Regardless of whether we’re doing it intentionally or not, we all are capping our business’s growth at a certain point in our entrepreneurial journey. There are the usual suspects like under-charging and not filling the demand our customers have already expressed, but there are some other ways that are much less obvious than those.
For instance, I have quite a few colleagues that have made conscious choices not to work on weekends or evenings so they can spend quality time with their families or themselves. This choice caps their business’s growth, as it precludes them doing evening calls or weekend workshops which might otherwise bring in cashflow, opportunities, or visibility.
And it’s absolutely the right call for them.
I have some other colleagues that, due to disposition or capability, refuse to hire teammates or move beyond the solopreneur model. As awesome as that model might be, it severely limits the impact that a business can have simply because there’s only so much one person can do. (More on this later, but Mark has already talked about the myth of the solopreneur, too.)
And it’s absolutely the right call for them. Too many people underestimate how much leadership small teams need.
You’ve no doubt sensed that something has gone awry. Yes, I did say that the way some of these examples have capped their growth is the right call for them.
The world of small business and startups can be exhilarating, but running them can eat you alive if you’re not careful. (Click to tweet.)
Businesses can always develop and grow, but the people running them have limits. A business doesn’t need to rest and sleep because a business is a shared human construct like numbers and art.
The people in them, though, are real and need rest, sleep, recovery, joy, passion, inspiration, tenacity, and all the other things that allow us to wake up in the morning and push the boulder up the hill. Or chase it downhill on the best of days.
I’m not invoking a work-life balance framework that so many of us are skeptical about. It’s about work-life integration, not balance, for us entrepreneurs and change-makers. That said, there’s a clear difference between the creative builder, the building that we love to do, and the thing that’s being built.
The very best thing that we can do sometimes is limit the growth of thing being built so the builder can keep approaching the building for the long haul. Some of the ways we cap our businesses’ growth are conducive to that – others aren’t.
How are you capping your business’s growth? Is it conducive to helping you build for the long term?
Thanks for this great post, Charlie. As a creative person and fiction writer, I really have to balance where I put my creative energies. And work-life integration is really important, because I AM my business. But to sustain myself and my business, I’ve got to find the right place to cap it. Not there yet–still gotta grow it!
Quick question–one of the problems with running a business is when we compare our work to others. Comparisons don’t work, of course, because we’re comparing our insides to their outsides. But is there a way you see comparisons being helpful in finding a balance and cap for our work?
I’m glad you enjoyed the post, Baker!
I actually find comparative and competitive assessments useful for a lot of things when they’re done the right way. Let’s talk about neutral comparisons, though: sometimes seeing how other people rock their bizzes with constraints helps us fully understand that it’s okay to do the same in our own businesses. It’s the myth of the always-working entrepreneur or business operator that often frames our internal dialog about “what it takes” to do grow our businesses, so those counter-examples directly address those points.
I’ll add some nuance here, though: just because one capping technique works for somebody else doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. It just shows that there’s not a absolute incompatibility between constraints and thriving businesses.
I was literally just sitting here telling myself something similar – but it helped to hear it from you. — I just referred a client to someone else, because it was the right thing to do for the client. But I’d put so much thought into a solution for them, and I so wanted to do that project with them, that there was a thud inside once I did it. I really need to take time right now to develop my website and marketing. I know that this lull is the god-send my business really needs right now. — But I think I need to go take a walk and let my insides recalibrate.
Absolutely! And I know you know about slumps and peaks. 🙂
I enjoy your content, but while reading it on my smartphone,
The social “sharing” bar blocks part of the text
When uI zoom in. Annoying even while writing the comment
Thanks for the feedback, Jose! We’ll be looking into this and seeing what we can do to make the site more mobile-friendly.
I agree with your article. My biggest hang-up when it comes to my business is I don’t usually set a start or stop time. So I find myself working at odd times of the day (or night) when I might not be a alert as I could be. It muffles my productivity.
Charlie,
As I sit here thinking about the less than ideal surf conditions, I realize just the fact that I’m in Costa Rica and set my life up around the pursuit of waves capped my business in ways I didn’t realize it would. I’ve lost some income streams in the last few weeks and reestablishing new ones from here isn’t easy. That’s actually why I’m heading home. I also had a major safety blanket in the form of a part time day job, and that might have capped by business even more than the pursuit of waves. When all this happened in the last few weeks, a friend told me “necessity is the mother of invention.” This really all lit a fire under me and I started shifting focus to growing what I do into a real business. The first action I took was investing in Jon Morrow’s guest bloggin program. I realize despite blogging for 2 years, I’d stopped focus on growth and it was time to shift focus. I’ve been working on removing the ways I’ve capped my business.
Charlie,
I like what you said about integrating life and work. I recently took the plunge leaving the facade of a “secure” job to do my own thing. I find that I cap myself in a few ways. Some intentional; some not. I think part of my problem is that I want to help everyone. I have to realize that I’m not helping myself I use up my bandwidth with clients who aren’t my ideal. Your post reminds me not to make decisions first from a stance of “Is this right for my business and my life?” Thanks again for the insight.
It’s interesting how it shifts things to remember that it’s my choice how I cap my business’s growth rather than feeling like it’s a lack of capacity (and getting frustrated that I’m not currently interested in leading a larger team, for instance). Thank you for the reminder, Charlie!