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The $200M Reframe: When Growth Stalls, Stop Digging Deeper
We just held the inaugural Growth Thinking Roundtable, with special guest Bob Gilbreath – ex-P&G brand leader, serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, and investor. Bob was joined by Rich Cooper – writer, entrepreneur and creative thinker, and Owen Works – an entrepreneur currently building out his second venture.
It was a fast-paced, high value conversation focused on sideways thinking: the skill of hitting a problem not harder, but from different angles, to deliver powerful results.
Here are just a few of the killer insights we covered in our conversation.
The Neck Hanger That Saved Millions
Bob opened with his Tide story. When value brands started eating market share, everyone at P&G wanted to cut prices. Bob had a different idea: test a simple Tide bottle neck hanger in a small (sub $100k) experiment, with the copy “Three times the stain-fighting ingredients for only 25 cents per load.”
Results? a 10% sales lift, immediately.
The reframe wasn’t about being cheaper. It was about delivering better value per wash. That insight is still driving Tide messaging 20+ years later, protecting (by Bob’s estimation) hundreds of millions in margin that would’ve been lost to price cuts.
The lesson: When everyone’s solving the problem the same way, the breakthrough usually comes from changing the question entirely.
Why Entire Industries Get Stuck Digging The Same Hole
As Edward de Bono said: “You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper.”
I brought up a particularly irksome example: the LinkedIn outreach army that floods my inbox daily. Every single one has the identical pitch: “How many new prospects are you getting? We can book meetings for you, guaranteed!”
Their process? The same old LinkedIn Sales Navigator sweep to find targets, then AI-customized emails based on LinkedIn profiles.
I find these spam merchants mind-blowingly uncreative in their approach. Ironic for an offering that’s supposed to make you stand out. They’re all digging the same hole deeper, competing on who can send more spam faster.
Rich’s experience perfectly illustrated this trap. He started CRRAL as a traditional freelance-for-hire network because, well, that’s what everyone was building. But testing revealed something different: his customers weren’t hiring freelancers: they were hiring community builders. That insight transformed CRRAL into PRVN, a completely different business model. Equally creative, with the same foundation of building fans around big ideas. But definitely digging a different hole to come up with a better solution.
Three Reframe Triggers That Unlock Growth
1. What Game Are We Really Playing?
Old Spice was dying until someone noticed something obvious that everyone had missed: women buy most personal care products, even for men. The entire “Your man could smell like…” campaign wasn’t selling to men – it was selling to women buying for their partners.
Sales exploded because Old Spice stopped playing the game everyone else was playing (men’s grooming) and started playing the game that actually mattered (women’s purchasing decisions).
Your move: Look at who you think buys versus who actually decides. The gap between those two might be your biggest opportunity.
2. What Job Is Our Customer Actually Hiring Us For?
Another story from Bob. Tide customers weren’t buying detergent. They were buying “clean clothes with less hassle.” That insight opened up entirely new product lines and, like the Tide Washing System. It also was the gateway to more premium positioning for the already-top-tier brand.
Owen mirrored this with his own experience. His first venture built wearables to measure blood alcohol through sweat – a technology play. But customers weren’t ‘hiring’ the wearables to measure alcohol; they were hiring them to enable behaviour change. The regulatory burden, liability, and technology complexity of working in health made the wearables route brutal – but opened up a new door.
His pivot? A gambling-meets-health app that uses social accountability and real money stakes to help people change habits. Same job to be done (behaviour change), completely different solution. As Owen put it: “Fantasy football for your habits.”
Your move: Stop describing what you sell. Reframe your pitch to focus on the outcome your customer actually wants.
3. How Do We Make Our Competitor’s Strength Irrelevant?
Bob shared another example from an influencer marketing companies he started: instead of competing on follower counts, they focused on creative quality. They positioned higher-quality photography from influencers as a differentiator, then added their own designers to turn those assets into broader marketing materials.
The reframe: “You’re not just getting a social media post, You’re getting website content, in-store displays, and professional creative assets.” Suddenly, the higher price made perfect sense.
Your move: What are you competing on that doesn’t actually matter to your customer? What could you compete on instead?
The Test-Don’t-Talk Rule
A big insight came when we discussed endless strategy meetings: As Bob said “When everyone’s arguing, there’s probably market data you can get instead.”
Bob’s $100K Tide neck hanger test indisputably provided better intel than months of internal debates. Rich underlined Bob’s sentiment with stories about micro-testing creative instead of building $300K campaigns. Owen’s entire pivot happened because he tested what customers actually wanted versus what the technology could deliver.
The pattern is clear: small, fast tests trump big theories.
Your move:Pick the thing your team argues about most. Find a creative way to test for a potential reframe.
The Social Leverage Multiplier
One insight that caught everyone’s attention was Owen’s approach to accountability. Instead of enabling users to track results vs personal goals, his app lets friends bet against each other’s success. As Rich put it: “I’m taking Dave’s 10 bucks if he doesn’t lose the weight. That’s way more motivating than personal health benefits.”
The social element transforms individual willpower into community pressure, multiplying the behaviour change effect.
Your move: Are there a social dynamic reframe that could amplify your product’s impact?
The Monday Morning Reframe Ritual
Discussion is nice. Delivering a practice that builds your business is better.
Here’s a closing thought: every Monday, pick one assumption your company is making and ask: “What if this isn’t true?”
Surfacing, and challenging the sacred rules your business is built on, might be your next growth trigger.
Want to join the next Growth Thinking Roundtable? They happen every three weeks with different entrepreneurs and growth experts. Each session focuses on real businesses, real challenges, and solutions that actually work.
DM me “SIGNUP” if you want an invite to the next session.