How to Really Grow Your Business

"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! Folks, the so-called "experts" are wrong.

Growing for growth's sake is a path to failure.

The typical "Let's-grow-at-all-costs" business model goes like this:

1. Bob opens bakery shop.
2. Bob gets rave reviews. Gets a stream of referrals. Gets great publicity.
3. Bob grows business: opens five new shops.
4. Bob gets complaints: "We're increasingly getting bad inventory," his team tells him.
5. Bob, focused on growth, opens ten new shops. "When we grow, these problems take care of themselves," he thinks.
6. More growth. More problems. Horrible services. Unfulfilled orders.
7. Customers run off.
8. "Where's the money?"
9. Bob closes shop.

What's wrong with super-fast-let's-just-do-it growth?

Most businesses start out fabulously. Customers love them. Then, the unfortunate: owners put their companies on growth steroids -- growing viciously, without any infrastructure to support that growth. Instead of getting those rave reviews the once-fantab companies had before, customers are sending them litigation threats for forgetting their orders.

Growth for growth's sake sucks.

When you focus on growth for growth's sake, your main crime:

• You dismiss customer needs.

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.

The solution to growing your company.

Think back to your first customer. How kick-ass was your customer experience? How responsive were you? How much did customers value you? 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-Trizzy-approved way (i.e. correctly). When in doubt of growth, remember:

I treat my ____^th customer like my first.

If you enjoyed How to Really Grow Your Business, get a complimentary subscription to our freshest articles through email or through your feed reader.