Growth Hacking

What most people mean

“Find the one lever that unlocks exponential growth.” Hack the algorithm. Optimise the funnel. A/B test your way to success. The premise: growth is a system you can crack if you’re clever enough.

The industry renamed it several times. Growth hacking became growth marketing became “GTM strategy.” The label changes. The promise doesn’t.

Where the definition breaks

The constant pressure caused by those you’re-just-one-funnel-away gurus. The “secrets” all your competitors know already (except you!). The new AI tools that will 100x your business while you’re sleeping with almost no detectable brain activity. The FOMO bullshit like, “Marketing is moving so fast, you have to keep up! It’s changing all the time!”

They make you wonder: am I missing something? Or am I just f*cking stupid? Should I just quit everything and start a goat farm?

They chip away at your confidence, self-worth, and joy in what you do, leaving you feeling useless. And that’s when they suck you into craving the quick fixes they peddle.

Wanna get a constant flow of customers? Wanna know the secret to online success? All you need is one offer people can’t refuse, one hyper-optimised funnel, and one ad using this groundbreaking approach! That’s all you need! It’s that easy! More exclamation points!!!

F*ck that.

If it were that easy, everyone would do it. A sales funnel is not a business. Neither is an offer. Or an ad campaign. Selling stuff to people is hard. It takes time. It’s meant to be hard.

One of my clients’ clients made $40,000 a month solely from Facebook Ads. The ads stopped working after a couple of months. Revenue went to zero overnight. He had no other option but to shut down the business. Why? Because it had no foundations. No unique positioning, no distinctive brand, no continuous reach. Just an offer sitting on top of a house of cards.

How we define it at STFO

Growth hacking culture is the monster. It’s the thing that harms the people in our segment. We pointed our finger at the toxic growth-hack marketing culture and highlighted how it’s been eroding your confidence, self-worth, and joy in your work, pushing you toward quick fixes sold by so-called experts.

The alternative: foundations.

Unique positioning. Distinctive brand. Continuous reach. Built on insight foraging. In that order. It takes time. There is no map. There are no shortcuts. Don’t expect a treasure map with a big, fat X marking the spot. Anyone trying to sell you that kind of shortcut is full of merde.

“GTM Strategy” is the new “Growth Marketing,” which was the new “Growth Hacking,” which was the new “Digital Marketing.” Trends come and go, but foundations remain the same.

What it is NOT

• Not a legitimate strategy (it’s a label for tactics without foundations)
• Not dead (the mindset survived the term, it just rebranded)
• Not something you should feel bad about not knowing (the “secrets” are manufactured FOMO)
• Not what built any of the companies growth hackers cite as examples (those companies had product-market fit and positioning first)
• Not a replacement for doing the hard work of understanding your customers