What do we actually mean by growth?

Growth isn’t a brand value, it’s an outcome of values lived well. What six months on Substack has taught us about brand building and directional growth.

During a recent client workshop to define an architecture firm’s brand values, we spent several days (in person!) identifying and defining what each person on the team valued — personally, professionally, and long term.

Many chose the word growth.

The business team loved growth as a number.
The marketing team loved growth as an opportunity.
Others saw growth as a future state — something directional and expansive.

But no one could agree on what growth actually meant. How it was measured. What direction it moved in. Was it a ripple outward, equally from all sides of the firm? Or a single line of impact stretching into the future?

Everyone liked the word — and everyone had a different definition.

We default to “growth” constantly. As companies, as brands, as people. It sounds good. It sounds ambitious. It sounds like something we have an obligation to pay attention to. But what does it actually mean?

Growth is both a process and a destination. Milestones or benchmarks along the way and an umbrella term for everything that makes up “along the way.” Growth is everything that makes a journey and yet a future state — elusive and far away.

By the end of the workshop, the firm decided to remove growth from its values entirely. They realized growth isn’t a value, it’s a process of becoming and what you inevitably become.

If the firm began to live its values, and if the values felt true to them, growth would come naturally. Along the way and as an outcome.

Growth without direction is just expansion: true growth comes from intention, direction, and alignment. Not quantitative destinations (although those are important too), but a qualitative direction that starts with values that are true to the people behind the firm — not their business goals.

The brands we cover are often focused on staying true to their purpose over growth, and the growth comes from an intentional and deliberate brand build. Growth is always a destination and a journey — but it isn’t always the focus. The focus is the thought, the need, the problem you’re solving.

For weeks after that workshop, we kept thinking about the term growth. How often we default to it and how rarely we define it.

We hit publish six months ago — no grand launch strategy, no perfectly mapped content calendar. Just a list of brands we loved and the belief that there was space for thoughtful conversations around brand building, farm to table foundations, and the deliberate decisions behind products that deserve to exist.

What does growth mean on Substack? If it’s inevitable when values are clear, then the goal here isn’t to be bigger or more frequent. It’s to be clearer and sharper. More intentional. Just like the brands we try to focus on.

Exploring intentional brands has always felt refreshing after working with larger corporate ones. Not because scale is wrong or because we don’t like those brands (we do!), but because behemoth brands are often so far removed from their foundational stages that there’s no space to look at how they began.

Snapshots allow space to observe closely, ask better questions, and study why certain companies resonate while others fade — why farm to table or smaller brands are often rooted in a deeper purpose.

Looking ahead, we want to provide more frameworks you can actually apply.
More founder stories.
More brand explorations that focus on the behind the scenes work.
Less about trends and more about intention.
Less about fast growth and more about sustainable brands.
Less about the show and more about substance.

If you’ve been reading — since day one or since yesterday — thank you! We’re still evolving, refining, and shaping what The Brand Snapshot is in real time. And that, for us, is growth.

A note from us: The Brand Snapshot is just getting started. Leave a comment, message us, follow us on Instagram — and tell us what brands and categories resonate with you most or who you’d like to see in a snapshot next. We’re building a brand rolodex of the best brands you’ve never heard of.