Exhaust more before anything else

1. Why more goes first

If you can do more, the view given is that you should, for these reasons:

• The best bet after risk. More is called the highest risk-adjusted return move. Do more of something that has already worked and the likelihood it works again is very high. Repeat what succeeded, and keep repeating it until it stops working.
• The easiest bet. Pressed on why not more, one owner floated starting a personal podcast instead. The reply: why? Just do more, and save the podcast for when more stops working. More is called by far the easiest bet.
• It takes work. More takes an unbelievable amount of work, and that, it is thought, is why people do not want to do it.

Diminishing returns are still returns. Suppose your first $100,000 of ad spend returns ten times, and your next $100,000 returns three times. You might not be improving at the same rate, but you are still making progress, and it is still better than the stock market. A habit here is to ask: is there an absolute return, and is there something else whose absolute return is higher? If there is, maybe you allocate the resources there. One practice here, because of risk, is to max out a path before anything else is considered. Working out how to do more of what already works is hard; the view here is that it is a problem to attack with confidence.

When you are not sure. If you are not sure whether to do more or better, start with more, because more will always make you better, it is said. For most people, more is the risk-adjusted bet: what you do already works to a degree, so adding far more volume carries very little risk. More is almost always the one worth exhausting first.

2. What more looks like, method by method

Asked of each way of getting customers, the question gives these mores:

Method	The mores named
Ads	Spend more money; make more creative; add more platforms
Content	More posts across Instagram and TikTok; more spend and more creative; add tech; recruit more people onto the media team to make more
Outreach, for customers or for affiliates	More money on it; more messages out; more platforms; more technology; more people

All of these are called very low-risk mores once risk is weighed, and if you have the chance, the view is that you should take it now. More keeps working far longer than you would expect. The ten-times question, channel by channel, is on SOP 40 — Choose the next growth move, section 2.

3. More and better, back and forth

Experience here suggests that, over long stretches of taking a huge amount of action, the work tends to move back and forth, like an accordion, between more and better.

An example. You make one YouTube video a week. Go to five a week and you will likely get more views, but you will probably notice that one of the five (or one of ten) does dramatically better than the rest. Betting you could make the others like it with more time, you pull back, from ten every two weeks to three. Those three are on average much better, and total views rise. Once you are really good at three, you try for ten that good every two weeks and push back out; again, one of the ten beats the other nine.

The swing is called normal. Which of the two you are doing just depends on where you are in it, it is thought; what matters is doing one or the other.

A second view: both at once. One team's practice is to aim for quality and volume together: settle where quality changes what the audience does, hold it steady, and turn that unit out as often as possible. The detail is on SOP 214 — Make more and better organic content, section 10.1. This section has more and better take turns; the second view does both in the same stretch. This page does not settle which reading is right.

4. Quantity makes quality

A familiar story: one pottery class is graded on each student's best pot, another on how many pots they make. By the end of term the second class had made more pots, and better ones than the class that fixated on the best. Doing more of something makes you better at it. The measured case on paid advertising is on SOP 40, section 2.1.

5. Count in hundreds, then in thousands

The seven customers. An owner has seven customers: three from cold outreach, one from an event, one from a referral, and so on. Each has a clear input and output, so why not more events and more outreach? He did not have the data. That is the next question in the order; getting the numbers is SOP 189 — Get the numbers and decide fast on reversible bets.

A hundred is the yardstick. A rule of thumb here: count in hundreds, and do not accept that anything has been done enough until it has been done a hundred times. For content, that means a hundred; for outreach, a hundred a day. The daily hundred, and the plan built on it, are on SOP 52 — Set daily advertising volume and keep going until the goal is hit, section 1.

Then thousands. The bar rises: count by the thousand, not by ones and tens. Doing a hundred actions a day is called a primer for someone just starting. No one takes action, it is said, so beating people is very easy; just make sure you are not one of them, which is most people.

6. Results that swing mean too little volume

If your sales swing (two some months, four in others), the problem, in this view, is that you are not doing enough advertising. If a month's advertising gets two sales, two a day takes 30 times that level of advertising. No one could do that volume? Of course you can, it is said; it just takes time, and at least if you attack it from that angle you are far more likely to get there.

The same point with one deal a month: you usually do about one, never knowing which day or from where. What looks like volatility is just insufficient volume.

Somebody in your industry is doing 30 times more. There are probably people in your industry closing a deal a day. For almost everyone, someone in your industry makes 30 times the sales; that is probably true, and if it is, the bet is that they run 30 times the advertising or more.

Under a million a year. A special call-out: if your business makes under a million dollars a year, it is almost guaranteed you are just not doing enough. Nine times out of ten, the diagnosis could end there. Sometimes there are strategy issues, but more times than not you just need to do more, because at that volume you cannot even tell whether anything is working. The same is put as a broad, sweeping generalization that is almost always right: below a million a year, the answer is almost always more. The swings in your sales come from too little volume, and you are small because you do too little and no one knows you exist. That last point is SOP 194 — Count what it costs to become known.

The ceiling is in your head. People believe they cannot do more than 100 outreaches a day; some companies do 100,000. Not sure where you would get the leads? At least now you know your problem, and can solve it.

7. Other people's volume is bigger than you picture

The flyers. The too-small test, with its figures, is on SOP 52, section 2. What is added here: in that example the business was new and short of customers, and the test followed a mentor's advice. The phone rang once: a caller saying the owner had dented his car. At 300, in the mentor's view, it is hard to know whether anything works. The mentor's volume was put at 500 times the owner's, or 5,000. You cannot picture someone doing three or five times your volume, yet people do far more.

One company's content. Asked why someone's content is not working, one company's answer is that it does 20 times more, 50 times more, and has for five years. Its team's weekly count is given as a guess: "500, 450 pieces of content a week".

One company's launch:

What	The figure offered
Affiliates and ads	A very large number of each, in a six-week window
Where the creative ran	X, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, podcasts, email, billboards, direct mail
Pieces of content	This page gives no figure for it

The point of piling it up, it is thought: if this belief breaks and you raise your standard for how much you must do, the mission is accomplished. You probably just are not doing enough.

8. Time and consistency unlock volume

A tremendous amount can only be done over a long time. 450 pieces in one week would do more than nothing, but not much; 35,000 pieces in a week is unlikely. So time unlocks ever larger volume.

Consistency is hard to see, because the only way to see it is to keep watching. To see an owner arrive at four or five in the morning daily, you must be there at that hour daily; a week of watching still does not show a year. The claim: consistency is the secret, and it is hard to see.

9. Raise your minimum standard

Counting units. In high finance, it is said, a million dollars is a stick, the money being so large that the count restarts at one. One owner, when broke, counted money in burritos, as meals; with a little more, in months of rent. You probably have a standard that keeps rising too. You can typically tell how wealthy someone is by their units: in time, how far out they think; in money, how they size their bets.

One operator's starting standard. In a new industry, one operator would think at once about a sales team of 50 to 100 people and spend of a few hundred thousand a day, and push that way until at least reaching it, where that operator is very comfortable. Bigger operators hold bigger standards still. The aim: pull your future standards into today.

10. Put more in, and press on when it is working

The box. Advertising goes into a box that turns raw attention into money. That picture is on SOP 195 — Put the marketing principles ahead of the tactics, section 3. What is added here: to get more money out, you could just put more in, and people do not; they would rather tinker with the box.

Lean in. Some of you are doing very well and do not know it. In one example, an owner said he was getting 20 to 1 on his advertising while spending $1,000 a month. The reply: imagine spending more. The principle: push hardest when it gets easy. For most people it is usually the opposite: when something starts working, they ease off. You do not know how long it will work: this is when you lean in, and this is when you push hard.

If nothing is stopping you from doing more, go and do more of what works, and leave the list at that first and earliest exit.

11. When better beats more

There is an arithmetic answer here too: do better when its incremental return is greater than the return on more. Good strategy is called getting the highest return on limited resources; strategy as prioritizing is SOP 185 — Allocate resources to the constraint and use leverage.

Case	Better	More	The call given
Sub a million, you probably have one salesperson	You might lift that one proficient rep from 25 to 40 percent close: a 60 percent improvement	Hiring a second is a large effort, but one proficient rep to two doubles sales	Probably more: doubling makes more money even without the lift, and it lowers the risk of being limited by one person; with one rep you almost always just need more
A 20-person sales team	Lift the team from 25 to 30 percent: a 20 percent improvement	Onboard and train four more reps, 20 to 24: also 20 percent	Both net 20 percent: do whichever is easier and takes fewer resources; the better route might be less work

Both would make more money, and choosing between them is called the essence of good strategy. You move faster by getting more for what you put in, which is the root of leverage.

12. When to do new

At least for getting more leads, new is kept on a very tight rein: you need a very good reason for it when you could do more or better. Three cases are named:

1. You have really maxed out a market. This is said to be far more common locally than nationally: you hold a huge share of it, or your spend covers the whole market many times over in frequency. Then you can move on to another market.
2. The platform itself is shrinking. Say your customers come from newspaper ads, and newspapers are falling 25 percent "a month or a year"; the period is not established on this page. Losing 25 percent, compounding, is not good, so a head start on another platform is probably a good idea.
3. New beats more and better after risk. The incremental return on new is greater, once risk is counted. This is called super rare. Doubling your ad spend has almost all of its risk covered already, and it is likely to double throughput, or at least raise it a lot; put the same money into something new, and the odds it beats your main machine are low.

Then ask again. Once you have done more, you probably ask what comes next: whether you can do more again; you would be surprised how often the answer is yes. The problems left are how to do even more, which are hard but solvable, not the exciting ones that pull you toward new, shinier things. The method comes first, then the choice among the three growth moves, and only then the tactics. Choosing the path for those tactics is SOP 186 — Pick the path up the mountain that fits your skills.

13. What this page does not decide for you

• How much more spend to imagine, in the 20-to-1 example. Not established on this page.
• 500 times or 5,000. 150,000 flyers a month against 300 once is 500 times. This page does not settle which reading is right.
• The launch's content count. This page gives no figure for that launch's content.
• The larger operators' standard. Not established on this page.

Flag	SOP 40, section 6	This page, section 12	A third reading
When new may start	Once more and better are exhausted: the same effort returns less than it would on a new platform	For a very good reason; of the three named, a shrinking platform can call for new while more or better are still open	Alongside more and better: where the machine works but tuning it brings only small gains and cash is tight, the view offered for that case keeps a team tuning it and gives a fifth of the focus to finding a better vehicle, since tuning alone will not get you out
What each costs	A head start lost on a platform in decline	Money put into new that more could have used	Not established on this page

This page does not settle which reading is right.

14. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Ask why you cannot do more; if nothing stops you, do more of what already works
2	Run the mores for each method: spend, creative, platforms, tech, people
3	If unsure between more and better, start with more
4	Count in thousands, not ones and tens; the rule of thumb counts nothing as enough before a hundred
5	Read swinging sales as too little volume, and size the volume a steadier result would take
6	Raise your minimum standard; volume on that scale takes time, and consistency
7	When it works, lean in rather than ease off
8	Do better when its incremental return beats more's
9	Keep new for a very good reason; the three named are a maxed-out market, a shrinking platform, or new beating more and better after risk (called super rare)
10	After more, ask whether you can do more again

15. Where this sits

• Getting better by testing: SOP 41 — Run one test a week.
• How many to contact, how often, by which routes: SOP 29 — Set outreach volume.
• The cost every change carries: SOP 188 — Apply the cost-of-change rule.

16. What this page does not cover

Tactics for each channel start on SOP 209 — Pick a lead bucket, starting with the offer and lead magnet. Choosing the method is on SOP 186, section 5, and SOP 12, section 4.