# Grow a Business

> Build a repeatable growth engine — a guided journey that orchestrates 9 AI agent skills, one decision at a time.

Published 2026-07-16 · Updated 2026-08-17 · Guided journey · Free and MIT-licensed
Canonical: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/grow-business/
Source: https://github.com/wondelai/skills/tree/main/grow-business
Companion guide: https://skills.wondel.ai/guides/grow-an-existing-business-with-ai-skills/

**Install:** `npx skills add wondelai/skills/grow-business --global`

## What is the Grow a Business journey?

Lucky months are not a growth engine. Nine phases build one: pick the niche and the empty square of the marketing machine, strengthen the offer, manufacture pipeline, engineer word of mouth and network effects, then measure and stop discounting. Every decision lands in docs/ and carries into the next session.

## The 9 phases

1. **1-Page Marketing Plan** — Which niche, and which square of the machine is empty? → `docs/MARKETING.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/one-page-marketing/)
2. **$100M Offers** — Why should they buy this instead of the alternative? → `docs/OFFER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/hundred-million-offers/)
3. **Predictable Revenue** — How do we manufacture pipeline on demand? → `docs/MARKETING.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/predictable-revenue/)
4. **Contagious** — Why would anyone share this? → `docs/MARKETING.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/contagious/)
5. **Influence Psychology** — Why do they say yes on the page? → `docs/OFFER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/influence-psychology/)
6. **Crossing the Chasm** — How do we reach the mainstream buyer? → `docs/STRATEGY.md + docs/CUSTOMER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/crossing-the-chasm/)
7. **Cold Start Problem** — How does the network do the acquiring? → `docs/MARKETING.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/cold-start-problem/)
8. **Lean Analytics** — Which one number tells us it is working? → `docs/METRICS.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/lean-analytics/)
9. **Negotiation** — How do we capture the value instead of discounting it? → `docs/OFFER.md` (https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/negotiation/)

## What it produces

- `docs/MARKETING.md`
- `docs/OFFER.md`
- `docs/STRATEGY.md`
- `docs/CUSTOMER.md`
- `docs/METRICS.md`
- `docs/GROW-BUSINESS-PLAN.md`

## When to use Grow a Business — and when not to

Reach for it when:

- Turn ad-hoc marketing into an operating system with owners
- Build an offer strong enough to carry outbound and referrals
- Manufacture pipeline with a repeatable outbound process
- Engineer word-of-mouth and network effects deliberately
- Stop discounting your way to growth

Reach for something else when:

- Growth is not the constraint; execution is — Improve a Business opens with a diagnosis gate for exactly that.
- Nobody has bought yet, so there is nothing to scale — Create a Business earns the first evidence.
- You only want an outbound motion designed — Predictable Revenue covers specialised roles and repeatable pipeline by itself.
- The bottleneck sits on one page rather than across the funnel — Grow a Website is closer to the money.

## Example prompts

- We have customers but growth is ad hoc — build us a growth engine. using grow-business skill _(Ad-hoc growth)_
- Run the grow-business journey; our weakest square is lead generation. using grow-business skill _(Weakest square)_
- Pick up our growth plan from the tracker. using grow-business skill _(Resume journey)_

## Worked example — Build a Repeatable Growth Engine

You have customers and word-of-mouth, but growth is ad hoc and unowned.

```
Our growth is improvised and unowned. Run the grow-business journey: marketing operating system, offer, outbound pipeline, word-of-mouth, and metrics — each phase feeding the next, recorded in docs/.

Use grow-business skill.
```

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I install the Grow a Business journey?

Run `npx skills add wondelai/skills/grow-business --global`. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The Grow a Business skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills.

### Which skills does the Grow a Business journey run, and what does it produce?

It orchestrates 9 skills across 9 phases — 1-Page Marketing Plan, $100M Offers, Predictable Revenue, Contagious, Influence Psychology, Crossing the Chasm, Cold Start Problem, Lean Analytics, Negotiation — asking you one decision question per phase. Each answer is written to your project's docs/ folder (docs/MARKETING.md, docs/OFFER.md, docs/STRATEGY.md, docs/CUSTOMER.md, docs/METRICS.md, docs/GROW-BUSINESS-PLAN.md), so the journey survives across sessions and you keep the reasoning, not just the output.

### Which phase should I start with if only one part is broken?

Start with the 1-Page Marketing Plan phase anyway — its whole job is finding which of the nine squares is empty, and it takes an hour. It writes the map to docs/MARKETING.md, and the journey then runs the phases that square needs: Predictable Revenue for pipeline, Contagious for word of mouth, Cold Start Problem for network effects, Influence Psychology for conversion. The rest stay open in the tracker.

### Two phases end on the offer and one on negotiation. Why so much pricing?

Because growth built on a weak offer, or a discounted one, does not compound. The $100M Offers phase makes the thing itself hard to refuse; Influence Psychology makes the page it sits on believable; Negotiation stops you handing the value back at the closing table. All three write to docs/OFFER.md, which becomes the single place your site, sales and outbound copy should agree with.

### What if I stop halfway through?

You get a partial engine, and the tracker says which parts. docs/GROW-BUSINESS-PLAN.md lists all nine phases with their status; docs/MARKETING.md, docs/OFFER.md and docs/METRICS.md hold whatever has been decided. The natural stopping points are after Predictable Revenue, once pipeline is repeatable, and after Lean Analytics, once you have a number to watch. Resuming means pointing your agent at the tracker.

### Does this work for a services business, not just SaaS?

Yes, and the offer and pipeline phases usually matter more there. Cold Start Problem is the phase most likely to be skipped — network effects rarely apply to an agency — and that skip is noted in the tracker. Everything else applies to anyone selling something repeatable, from the marketing machine to the beachhead choice in Crossing the Chasm to the margin leaks Negotiation hunts for.