When you step into a business where performance has flatlined, the instinct is often to look for big, transformational changes. New platforms, rebrands, complete strategy resets.

In reality, moving the dial quickly is rarely about doing everything. It's about identifying the few things that matter most — and acting on them fast.

"Growth doesn't come from doing more. It comes from doing the right things, in the right order, with commercial clarity."

When I joined Harrier Trail Running, the business had plateaued. Growth had stalled, and while there were plenty of ideas, there wasn't a clear focus on what would actually unlock performance in the short term. Within four months, we turned that into 35% year-on-year growth — not through one big change, but through a series of focused, commercially driven decisions.

Step 1: Get Control of Trading

Before looking at acquisition or brand, you need to understand how the business is making money day to day. What's selling, what isn't, where margin is being made, and where it's being lost.

By tightening up trading and making more deliberate commercial decisions, we were able to drive a significant uplift through optimisation alone. No major investment — just better control and sharper execution.

+98%
Revenue Uplift from OptimisationNo major investment — better control and sharper commercial execution

Step 2: Remove Operational Constraints

Growth is often limited not by demand, but by the business's ability to fulfil it. In this case, the existing setup was inefficient and costly. By restructuring the 3PL and improving how orders were managed, we removed a key barrier to scaling.

£60K
Cost Reduction3PL restructure and order management improvements removed this directly from the cost base

Step 3: Unlock Demand

Once the core was stable, the next focus was on unlocking demand. Paid social became a key lever — but not in isolation. It was tied into a clearer acquisition strategy, with influencer marketing and digital PR scaled aggressively alongside it.

  • 15% increase in leads from paid social
  • 10,000+ new prospects entering the funnel
  • 300% increase in traffic from influencer and digital PR activity

The key wasn't just adding channels — it was making sure they were working together with a clear objective.

Step 4: Convert and Retain

Rather than broad, generic CRM activity, we focused on segmentation and lifecycle improvements — targeting customers based on behaviour and intent.

£80K
Additional Revenue from CRMProving that growth doesn't always require more traffic — just better use of the customers you already have

Step 5: Define the Growth Roadmap

With short-term performance improving, we defined a longer-term product and growth roadmap — not about immediate wins, but ensuring the business could scale sustainably.

£2M
Planned Growth Over Two YearsA clear roadmap aligning product, marketing and ecommerce around a single direction
Key Takeaways
  • Get control of trading before investing in growth — understand where money is made and lost
  • Operational constraints often limit growth more than demand does — fix them early
  • Channels work better when aligned to a clear acquisition strategy, not run in isolation
  • CRM and segmentation can unlock significant revenue without increasing traffic
  • Short-term wins and long-term planning should run in parallel, not in sequence

The common thread across all of this is focus. When you come into a business, it's easy to get pulled into everything at once. The reality is that only a small number of areas will truly move the dial in the short term. The job is to find them quickly, prioritise them properly, and execute without overcomplicating things.