There’s a pattern emerging across the businesses Scaled works with right now. Some are flying – growing fast, winning clients, full of momentum. Others are genuinely struggling, stuck, wondering what’s gone wrong. And what’s striking is how little sits in between.
In the short video below, Scaled founder Simon Penson shares the lens he’s been applying to businesses on both sides of that divide – and the deceptively simple truth that tends to separate them.
Sell the thing people want to buy right now
Not the thing that sold well five years ago. Not the service a team has spent a career perfecting. Not the thing that felt like a sure bet when the proposition was first built.
The businesses growing fastest right now are selling into visceral pain. They’ve found a market where the problem is urgent, budgets are moving, and buyers don’t need convincing that they need help – they’re already reaching for the phone.
The clearest example? AI data centres. Businesses consulting into that space or building them have been able to multiply many times over, such is the volume of capital flooding in. The pain, the urgent and unavoidable need, was obvious. And the businesses positioned to serve it grew accordingly.
That’s an extreme example. But the principle applies everywhere.
This doesn’t mean existing expertise is worthless
For businesses in more traditional or mature markets, this isn’t a signal to start over. It’s a signal to look more carefully at where within a market the pain is most concentrated right now.
Take design agencies. Brand and design aren’t dead. But for a design agency wondering why growth has slowed, the question isn’t whether design matters – it’s where it matters most right now. Which sectors are investing heavily in it? Which geographies? Which size or stage of business?
Social and influencer marketing, for instance, is where significant budgets are currently flowing. That doesn’t mean every agency should pivot overnight, but it does mean being honest about where the energy in a market actually is, and asking whether positioning is aligned to it.
In less digitally mature markets, there’s still significant runway with core service offerings. In more mature markets, the game becomes finding the niches within niches where demand remains strong and underserved.
There’s always a way to find it. But it requires looking.
The lens worth applying
The framing Simon applies with almost every business he works with is this: Where is the visceral pain in our market, and are we positioned to solve it?
It sounds almost too simple. But it’s an extraordinarily clarifying question – and most founders don’t ask it often enough, or honestly enough.
Most businesses are built around capabilities, and then find customers for what they’ve built. The most effective businesses invert that. They start with where the pain is – where budgets are moving, where buyers are urgently seeking solutions – and then ask whether they can credibly serve that need.
Sometimes the answer is a product pivot. Sometimes it’s a positioning shift. Sometimes it’s just sharper targeting within an existing service. But the starting point is always the same: find the pain, then work backwards.
A useful exercise
For any business unsure where the visceral pain sits in their market, three questions are worth sitting with:
What are your best clients most worried about right now? Not just satisfied with – genuinely worried about. Where are they spending unexpected budget? What keeps coming up in conversations?
Where is new money moving in your sector? What are competitors winning that you’re not? What services or specialisms are growing fastest? What’s getting funded?
What do you wish you could sell, but feel like you can’t? Founders often already sense where demand is concentrated but feel constrained by existing positioning or identity. That tension is worth exploring.
The simplest business truth
People buy what they urgently need. When a business is selling into a problem that feels pressing and real to the buyer, the sales process is fundamentally different – and faster – than when it’s educating someone about a problem they don’t yet feel.
The businesses struggling right now are often excellent at what they do. The problem isn’t quality. It’s that the urgency around what they’re selling has shifted, and they haven’t shifted with it.
It doesn’t take a complete reinvention to fix this. Often it just takes an honest look at where demand is moving, and the courage to reposition toward it.
Find the visceral pain. Solve it better than anyone else. The growth tends to follow.
Scaled is a growth consultancy and investment vehicle helping service-led and digitally-enabled businesses 5–10x their profits over five years.
Get in touch to find out if Scaled is the right fit for your business.
