When Growth Isn’t the Goal

I started my first business in 2001 before hosting and website design/development became a commodity.

I was working as a web and application developer in the marketing department for a CRM company that fell victim to the great dot-com burst of 2000. Funny story, I remember our director sending us home because no one in senior leadership would tell us what was going on.

That summer Civilization III came out so that consumed a bunch of my time, and later on that summer I was summoned to the CTO’s office where I was told I was going to be let go, with a caveat.

I’d need to transfer my knowledge to the lead IT guy who gave exactly no fucks about that because he was in the same boat. I was the last person standing in marketing, had the whole floor of the building to myself and out of 600 people, I was one of the last 20.

I start Rawk Web Design with a friend, bought a co-located server and reached out to my fellow marketing compatriots to drum up business. This was well before the days of #nocode and the explosion of tools and hosting options that made it possible for non-techie people to do this themselves.

Hell, while working at that CRM company there were 5 of us in the web division of marketing and that simply doesn’t exist anymore. What the 5 of us did is likely a side job for one person nowadays.

After that ran its course, I worked with 3 different mobile startups, the most successful one created by the IT guy I was supposed to transfer my knowledge to. While our dot-com organization was imploding he built an application that did mobile content distribution, which was just about to EXPLODE.

After that I worked for a couple more established startups but the pattern of my integration into these companies was always the same. I was like a swiss army knife. I could do a lot things ok-enough to make progress and I wasn’t limited or constrained by bullet points in a role description document.

Fast-forward to now, and my latest “startup” evolved by accident. I wrote a book in 2014 and somehow the demand for those ideas evolved into a global training and education business.

I used quotes in the word “startup” in that last paragraph because I was working as a consultant and never considered what I was doing as a real business. It wasn’t until 2018 when I woke up one morning and realized I need to start treating it like a real business, but I had a problem.

I’ve always been the swiss-army knife, not the captain of the ship and at some point “my” business became less about me, and more about the global community and my facilitator partners.

When Growth Isn’t the Goal

I remember talking to a mentor years ago and telling him that I don’t want to wake up years down the road and have an office with employees and a hierarchy. The problem was, I knew what I didn’t want, but I didn’t know what I wanted.

I only have two goals for my business:

First, change the world, one person at a time through the ideas in my books:

If change agents in organizations realize their job is about helping people love their work again, the magnification effect takes place:

• If change agents switch their outlook on organizational change to one of helping people enjoy their jobs more, people will be happier, and change agents will be more satisfied.
• Happiness breeds happiness. Imagine a situation where parents come home and love their work. That attitude will rub off on their kids and the interactions their kids have with friends/family/teachers will be more positive.

Second, make enough loot so I never have to get a real job

Pre-pandemic, it was really irritating for people to tell me how lucky I was to be able to work from home on my own schedule and to travel the world.

To finish this though, I’ll just leave this here:

I went bankrupt in the late 90’s. I worked full-time midnights and went to school full time during the day and still couldn’t keep up. I remember the absolute shame of walking into the trustees office where they look at you like you’re a failure and a burden on society.

I remember creditors calling to re-possess my car because I worked out a settlement to keep it as part of my bankruptcy and missed one payment. Creditors aren’t nice…and I can’t imagine how shitty that job is so I can empathize with them.

7 Short years later, my credit was ‘repaired’, and the shame had been washed away.

I have never publicly shared that story because it’s embarrassing.

So what in the hell does this have to do with growing a business? Plenty. Our experiences shape who we are and being let go from a couple of startups made me know that I never want to be responsible for someone else’s financial well-being.

So here I am, a founder of a self-funded, cash-positive, #nocode bootstrapped business that is bigger than I can manage on my own anymore. Projects are taking longer, quality is dropping due to my lack of focus and I’m stuck.

This post feels like a cry for help, but like all of my posts, it’s therapy for me so thanks if you’re still reading. This is what worries me:

• suppose I hire someone and the income dries up?
• suppose I hire the wrong person? (which says more about me than them, but anyone who knows anything about startups knows the 1st hire is absolutely critical — up until now Fivver has been my only employee!)
• suppose I wake up one day and don’t want to do this anymore? what’s my end game?
• suppose I get hit by a truck tomorrow? who takes over?

It’s hard to say that “growth isn’t the goal” but it’s not the primary goal. It will grow as is evident by the state I’m in right now.

All I know is, once founders I know, and have read about get to where I am now and commit to funding, or partners, they feel relieved and wonder why they didn’t sooner.

The hard part is, how do I keep focus and avoid my business turning into one that resembles the ones I’ve been hired to fix when I was working as a consultant.

And the story continues…