“If you try to win gold in three Olympic sports at once, you’ll lose them all.”
– Ward van Gasteren, on why focus beats multitasking in growth
In the early days of building something, a startup, a product, even a podcast we often believe growth is about hustle. About doing more. More content, more tools, more channels, more hacks.
But what if the real secret to growth is the opposite? What if it’s not about more, but about less, done with precision?
In this episode of No Hacks, I sit down with Ward van Gasteren, a seasoned growth consultant and one of Europe’s first professional growth hackers. Ward has helped hundreds of companies scale smarter, and what he teaches isn’t a hack. It’s a system.
It starts with something deceptively simple: the 1-1-1 Framework.
🚀 What Is the 1-1-1 Framework?
Ward’s 1-1-1 Framework is a focused strategy designed for early-stage teams who are overwhelmed by everything they “should” be doing.
Here’s what it looks like:
- One audience – Speak to a single, clearly defined group of people. Not “everyone with a credit card.”
- One channel – Pick one distribution method (ads, SEO, outbound, whatever) and master it.
- One message – Communicate one core value prop. Repeating it is not boring — it’s effective.
According to Ward, this framework alone can take a company from zero to 1M+ in revenue. It eliminates distractions, brings clarity to chaos, and helps teams actually see what’s working.
It’s not sexy. It’s not “viral.” But it works.
🎧 Episode Highlights
In our conversation, Ward and I explore how the 1-1-1 approach can be applied to almost anything — not just startups. In fact, I realized I’ve been applying it to this podcast without even naming it.
🎙️ My 1-1-1 for No Hacks right now?
- Audience: Product builders and marketers who want real growth, not fluff
- Channel: LinkedIn (plus the podcast platforms)
- Message: Growth doesn’t need hacks — it needs clarity
And the moment I leaned into that focus, I started seeing real traction.
We also talked about:
- Why most teams “grow” without knowing what actually moved the needle
- What early-stage companies get wrong about social media (hint: it’s not a growth engine)
- How to stop chasing playbooks and start trusting experiments
- The difference between traditional marketing and growth (and why both matter)
- Why growth is a team sport, not just a function of ads or traffic
- How AI tools help speed things up but don’t solve focus for you
- The underrated power of listening to your users (and how to do it well)
🛠️ From Hustle to Systems: Growth as a Mindset Shift
One of my favorite parts of the episode is where Ward breaks down the mindset shift required to go from early traction to real, long-term growth.
In the beginning, hustle is necessary. You’re validating, figuring things out, doing things that don’t scale. But at a certain point, the question becomes:
“How do we stop relying on hustle and build something that scales without burning out?”
Ward’s answer is simple: focus → system → scale.
Once you’ve validated your 1-1-1, you move to the next step: building a consistent funnel. Then, when that’s humming along, you add a momentum layer, things like content, brand, and social proof to compound your efforts over time.
Growth becomes less reactive, more strategic. You stop throwing things at the wall and start building repeatable systems that work.