Three Ways to Grow - TGO

Are you looking for a Third Growth Option ℠ ?

The growth strategy you’ve trusted for years might be the very thing keeping your business stuck.

Most companies default to a binary choice:

• Organic growth (get better, faster, cheaper with what you’ve got), or
• Acquisition (buy your way to scale, and hope the integration sticks).

But both come with real headaches—breaking down internal silos, aligning teams, post-merger chaos... Sound familiar?

There’s a Third Growth Option—and it’s driving results that traditional methods miss. I’ve seen it add $26M in revenue by expanding a lighting company into furniture, and double a factory’s revenue just by fixing how they go to market.

This approach focuses on three high-impact levers:

1. Expanding into adjacent product categories
2. Tapping new distribution channels
3. Sharpening your go-to-market execution

The beauty? You can build this engine without burning out your core team—because it runs alongside your day-to-day ops, not instead of them.

If your business is plateauing—or if growth feels like pushing a boulder uphill—this might be the framework you’ve been missing. Let’s talk about what’s getting in your way and how this Third Growth Option could unlock your next leap.

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

[e-mail]

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
it's tough to get growth right if you're operating
under the wrong framework.
Right and in this season threegrowth climbers toolbox, I want
to share all the things thatI've learned over the years that
can help you right.
And I've learned that thisframework of you know, the most

(00:31):
used framework in businessgrowth framework is organic
growth or acquisition.
It's binary, it's organic orit's acquisition, and I've been
thinking about this.
Actually I've been thinkingabout this since I was a kid,
for crying out loud Because inthe 1970s my dad's business got
stuck and I've watched himpainfully.

(00:54):
I watched him be stuck in sortof the wrong framework, I think.
And in the first 20 years of mycareer I've been in plenty of
Monday morning financial reviewsor yearly budgeting meetings
and we're always talking about,you know, there's always this

(01:17):
sort of pressure and anxietyaround the complexity of driving
organic growth or doingacquisition.
Complexity of driving organicgrowth or doing acquisition,
which, by the way, organicgrowth is very complex because
it forces you to use currentresources to go better, faster,
cheaper.
That's what organic growth isand does.
And there's lots of complexityin getting different departments

(01:39):
, lots of complexity in gettingdifferent departments to play
well with each other.
Silos you break down silos andmake collaboration happen, and
what's good for one departmentis very challenging for another
department in all of that, sojust sort of the tyranny of
running today and making, youknow, making the month and

(02:00):
making the year in organicgrowth is very, very difficult.
It's very, you know,challenging, and acquisition has
its downfalls.
You can find the right targetand buy it at the right price
and then it falls apart inintegration.
Right, integration goes away.

(02:21):
But the framework that we usethat I encourage you to think
about in your business, is thethird growth option.
So you've got organic, you'vegot acquisition, and then the
third option is adding new,adjacent categories.

(02:41):
You know you're selling apples,oranges on your food stand,
accessing new channels ofdistribution, you're on the East
Coast, not the West Coast, oryou're in the US, not in Europe,
or you're online but notoffline, or the other way around
.
Accessing new channels ofdistribution, which requires a

(03:02):
tweaking of the go-to-marketprocess usually, or you just
stay in your act.
Third growth option can also bejust remaining in your core
categories and your corechannels, but fixing the market
process, which is usually thiseight-cylinder engine that
sputters on five and umbackfires on three cylinders.
Uh, so fixing the go-to-marketprocess can have huge

(03:28):
implications.
I've seen, you know.
I'll give you two examples ofthird growth option success
stories.
One we added a furniturecategory to a lighting company,
went from zero to $26 million inthree years.
The other we doubled therevenue of a of a factory, um,
by just fixing their go-tomarket process.

(03:49):
Um, and there are and, and.
The reason we've been able todo that and you can do this, um,
the reason you can make thethird growth option work for you
, is because it is aboutunderstanding the framework from
a different perspective,applying resources to building

(04:13):
adjacent categories, fixing thego-to-market process, adding new
channels of distribution andapplying resources today to make
that happen, while the rest ofthe team under your payroll
continues running the businesstoday.
Right, what are some thingsholding you back?
Love to hear about it, love totalk about it and see if I can

(04:36):
help.
Thank you.