Outgrowing Your Ability to Grow
Nick Richtsmeier
Solving growth for ventures dependent on trust | Unapologetic generalist | Allergic to convention
Issue 068 | Outgrowing Growth: Why stalling growth has almost nothing to do with marketing.
Shortly after my dad died at 53, I was a new father in a job I didn't love, trying to figure out how to make my way in the world. We had just purchased a 100-year-old duplex that leaked when it rained and whose doorways had to have have custom doors made to fit the slants.
I had aspirations of tearing up an old sidewalk and putting in a paver patio in the backyard, having no proven skills to do either. My 80-year-old grandfather volunteered to make 12-hour drive to bring some tools and supervise.
I'll never forget sweating uncontrollably in the summer sun, trying to sledge hammer apart that old sidewalk.?
"You're working harder than you need to," he said through a smile. One of twelve siblings he grew up on a family farm learning to do everything by hand. I'm sure the scene was comical to say the least.
He crawled down on all fours, stuck a small crowbar under the sidewalk and with a little leverage and a swing, broke the sidewalk in pieces. Proceeding do to it a half-dozen more time, chewing through more concrete in 5 minutes than I'd done in an hour.
"When you don't know what you're doing, you've gotta do everything by brute strength and awkwardness. Eventually learn it doesn't have to be so hard."
Growth is the enemy of growth
Most of our clients call us with growth on their minds. Because we have some background in the marketing discipline, their first thought is that marketing needs to get "fixed."
Like an old dog impregnating neighborhood purebreds, marketing is believed to be causing more problems than it solves and surely something can be done.
In some cases, this is true. Particularly for those companies who have never used marketing particularly effectively or whose growth has come through other means, marketing can be in the mix.
In other cases, the issue is positioning. Your company just sits in the wrong place in the market, is misperceived, creating a disconnect between your value creation and those looking for value. This is not a marketing problem. When you try and a solve it with marketing you create more problems, building up a backload of what we call "operational debt" that will only further slow down your progress.
What is most often the case is that growth has stalled?because of growth. What got you here is not only not going to get you to the next place, but its actually pushing you backwards. Brute strength and awkwardness got you to the 6% of companies that make more than $1M in revenue every year.?
It will not break up sidewalk in the blazing sun.?
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You said there was a science to this.
Every piece of strategy advice we publish starts with our work in the field with clients like you. Then as themes emerge we compare our work to what's been done by other smart folks. As is always the case, there's nothing new under the sun.
There is a science to why growth stalls. And the themes from?Forbes?to?Harvard Business Review?to?McKinsey?have documented the themes we discovered.?
Revenue growth is never just a straight line going up and to the right. And yet, what we’ve often seen strategic plans that map out just that. Think about your C-suite. How do you talk about your future plans?
Is it some version of, “We’re going to do what we’ve done well, just more of it”?
If so, now is the moment to raise the yellow flag of concern. “Generally the same but more” is the one thing we can almost guarantee won’t happen.
We tell our organizations that they need to plan to reposition the company every 3-5 years. Healthy companies are in one of three states:
The best leaders are abandoning the illusion that anything stays the same. It won’t, and neither should you.
You can’t be the business you were yesterday.?
We broke down where growth ceilings?and why on the path from startup to $100M in revenue, how to recognize and what to do. Make sure to dig in. As always with us, no sign-ins required.
Forward, Forward —Nick?