Do You Want What Growth Means?

There are some great books out there that can teach you how to grow and scale a business. EMyth, Traction, and Scaling Up are just a few. They teach the processes, rhythms and letting go that must happen for the entrepreneur to successfully scale a company larger. But many books like this don't do justice to the mental preparation the entrepreneur needs to go through to walk this journey.

These books make a huge assumption: that the reader wants to grow their company. And I believe most people reading these books assume they want to grow too. But do they want what growth means? I don't think everyone truly understands what growth may mean for them. It may mean you have to make sacrifices you didn't anticipate making before you started the process of growing.

For example, Traction speaks of the "letting go" which is required for an entrepreneur to see their company grow. Letting go is the process of giving over the company to its processes and rhythms that begin to take on a life of their own. Once that happens, the entrepreneur needs to serve the company, instead of the other way around. This concept can be hard for a Founder who poured their heart into building their company. And it can be equally surprising. But letting go is a key component to being successful.

Letting go is just one issue that founding entrepreneurs can run into when deciding to grow their companies larger. This is part of what it “means” to grow. Do you have examples of what it means to grow?