Hi Reader,

Going from $0-$1M is an art

Going from $1M-$100M is a science

I took AppSumo from $3M to $84M in 6 years while cutting my own hours in half doing it.

Here’s the recipe.

The 3 stages of a $100M+ company

At AppSumo, we watched 1,000+ companies launch. It gave me a unique watchtower over the industry.

Looking back at the most and least successful, ONE correlation was clear:

The companies that scaled had founders who attacked the right problems at the right time.

What I realized is companies go through 3 very unique stages:

• Start Up: Getting a company from 0 to 1
• Scale Up: Scaling it to $100M
• Grow Up: Growing to $1B+ and beyond

While your title is “CEO” through all 3 phases, your job couldn’t be more different.

The best CEOs know which stage they thrive in… and when they’ve become the bottleneck. Tim Cook is perfect for Apple today, but he couldn't have done the work Steve Jobs did.

Don’t get it twisted: $0-$1M is 10x harder.

You’re searching for PMF. You don’t have the funds to grow. You’re discovering flight. This is art. This is why Founders make the big bucks.

But anybody can get to $1M/year on pure savagery.

$1M-$100M has a process to follow.

You have to do the right things at the right time or you’ll be cracking an egg on your freshly baked cake and wondering why it tastes off.

This was my zone of genius.

As CEO, you have to know which stage you’re in and attack accordingly.

The 9 Steps to 9 Figures

In 2022, Forbes covered my framework: “The 12 Plateaus of Progress” (The 12 P’s).

In that article, The 12 Plateaus mapped to the 3 stages:

• Start Up: Person, Product, Promotion, Process
• Scale Up: People, Performance, Plan, Profits
• Grow Up: Psychology, Pinnacle, Protection, Press

After teaching it to hundreds of CEOs, I learned:

A framework people can’t remember is a framework people will never use.

A coach once watched Kobe practice for 45 minutes. Nothing but basic layups and jump shots.

Why? "I don't get bored with the basics."

Expertise is taking the fundamentals to their limit.

So I deleted a quarter of my life's work and compressed it down from 12 to 9 mission-critical steps.

9 Steps to 9 Figures:

• Start Up: Persona, Problem, Promotion
• Scale Up: People, Performance, Process
• Grow Up: Plan, Psychology, Protect

Start Up

Person → Persona

Exclude 99% of customers to serve the 1% who'll love you.

When AppSumo narrowed from "entrepreneurs" to "Marketing Agency Matt" CAC dropped and AOV tripled.

"Person" didn’t click, but renaming this to “Persona” made people understand instantly.

Product → Problem

Products decay.
Problems are timeless.

AmEx started as a freight company. They abandoned trains for credit cards and built a $150B empire. Still serving business travelers.

AppSumo started by selling digital deals.

When we reframed around “the tools you use to grow your business shouldn’t put you out of business,” every product decision got easier and retention climbed.

The graveyard of business is littered with companies obsessed with products.

Promotion

Find one channel and max it out before you add the next.

At AppSumo, email was the engine. We didn’t chase 10 channels. We made email print money, then layered on partnerships, affiliates, and paid once email was already profitable.

Scale Up

Process

At AppSumo, our "Profit Factory" ran the whole business: close deals Monday, copy Tuesday, email Wednesday, support Thursday, source deals Friday.

People

Your first 10 hires either accelerate you or become anchors.

I hired people who could run without me. Every hire that needed daily direction cost me months.

Profits → Performance

I dropped “Profits” from the 12P’s. What good is measuring performance if you can't drive profit from it? They're one conversation.

What gets measured gets managed. What gets managed gets money.

We tracked revenue per employee like a religion. Beat Apple, Google, and Amazon on that metric.

Grow Up

Pinnacle → Plan

Pinnacle is your vision. But what good is a plan if you don't know where you're going?

The destination belongs inside the roadmap, not above it.

Every quarter we asked one question: “What’s the one thing that, if we nail it, makes everything else easier or unnecessary?”

Psychology

The company can only grow as fast as the CEO does.

The hardest part of going from $3M to $84M wasn’t strategy. It was rewiring my own identity as the job changed underneath me. And making sure everyone else (including customers) was along for the ride.

Press → Protect

Part of protecting what you've built is your ability to influence public perception of you. You're one PR crisis away from writing a $10M check.

This also includes legal, compliance, brand risk. Most founders ignore this until it's a five-alarm fire. Build the firewall before you need it.

The Framework

Each plateau unlocks the next one:

Amateurs collect frameworks. Masters cut them down.

These aren’t a checklist, they’re a diagnostic.

Rate yourself Red/Yellow/Green. Your lowest score is your operational bottleneck and your next 90 days of work.

What got you here won’t get you there…

What’s next?

Now I’m writing the book:

9 STEPS TO 9 FIGURES

The complete guide to go from 7 figures to $100M.

For now, stay tuned while I send a break down on each stage with the exact $100M playbook behind it.

See you at $100M 🤝

🔖 To Bookmark:

• ​How I got hired at AppSumo: Do things without asking
• ​Great strategy off-site: 8 tips to follow
• ​Hackathon guide: How to make your team adopt AI
• ​what_the_market_is_telling_us.md: AI loop to help you speak to your customer
• ​10 traits: Of every $100M CEO I’ve coached

👀 From the Box Seats

Notes from coaching CEOs. The patterns you can only see when you’re outside your own P&L.

🛠️ Product Rec

<$100: MagTech Sleep Stack - Like a sleepy lemonade that helps fuel your brain.

>$100: Peak Design Laptop Bag - Probably my favorite travel backpack. It's a photography backpack, so it has side zip access as well as padded compartments to keep everything organized.

🗨️ Still True

Alright Reader, that’s it for this Sunday! Ayman Al-Abdullah Follow me on X 🤝 3 WAYS TO GROW TOGETHER: ​Download my free Company Wiki. Every company should have a page like this that every employee can reference. ​Join the waitlist for 1:1 coaching. Currently booked out, but joining the list saves your spot in the queue. ​COO Playbook. Give this to your COO to help them onboard themselves and unlock way more leverage for you and your business. ✉️ SHARE THE WEALTH: Forward this to a founder friend. Someone forwarded this to you? Subscribe here.​ P.S. Is there a specific topic you want me to cover? Shoot me a reply to this email. I read every response and value your thoughts 🤝

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