Unlocking 8-Figure Growth: Mastering Market Share & Revenue Metrics

Most 7-figure businesses never hit the 8-figure mark. So right now, we’re going to go over the most common steps that almost always translate into 8-figure growth.

My name is Chris Guerriero, and I’ve been in business for over 30 years. I have a portfolio of 12 companies and hold equity in multiple 7-, 8-, and 9-figure brands.

I have a unique insight into what works today—both in my personal companies and in the companies I invest in.

If you have a 6-figure business, you’ll still grow from what I show you here, but I put this all together specifically for 7-figure companies that want to hit the 8-figure mark in the next 12–24 months.

It doesn't make a difference if I'm starting a company from scratch or walking into it as an investor or advisor. Initially, I always look at four things.

I look at the amount of market share a company owns compared to the amount of market share available in their industry. With my team, the term we use for that is REACH.

Then I'll look at how they're generating REVENUE compared to how we generate revenue across the companies in my portfolio.

Third, I look at what they're doing to RETAIN their current customers and get them to purchase more.

And fourth, I look at their ORGANIZATION or their structure, which is what holds the boat together while we keep piling on more and more customers.

And it's always in that order!

What you'll find is that 7-figure companies get stuck because one of those four things is either weak or being focused on way too much. For example, it's easy to grow a six- or seven-figure company if you believe sales are the most important thing to focus on, and you put all your time and effort into selling more of your products and services.

But there's no way to sustain that when you get into the high sevens. And it's impossible to get into the 8- or 9-figure range with that mindset.

On the other hand, there are also many 7-figure companies that hire a consultant who tells them they need to systematize everything in order to keep growing. So they focus on creating systems instead of growing market share, driving new sales, and over-delivering to customers so those customers want to keep buying from them.

But systems are a waste of time if you don’t have the other three areas working properly.

So, if you're a 7-figure company, the first thing you want to do is write those four areas down—either on a piece of paper that you see every day or on a whiteboard in your office—so you're reminded every minute of every day that you need to pull all four of those levers every week, if not every day.

But if it's that easy, why do so many companies get stuck at the 7-figure mark?

In my experience, it's because they don't understand how to get clear on the few key actions that drive growth in each of those four areas.

I'll spend more time getting clear in business than I will on anything else. Every bad decision I made in my early years came from jumping into projects too fast, without talking to very smart people who were far more experienced than I was, and then studying what actions drove the greatest results for me.

For example, when it comes to growing revenue, clarity around the few key actions that have the greatest effect on your revenue and what metrics track those actions are the two most important things you need to be clear about.

What actions you need to take—and what metrics measure those actions so you know you’re on schedule to hit your target on time.

And I'm going to tell you exactly how to do that so your revenue grows faster and so you can actually see what the end game is, meaning you're clear on the path to get you from 7 to 8- or 9-figures.

The first thing that you want to be clear on is how much market share is in your industry.

If your industry is massive and that’s too big of a number for you to actually understand, then create your own measure of market share.

Let me give you an example.

When I was in the health club industry, I was a small player with a handful of locations. It was overwhelming for me to think that I could own a percentage of the entire health club market.

It was overwhelming even to think that I could own a percentage of the market share just in the United States.

So I looked at the size of the market share in one of the states where I was located, which was New Jersey.

But at the time, I was a young guy in my 20s, and this was my first successful business, so even that market was too big for me to wrap my mind around.

So I took out a map (literally a paper map that I pinned to my wall) and I drew a circle—a 5-mile circle around one of my locations. My team and I spent months trying to figure out:

- How many other health clubs were inside that circle  

- How many members were paying to go to those other clubs  

- How many people lived inside that circle who weren’t yet a member of a club  

For me, that was the definition of market share for that one location of mine.

Then I looked at the number of my members compared to the total number of people paying other health clubs, and that was the amount of paid market share that I owned.

The other number we came up with was the number of my members (people who were paying me for a membership) compared to the number of potential customers in that entire circle (which included both people paying other clubs and people who were not yet members of another club).

And that became my potential market share.

Those two numbers:  

- The Paid Market Share

- The Potential Market Share 

…became two of the most important metrics that were the topic of every leadership team meeting and every sales team meeting from that day forward.

When all the other health clubs in my circle (and at the time there were five others) were running discounts every month to get more members, we stayed consistent with our pricing and pushed to take market share in every way we could.

Within a few years of adopting this mindset, four of those five competitors inside that circle either went out of business or sold to another owner.

Obviously, we didn't gain 100% of that market share, but we grew massively while they struggled, because we weren't competing for the same audience.

Our competitors were discounting their prices to get “everyone” to join—meaning they were running ads to get people to basically put the bag of potato chips down, get off the couch, get into their car, drive to a place where they knew they didn’t fit in, and pay for a membership they knew they probably wouldn’t use.

They were advertising to the masses because that’s what’s normal in that industry.

But those are the most expensive people to advertise to, they’re the most difficult people to sell, and retention of those people absolutely sucks.

We, on the other hand, were fighting for market share.

All of our marketing was focused on attracting the people who were already paying for health club memberships at other health clubs.

Because we knew they already understood the value of being in shape, they understood the value of being a member of a health club, and they already knew everything about their current membership that they didn’t like.

Either their club wasn’t clean, or they didn't open early enough or stay open late enough, or their staff wasn't friendly enough, or they didn't have the most up-to-date equipment.

Whatever it was, every member had a list of things they thought could be better.

So, we interviewed all of our members who used to be members at other health clubs in the area, and we found out all the reasons why they moved from those other health clubs to ours. That became the foundation of all of our marketing.

We advertised that:  

- We were the cleanest clubs.  

- We opened earlier and stayed open later than anybody else.  

- We had staff who wiped down all the equipment on a regular basis.  

- We had friendly staff who knew every member's name when they walked in. (This was easy because members had to swipe their membership cards to get into the club, which brought their name up on the computer. We simply trained our receptionists to say hello and use each member’s first name.)  

- We offered free towel service, free coffee, and many other extra amenities that nobody else in the area offered.  

This attracted so many members of other clubs who were frustrated about paying for services that we included for free in our memberships.

We also educated everyone on how to get out of their other club memberships.  

And if they couldn’t get out of their membership, we simply added any remaining time they had left on their current membership to the end of the membership they bought from us. Alternatively, we offered them a spouse membership for free for the same duration.

Because we led with service and value—and we focused on over-delivering once someone came in—we took market share from every other club in our little universe. Our members were more loyal, and they stuck to their memberships far longer than the industry standard. That company eventually sold for more money than I had ever seen a chain of health clubs sell for at the time.

This success came because we focused first on getting crystal clear on the definition of market share for us and the few key actions that really drove growth—instead of just focusing on revenue.

No matter what kind of business you have or what industry you’re in, you will grow faster and more predictably when you focus on market share. And moving from 7 to 8 figures will be much easier for you.