What We stopped Doing Once We Got Big

Growth isn’t always about adding more. We found our stride by stopping the right things—and the results reshaped our marketing, our team, and the way we serve customers. We open up about the specific tactics we cut, why they weren’t serving us at scale, and how focusing on fewer, better moves led to sustainable growth without compromising customer experience.

We start with marketing myths that looked effective from the outside but underperformed in practice. Flash discounts trained delay and hurt margins, while purchased call and email lists drained time with poor data and low intent. We explain how shifting to consistent, year-round pricing and building demand through relevance paid off. You’ll hear why we opted out of big, crowded trade shows in favor of focused niches, reduced spend on LinkedIn paid when CPA spiked, and resisted bidding during seasonal search surges. We also share why we stopped routine company announcements unless they were truly useful to customers.

From there, we get practical about people and process. Hiring for potential slowed delivery; hiring for immediate capability raised the bar on day one. By building roles around strengths—on-camera communicators in content, great talkers in service, process-minded folks in operations—and investing in targeted upskilling, we cut context switching and improved outcomes. We’re candid about the hard decisions too, including changing roles and, when needed, parting ways to support the next stage of scale.

Finally, we talk trust and focus. Underpromise-overdeliver became a policy that protects our brand. We stopped saying yes to every printable item, referred non-core work to great partners, and doubled down on what we do best: promotional products and uniforms. On a personal note, we filtered advice to proven experts and looked beyond local competition to learn from leaders across the US, Europe, and Asia. That global lens sharpened our site, processes, and operations.

If you’re feeling stretched as you grow, this conversation offers a clear playbook: remove the busywork, specialize with intent, and test your strategy against the best. Subscribe, share with a teammate who needs clarity, and leave a review with one thing you’re ready to stop doing next.

Follow the host: Charles Liu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-liu-042b9124/

Follow Cubic Promote:
🌐 Website: https://www.cubicpromote.com.au
🔗 LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/company/cubic-promote
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cubicpromote/
👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CubicPromote
🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cubic_promote
📌 Pinterest: https://au.pinterest.com/cubicpromote/
⭐ Google Business: https://share.google/hskqvOCdVzgckNmYJ
✖️ X: https://x.com/cubicpromote

Chapters

• 0:00 Why We Stopped To Grow
• 0:55 Marketing Cuts That Worked
• 3:39 Choosing Smarter Events And Channels
• 4:17 Ending Noisy Social Announcements
• 4:17 Staff Built For Ready Impact
• 6:02 Specialise Roles And Upskill
• 6:22 Serve Clients By Saying No
• 6:45 Hard Team Changes For Scale
• 8:48 Summary And Takeaways
• 8:58 Only Experts And Global Benchmarks

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Promo Playboard by Cubic Promote. Today we're going to do a podcast that is something a little bit different. We're going to be just talking about things that we stopped doing as a group and as an individual myself personally, once our business got a little bit big. I'm not going to pretend Cubic Promote is one of the largest suppliers of promotional products and uniforms in Australia. And then reached a point a couple of years ago where we felt that we had to stop doing certain activities in order for us to grow, but not just grow, but also grow sustainably in a way that doesn't impact a customer's experience with ourselves. I believe some of the experiences that I've learned over the years can be applied to any given industry or any given company as well. So without further ado, I'll be covering what we stopped doing marketing-wise, what we stopped doing for our staff, what we stopped doing for clients, and what I personally stopped doing for myself in order for us to achieve sustainable growth. Let's start with marketing and the type of things that we stopped doing marketing-wise. I'm going to just simply list them out. The type of things that we stopped doing marketing-wise was we stopped doing flash discounts, discounts that last a day, a week, or in some instances, even months on end. From experience, we found that flash discounting didn't really move the needle. Customers certainly didn't buy into it. And over the long term, we found that it hurt our revenue sales more than anything else. So instead, we focused on lowering the prices sustainably across our entire range, across the entire year. So no more flash discounts. We also focused or stopped focusing on buying client call lists and email lists. We've purchased previously a client call list and email lists. We're a B2B company and we purchased other business addresses, and we found those lists to be a combination of out-of-date, irrelevant, and whether, and when in the instances they were in date and where they were relevant, reaching out to customers at such scale, you did very, very little positive feedback and certainly very little sales. The amount of time spent on it wasn't worth the while. Admittedly, the cost involved in doing that was very low. So from a cost perspective, it didn't really matter as much. However, from a client relationship and a time spent, it certainly wasn't worth the amount of time we were spending on it. Trade shows at the wrong events, trade shows that we were doing at events where we knew they were irrelevant, trade shows that we knew that where we had strong competition. For example, in a recent B2B expo here in Darling Harbor and Sydney, Australia, there was a B2B expo. We decided not to go to those expos because we knew that spending all that time and all that effort and all that money in order for our potential clients' attention spent to be halved in the case of a competitor, or in some cases down to a fraction, simply wasn't worth our while. What we have done instead was to pick niches, specific niches where we knew that we had a lot to offer and where we could generate a lot of interest. And those niches have been provided, have proven to be really, really good. So some of the other things that we stopped marketing-wise was this. We stopped posting on Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn paid marketing. We stopped doing that. Our LinkedIn paid marketing might be a little bit controversial, however, we did stop that because the cost per acquisition was incredibly high. Most businesses that are B2B businesses like ourselves will have probably found the same experience. We've also stopped advertising when there were spikes in Google demand. Our product and uh and the merchandise that we supply has a seasonality aspect to it. So we stopped advertising on Google whenever there was a seasonal spike because the cost per acquisition, once again per customer, was far too high. From a social media point of view, there's one thing that we stopped doing as well. Company announcements, we stopped doing that. And now, and what I what I'm talking about is company announcements in relation to new hires, potentially we may have onboarded new clients, um, even new products. Unless those products were really genuinely interesting and groundbreaking, we stopped doing all of those because every minute time saved means that we could divert our attention to somewhere else. And we found that those announcements that we thought would have meant a lot to our customers in reality meant nothing to our customers. So that's one thing that we decided to cut away from. Let's talk about staffing and what we did staffing-wise and what we stopped doing staffing-wise. So, staffing-wise, we stopped hiring team members based on their potential. In the past, we would have hired team members based on what they potentially might morph into. Maybe after a bit of training, perhaps after a bit of hand holding, perhaps after maybe a couple months of experience, that we felt that that team member would have done really well. Well, we stopped doing that. And instead, we've only onboarded team members that are ready to go. Shoelaces tied, ready to start immediately. We found that that really moved the needle to ensure that our customers have top-notch customer experiences off the bat. Another thing we stopped doing with team members is we stopped putting the onus on needing to be the jack of all trades for all team members. In the past, we expected team members to know about IT, to know about cleaning up their emails, to know about connecting a printer to their laptop, to know about speaking to customers, to know about product, to know about everything when it comes to logistics. So we stopped doing that and we focused on focusing on team members' skill sets. If a team member is really, really good and comfortable in front of the camera, yeah, we'll do more social media work with that team member. If a team member was better at talking to customers, for example, we'll do allocate more work for customer service for that particular team member. So we stopped relying on team members to be a jack of all trades. There were some roles that certainly had to be changed. There were some roles where it's certainly team members had to upskill. And that was one thing that we st we stopped doing. In the past, we had limited upskilling of our team members, and that had to change. And so we started upskilling our team members in specific areas that would enhance customer service. Unfortunately, in some instances, we have had to let staff go as well because the roles that were original in place when they first started with us when we were a smaller business simply could not be carried over when the business got larger. And so, in some instances, we have had to let people go in order for us to grow in a sustainable way. Now I'm gonna talk a bit about clients now. So this is number three. What have we just stopped doing for clients? We stopped doing two things. Number one, we stopped overpromising. There was a point where when we were in the growth stage where we needed to overpromise in order to win the trust of customers. Now that worked very, very well. I'm not gonna pretend it did not work. We're able to uh utilize that and grow at a very, very strong position. We stopped doing that simply because overpromising meant underdelivering, and that affected our long-term brand reputation. So for many years now, we have stopped over-promising. In fact, we have a policy in here to underpromise and to over-deliver. We found in the long run that made a very, very big difference. What else have we stopped? The second thing that we stopped is we stopped saying yes to everything. There are certain product ranges in our range that we do not do well. For example, printing business cards and printing pamphlets and catalogs. Yes, we can do it. Yes, we could be a print management company. Are we the best at it? No, we're certainly not. And so in instances like that, we simply refer our customers to try and interested partners of ourselves that we have internally so that they could look after them properly. We have stopped becoming the one-stop shop because we want to ensure that we deliver the top services and the top products for the things that we are good at. The things we are good at are promotional products and uniforms. Now, see, for myself, what have I stopped doing? I stopped taking random advice from people who have had no pedigree. I only take advice from people who have done it before in this industry, in any other industry. So I filter who I listen to. Subject matters are experts only. So whether it be search engine optimization, whether it be marketing, maybe it's strategy, I only take advice from people who are tried and tested and are willing to have strong and powerful conversations with myself. The last and final point, and one that's quite powerful to me personally, is that I stopped looking at competitors locally and I began to look at competitors internationally. I found with Australian competitors, they're very, very powerful. But when you look at our peers and counterparts in Europe and in America, and even in parts of Asia, there's so many things that we could learn from them. How they present their websites, how they run their processes, their procedures, their operations. The amount of information and data that we could learn from other sources outside of Australia has been epic. So those are the, in summary, the four things that I focused on and what I've stopped doing. So we for marketing, for staffing, for clients, for myself, these are the things that we stopped doing once we got big, and it's allowed us to provide incredible customer service. And I believe some of these lessons that I've just outlined can be applied to any or all industries in Australia or indeed around the world. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Promo Playbook. Stay tuned for future episodes.