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Write for Us: Business Strategy and Growth

Our largest desk, and the one that receives the most recycled pitches. Here is what a business strategy piece has to do to run here, and what gets turned down before it reaches an editor.

Reviewed August 2026 · The Insight Journal Editorial Team

Paid placement Sources required House byline

This desk in one box

Covers
Growth tactics, strategy frameworks, and the failure modes of scaling too fast.
Written for
Founders and owner-operators of companies under roughly 200 people
Cost
Quoted per pitch. No published price list.
Pitch this desk

What the Business desk publishes

In short

This desk publishes original business strategy and growth writing for owners and operators: how a company picks a growth lever, sizes it against real cash, and measures whether it worked. Every non-obvious claim needs a named, linkable source. Placement is paid, and rates depend on scope.

Business is the broadest desk on the Journal, which makes it the easiest one to pitch badly. Most submissions arrive as a numbered list of growth tips that would fit any company in any industry, which is another way of saying they fit none.

What runs here instead is writing with a decision inside it. A piece that says how an owner should choose between two growth levers, what that choice costs, and how they would know within a quarter that it was wrong.

The strongest submissions we receive tend to come from people who have run the number rather than read it. You do not need a title to write here, but you do need to be specific.

Who reads it

  • Founders and owner-operators of companies under roughly 200 people
  • General managers accountable for a P&L
  • Operators moving from a functional role into a company-wide one

Write for that reader rather than for a search engine. A draft aimed at the person in the job usually clears our checks on the first pass, because specificity and sourcing tend to arrive together.

Ten angles we would commission today

In short

These ten briefs are open right now. Pitch one directly, or use them to calibrate an idea of your own. They share one property worth copying: each names a decision the reader has to make, rather than a topic they might find interesting.

Anything at this altitude gets read properly. Anything below it gets a form reply, which serves neither of us.

  1. 01

    The trade-off behind a growth lever

    Pick two realistic paths, price both, and say which one fits which balance sheet. Comparison beats advocacy.

  2. 02

    A framework tested against its own limits

    Frameworks are welcome if you also say where they break. Name the company size and market condition each one assumes.

  3. 03

    Unit economics before scale

    How contribution margin, payback period, and working capital behave as volume rises. Show the arithmetic.

  4. 04

    Failure modes of fast growth

    Where quality, cash, and management bandwidth crack first. Our readers meet this before they meet a growth ceiling.

  5. 05

    Pricing changes that stuck

    What actually happens to churn, mix, and margin after a price move, and how long the signal takes to read.

  6. 06

    Buy, build, or partner

    The capital and integration cost of each route for a company under roughly 200 people.

  7. 07

    Market entry on a small budget

    Sizing a new segment without a research budget, using public filings and government data.

  8. 08

    The operating cadence behind a plan

    How a target becomes a weekly number that someone owns. This is where most strategy writing stops short.

  9. 09

    Reading a competitor honestly

    What you can and cannot infer from public sources, and which inferences are guesswork wearing a chart.

  10. 10

    When to stop a growth initiative

    Kill criteria set in advance, and the sunk-cost pressure that keeps them from being used.

What this desk declines

In short

Most pitches are declined for category rather than craft. If your idea sits on this list, no amount of rewriting will move it, and we would rather you knew that before spending a day on a draft than after.

A decline usually means the piece belongs on another desk, or on the sponsored path.

  • Generic listicles ("10 tips to grow your business") with no decision in them
  • Case studies about a client we cannot verify, or that read as a sales page
  • Predictions with no method behind the number
  • Anything built around a single vendor as the answer to a strategic question
  • Pieces that cite other blog posts instead of primary sources

The sourcing bar, in specifics

In short

Every non-obvious claim needs a named publisher, a year, and a link a reader can open. On this desk, the sources below cover most of what a draft will need. A figure that traces back to another blog post is not sourced, and it comes out in editing.
Cite the organization that produced the data, not the article that repeated it. Include the year.
Primary sources accepted on the Business Strategy & Growth desk
U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)Firm size definitions, lending programs, and small business statistics.
U.S. Census Bureau, Business Formation StatisticsBusiness application and formation trends by sector and state.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)Business employment dynamics, including establishment survival rates.
SEC EDGAR filingsPrimary financial disclosure when writing about a public company.
Federal Reserve, Small Business Credit SurveyFinancing conditions and credit access for small firms.

Our full method is set out in the sourcing standard we publish against.

How placement works on the Business desk

In short

Placement here is quoted per pitch against business strategy & growth scope rather than from a price list, and the link treatment is agreed before you write. The terms, the editing process, and the link policy are the same across all six desks and are set out once, in full, in the submission standard.
Read first The standard a Business draft is edited against Rates, link treatment, editing, revisions, and what a finished draft has to contain. Wrong desk? The five desks that are not Business What each one commissions, and which reader it is written for. Paid path Sponsored Business placement For work that is promotional by design, labeled honestly and reaching the same readers.

Pitch the Business desk

Tell us the topic, the angle, and the sources you plan to cite. If it fits business strategy & growth, we reply with scope, link treatment, and a rate.

Replies within 2 business days

Questions

Writing for the Business desk: common questions

What counts as a business topic on this desk?
Anything that helps an owner or operator make a company-level decision: growth levers, pricing, market entry, operating cadence, or the risks that come with scaling. Purely personal-finance, investing, and career-advice topics belong elsewhere or are declined.
Do I need to be a founder or executive to write here?
No. We publish under a house byline, so a title adds nothing to the page. What matters is whether the piece is specific, sourced, and useful to someone running a company.
Can I include a link to my company?
Yes, where it is relevant to the reader. Any link placed as part of a paid arrangement carries the sponsored attribute, because that is what Google link-spam guidelines require. We confirm which treatment applies before you write.
How long should a business submission be?
Around 1,200 words is the floor and most accepted pieces land between 1,500 and 2,200. Length is a byproduct of covering the decision properly, not a target to pad toward.
Will you accept a piece that mentions our product?
A passing mention in context is fine. A piece built around your product is sponsored content, and it runs on the advertising path with a visible label instead of as an editorial guest post.
How much does placement on this desk cost?
Rates depend on scope, placement, and turnaround, so we quote per pitch rather than publish a price list. Send the topic and angle and we will reply with a rate.