How to Make Sure Your Business Survives Every Challenge

It’s a common misconception that business growth is linear—that it’s supposed to go up and up. But building a brand isn’t a straight line on a chart; all the dips and valleys and steady climbs are to be expected. If this turbulence is handled correctly, with the proper perspective, you have a better shot at sustaining your business in the long-term.

I like to think of building a successful company as a marathon rather than a sprint. To focus your attention on growth that lasts, here are three questions to ask yourself.

1. Can I sustain this workload?

When I first started Hint, people told me that I’d have to sacrifice all other aspects of my life to make sure my company succeeded. According to them, if I wanted my brand to flourish, I’d have to eat, sleep and breathe my business. And if I had a life outside of work? My company was bound to fail.

Spoiler alert: They were wrong. 

Working around the clock is simply not sustainable. More than a decade after starting Hint, I can confidently tell other business leaders that success means finding a way to sustain steady growth over time. For me, that means investing time in things that I’m passionate about outside of the office, like being with my family, travelling to new places and hiking almost every day.

Many leading entrepreneurs make time for hobbies and interests that aren’t related to their careers. (There’s good reason Warren Buffet, one of America’s greatest business leaders, plays the ukulele.) Be honest with yourself: Look critically at the hours that you dedicate to your business and make sure that you’re not working yourself into burnout. 

2. Am I pacing my business? 

Like good timing, proper pacing can help your company break through. For me, pacing growth meant attracting a healthy stream of customers organically and maintaining high standards, even if it takes a little longer. If you want your brand to stick around, take a measured approach. Invest the time at the front end to plan out your sales and marketing path to ensure your company’s longevity.

Avoid falling for the “grow-at-all-costs” startup mindset. For example, when Uber was under the leadership of Travis Kalanick, the company was so focused on customer acquisition that they lost sight of building a scalable, sustainable strategy. In the end, their singular focus on growth ended up hurting customer and employee happiness, which, in turn, discouraged loyalty and retention. Rapid growth may produce buzz in the short-term, but as we’ve seen with Uber and WeWork, there are significant long-term setbacks if you don’t show profitability.

3. How are you measuring your impact?

If your ambition is rooted in deepening your impact, instead of a Machiavellian pursuit of growth-at-all-costs, you are setting your company up for long-term success. 

When Hint launched, we disrupted the beverage market. For us, a true marker of growth is seeing how the industry as a whole has evolved in response to Hint's mission and success.

Develop a clear and simple purpose and vision for your business. When people feel like they're part of something important, whether as customers or as employees, they’ll automatically feel more engaged and invested. At Hint, we think about health first. We get laser focused on what’s going into our bodies and then create enjoyable products that make us feel good about the decisions we make every day.  

For a lot of our customers, Hint has been the first step in their journey to wellness. Our plan is to continue following this consumer and figure out new opportunities to help them live a healthier lifestyle. By sticking to this mission, we’ve diversified the ways in which we grow. We recently started expanding our product range. Today, we’re educating our customers that products like sunscreen and deodorant can be made even better. By showing people how they could live healthier, the brand becomes an increasingly bigger part of their day. And the company is growing in ways that matter more than any other growth metric. 

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Kara Goldin is the founder and CEO of San Francisco–based Hint, a healthy lifestyle brand that produces the leading unsweetened flavored water and a scented sunscreen spray that’s oxybenzone and paraben-free. She is also the founder of The Kara Network (TKN), an online resource for aspiring and thriving business-minded people. Listen to her podcast,Unstoppable, where she interviews founders, entrepreneurs, and disruptors across various industries and keep up with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.