For most business owners, growth is good. But there are situations where growth can position the business to fail and business owners to burn out.
Let’s look at a fictional but representative example of when growth can get out of control and why it’s so important to have a written process for handling your business’ growth.
Facts and Feelings
Harold Elfman was a freelance software engineer who had grown tired of the incorrect and morally tenuous information that he saw produced by artificial intelligence technologies. He had trained his school-aged daughters on how to fact check and warned them to constantly be on the lookout for doctored images, but he decided that he needed to do more.
So, Harold invented a software that could instantly identify, fact check, and source any images and text that artificial intelligence programs created. He introduced it to a few of his closest clients. Within months, Harold couldn’t keep up with all of the requests from other companies to integrate his software into their business operations to avoid copyright violations, plagiarism, and other unsavory scenarios.
Though he had had no real intention of starting his own business, the demand and willingness of companies to pay him lots of money for his software launched his career as the founder of his own company called “AI-Elf: A Watchful Eye on AI, Because There’s No AI in ‘Truth.’”
“You might want to hire a copywriter to help you work on that name,” his wife, a successful marketing director, told him when he founded the business.
Nothing Good Grows Forever
Taking his wife’s comments as a joke, Harold booked meeting after meeting with interested companies, spending 40 hours a week selling the software, and 40 hours a week coding the program to stay up to date with the constant deluge of what he called “AI slop” that school districts and private companies were served when they attempted to do research.
Though the contracts and money continued to flow in, Harold quickly felt himself losing the handle on what it was he had built.
He started missing meetings with important clients. At first, his clients chalked it up to his mad-genius persona, but they began to lose patience when his programs fell behind the newest iteration of generative AI misinformation that they were paying him to catch.
Because he spent so much time meeting with so many prospects, he often had to work long nights to keep the code up to date. Coding was his passion, but he found that it was starting to take a back seat to the relationships that he was struggling to build with so many interested prospects.
Then, while Harold attempted to juggle a phone meeting with his largest customer while debugging his most recent version of the software’s code, he heard a soft knock on his home office door. At his wit’s end, he shouted, “NOT NOW. I CAN’T DO IT NOW.”
After a long silence, he heard a soft voice on the other side of the office door that said, “I’m sorry, daddy.”
After another long silence, Harold’s customer said, “Why don’t we regroup at a later date. It sounds like it might be a bad time right now.”
After he had cooled off a bit, Harold approached his wife.
“I think you’re right,” he said.
“Correct,” his wife replied. “But what about?”
“I need help running this business,” he replied, apologizing to his daughter.
“I agree,” his daughter said.
You Cannot (and Should Not) Do It Alone
Business owners are prime candidates for burnout. They often do way too much, way too fast, all by themselves. In many cases, this happens out of necessity. They don’t have the means or the connections to hire all of the people that they need at the outset of founding the business.
But as many successful business owners experience—sometimes the hard way like Harold—you simply cannot run a successful business at scale all by yourself. Fortunately, you can create processes that help you share the burdens of running a successful business before burnout crashes your ambition.
Here are some important elements of creating a process that allows you to pursue growth without creating chaos.
1. PUT IT IN WRITING
It may seem onerous, but having written processes can go a long way in establishing systems that allow your business to scale its growth.
In Harold’s case, he knew everything he had to do and everything he wanted to do, but it was all stored in his head. The problem was that nobody could read Harold’s mind, and unless he specifically told someone that he needed help, there was no way for him to get the help he needed.
Harold tried to do everything in his own head, from scheduling and keeping meetings to updating his code. Even if he had decided that he wanted to try to do everything by himself, having a written process for how he planned to do everything he planned to do could have helped him streamline his approach to sales, operations, and relationship building.
Instead, because Harold kept everything in his head, he was a ticking time bomb who was overworked and overstressed. Had he instead made an effort to write his processes down, not only would he have a touchstone for reference but also a clear view that he was taking on more than he could handle by himself.
2. FIND YOUR EXPERT
Many business owners have particular strengths in one portion of the business over another. For example, Harold was an outstanding coder but became overwhelmed when it came time to sell his product. Because he did not have a process for intaking new prospects, he simply took every meeting he could and ground himself into dust trying to fulfill all of the obligations that he had set for himself.
In this case, a sales expert may have been helpful to Harold for numerous reasons. First and most obvious, the sales expert would take the bulk of selling off of Harold’s shoulders and allow him to focus on what he did best.
For a business owner like you, this may manifest as a next-level manager. A next-level manager is someone who can help take your business to the next level of growth and allow you to focus on the parts of the business that are your strongest suit.
In Harold’s case, he eventually took his wife’s advice and enlisted an advisor to recruit sales and marketing experts who could do the part of the job that frustrated him most. While Harold would still make appearances at big prospect meetings to provide technical insights, he let his sales experts guide the conversation with prospects. This led to stronger relationships, more sales, and fewer headaches for Harold.
3. UNDERSTAND ASPIRATIONAL GOALS
The reason Harold founded his business in the first place was because he was appalled by what he was seeing from a new technology that he felt was doing more harm than good. For Harold, the founding of his business was never about money. It was about something aspirational, something that meant something to him morally.
The same is true for many business owners. While indeed profit and financial security are some of the most important aspects of determining whether a business is successful, many business owners found their businesses with an aspiration that goes beyond growth at all costs.
Threading the needle between growing your business in ways that position you to achieve financial security and achieving your aspirational goals can be extremely challenging. As Harold learned, it’s easy to lose sight of your purpose when everyone wants a piece of what you’ve created.
Aligning your financial goals with your aspirational goals can help your business thrive while allowing you to feel good about what you’re doing. And as is often the case with successful businesses, it’s much easier to align those goals with the help of outside experts who can keep you honest about what’s most important to you.
We strive to help business owners identify and prioritize their objectives with respect to their businesses, their employees, and their families. If you have questions on this topic, we can help with more information or a referral to another experienced professional.