Growth is rarely just about finding more customers, opening more locations or hitting the next revenue target.
That was one of the strongest themes to come out of our recent Masterclass with Troy Hazard, Growing Stronger Networks, a session tailored to leaders scaling franchise and multi-location businesses.
Bringing together franchise, multi-location and network leaders, the session explored what sustainable growth really requires. Across the afternoon, Troy challenged the room to think beyond the numbers and look at the people, decisions, systems and habits that either enable growth or get in its way.
Make space for growth first
Troy began with a simple idea: uncertainty isn’t new, and waiting for the perfect environment to make decisions is a losing strategy.
His first challenge was to create more headspace by separating the things you can change, the things you’ve already influenced and need to let play out, and the things you simply can’t control. The point wasn’t productivity for productivity’s sake. It was to create enough mental space to actually think about growth rather than constantly reacting to what’s in front of you.
As Troy put it, if you don’t make space for growth, you stagnate.
Growth has to work for the business and the people behind it
One of Troy’s biggest challenges to the room was to stop treating growth as purely a financial goal.
Before building the business plan, he encouraged leaders to build a personal plan alongside it. Why are you growing? What will that growth actually enable? What impact will it have on you, your family and the life you want to build?
His own experience was a reminder that chasing bigger numbers, more locations or someone else’s version of success can quickly become a strategy that looks good on paper but doesn’t actually serve you.
That led into three groups every growth strategy needs to influence: your peers, the people you lead and the people you serve.
The smartest ideas might come from outside your industry
Troy encouraged leaders to deliberately surround themselves with people who think differently.
He shared the story of Poolwerx and how its US growth strategy was shaped not only by looking at competitors in the pool industry, but by learning from businesses and partners outside it. That helped the company build a different kind of relationship with suppliers and create a more distinctive route to market.
His challenge to the room was simple: instead of just talking shop with people who already think like you, ask:
What’s your greatest challenge, and how can I help? What’s your greatest success, and what can I learn?
Leaders have to evolve before the business can
Growth also puts pressure on leadership.
Troy’s point was that leaders can’t ask their teams to grow into something they haven’t been willing to model themselves. As the organisation evolves, leadership has to evolve first.
The same applies to the people you bring into the next phase of growth. Troy introduced a simple filter: skill, will, ability and timing.
The person who has been there the longest isn’t automatically the right person for the next leadership role. The franchisee who succeeds with one location isn’t automatically ready for five. Growth becomes much harder when the wrong people are placed into roles simply because they’re “next in line.”
Don’t lose sight of the “last three feet”
As businesses scale, senior leaders naturally get further away from the end customer.
Troy described this as the importance of the “last three feet”, the final interaction between your business and the customer.
Strategy, systems and expansion plans matter, but if the experience at the counter, on the phone or in a local location breaks down, the growth strategy breaks down with it.
For franchise and multi-location businesses in particular, that means staying connected not just to franchisees, members or brokers, but to the customer experience those people are delivering on your behalf.
Execution beats complexity
Troy’s final message was perhaps the simplest: be brilliant at the basics.
Growth plans often become more complicated as businesses get bigger, but Troy argued that execution still comes back to a few fundamentals: the right people, alignment behind the strategy, consistency, useful data and clarity around what the business promises its customers.
Financial metrics matter, but they’re not the whole picture. The “unit economics” of growth also include whether the people joining the organisation contribute culturally and emotionally, whether franchisees or members are engaged, and whether the people you serve actually believe in the direction you’re taking.
What this looks like in the real world
The conversation became particularly practical when Marg Lucan, Customer Engagement Manager at GoVita, and Malcolm Withers, Head of Sales at Selfco, joined Troy to share how they’re using technology to support growth across complex business networks.
Their businesses are different, but both face a challenge familiar to franchise and multi-location leaders: how do you communicate consistently, influence people across a distributed network and scale without losing relevance or the human connection? For GoVita, that means keeping independently owned stores, suppliers and other stakeholders informed and engaged. For Selfco, it means staying relevant to thousands of finance brokers who have plenty of competing lenders vying for their attention.
Cutting through in a crowded market
Selfco works with around 3,500 mortgage and finance brokers across Australia. Malcolm Withers explained that because brokers choose which lenders they work with, communication plays an important role in keeping Selfco front of mind.
“Constant Contact is the cornerstone of our reach program and it underpins the reach of our BDMs.”
But more communication isn’t necessarily better. Brokers can receive communications from 40 to 50 different lenders, on top of messages from aggregators and other partners. For Selfco, the challenge is finding the right balance between staying visible and adding to the noise.
The results suggest they’re getting that balance right. Malcolm shared that Selfco sees average open rates of around 48%, compared with what he described as a finance industry average of around 35%.
“It tells me that what we send the brokers is of interest to them.”
The next step is making those communications more connected and responsive. Malcolm spoke about bringing Constant Contact, SMS and their CRM together to build automated journeys based on how individual brokers interact with Selfco.
A broker attending a webinar, for example, could trigger a sequence of communications. Their subsequent behaviour could then determine what happens next, with different journeys depending on whether they engage with those messages or not.
“How do I build it into journeys and sequence the comms out so when a broker comes to a webinar, it launches a sequence of events?”
It’s a practical example of technology supporting growth by helping a business communicate at scale without treating every customer or partner exactly the same.
Helping a diverse network stay connected
Marg Lucan shared a different version of the same challenge at GoVita.
As a co-operative, GoVita needs to communicate across a diverse network that includes 111 store owners nationally, around 200 suppliers and independent health food stores. That means managing different messages for different audiences, while making sure the information that matters actually cuts through.
As Marg explained:
“On average, we could be sending out 20 different communications a week, from a weekly newsletter to supplier updates to independent newsletters monthly.”
Marg has been using Constant Contact for around seven years to help manage those communications, spanning newsletters, supplier information, events and resources for members.
But for GoVita, the challenge isn’t simply sending more information. Their store owners are running businesses, serving customers and managing teams, so finding ways to make communication easier to consume and act on is just as important.
“Our members are so time-poor. So at our conferences, we’re working on better strategies with them to maximise their time.”
That includes helping members become more comfortable with technology and structure their businesses so tasks can be delegated or automated. Marg gave the example of AI potentially helping with administrative work such as reading and categorising emails, freeing people to focus their attention elsewhere.
There are signs that engagement is changing too. Marg said email engagement has historically sat around 30 to 35%, but newer, more tech-savvy store owners entering the network appear increasingly comfortable engaging digitally. At the time of the event, she said engagement was getting closer to 40% for some communications.
GoVita also supports its network with a central member resource hub, giving stores access to marketing tools and resources, including EDM templates, when they need them.
Using technology to strengthen the human experience, not replace it
Perhaps the most interesting common thread between the two businesses was how they spoke about AI.
For Selfco, rapid growth means asking how technology can help the business scale without simply adding people at the same rate. Malcolm said Selfco had experienced around 300% year-on-year growth and was looking at how AI could take on certain tasks while existing employees moved into areas that better support the next stage of growth.
“For us, it’s about how do we scale for growth using the people we have.”
At GoVita, Marg drew a clear line between the tasks technology can make easier and the experience it shouldn’t replace.
GoVita’s independently owned stores differentiate themselves through personal service and the expertise of naturopaths and nutritionists. That human interaction is part of the value customers come for.
“GoVita pride themselves on that personal experience... You want that personalised service, and you’re not going to get that from AI.”
The goal isn’t to automate everything. It’s to use technology to remove friction, improve communication and give people more time to focus on the work and relationships that actually drive growth.
One thing to take back to your business
Troy finished his opening session by asking everyone in the room to identify one change they could make by Monday.
That’s probably the best way to approach all of this.
You don’t need to completely redesign your growth strategy tomorrow. But you can ask:
What’s one thing getting in the way of growth that we can simplify, change or start doing differently now?
Because sustainable growth isn’t usually the result of one giant idea. More often, it comes from creating clarity, getting the right people behind the plan and executing the basics consistently.
