"Grow your business" the so-called "experts" tell us. Growth is good. Seek growth. "If you don't have $_______ in revenues next year, you're a failure." Blah. Blah. Blah! <span class="highlight">Folks, the so-called "experts" are wrong.</span> <h2>Growing for growth's sake is a path to failure.</h2> The typical "Let's-grow-at-all-costs" business model goes like this: <ol> <li><strong>Bob opens bakery shop.</strong></li> <li><span class="highlight">Bob gets rave reviews. </span>Gets a stream of referrals. Gets great publicity.</li> <li><strong>Bob grows business: opens five new shops.</strong></li> <li><span class="highlight">Bob gets complaints:</span> "We're increasingly getting bad inventory," his team tells him.</li> <li><strong>Bob, focused on growth, opens ten new shops. </strong>"When we grow, these problems take care of themselves," he thinks.</li> <li><span class="highlight">More growth. More problems.</span> Horrible services. Unfulfilled orders.</li> <li><strong>Customers run off.</strong></li> <li><span class="highlight">"Where's the money?"</span></li> <li><strong>Bob closes shop.</strong></li></ol> <h2>What's wrong with super-fast-let's-just-do-it growth?</h2> Most businesses start out fabulously. Customers love them. <span class="highlight">Then, the unfortunate: owners put their companies on growth steroids -- growing viciously, without any infrastructure to support that growth. </span> Instead of getting those rave reviews the once-fantab companies had before, customers are sending them litigation threats for forgetting their orders. <h2>Growth for growth's sake sucks.</h2> When you focus on growth for growth's sake, your main crime: <ul> <li> <h2>You dismiss customer needs.</h2></li> <span class="highlight"> Instead, you adopt the "me-first" attitude. What can I get? How can I grow? How can I squeeze every cent out of my customer? That's a good, and eventual ingredient for long-term failure.</span> </ul> <h2>The solution to growing your company.</h2> <span class="highlight">Think back to your first customer. How kick-ass was your customer experience? How responsive were you? How much did customers value you?</span> <strong>If you're treating your second, third, 10th, 100th, or 1,000,000,000th customer the same as your first, you're growing the bad-ass-Trizle-approved way (i.e. correctly).</strong> When in doubt of growth, remember: <h2>I treat my ____^th customer like my first.</h2><br /> 2006-07-31T18:33:14-07:00 false 291 how-to-really-grow-your-business 0 2009-11-03T18:00:50-08:00