From JV: “I’m debating whether I should keep the business growing…”

“I’m currently working full-time, and outside of that, I’ve been growing my agency. Right now, I’m managing around 8–10 active accounts, each with their own campaigns, and I’ve brought on two freelancers to help with the operational side.

“Here’s where I’d love your advice: I’m debating whether I should keep the business growing – bringing in more clients and expanding the team – or shift focus for now and work on strengthening our internal systems. Things like tightening up our call scripts, improving quality control, and building better SOPs while we’re still small.

“When I scaled from 4 to 8 accounts, I started to realize how much harder it becomes to change processes once you grow. So I’m wondering – should I keep pushing for growth while improving as I go, or pause new client acquisition temporarily and focus on building a stronger foundation to scale more profitably later?”

My Response: As I explained in Ready, Fire, Aim, the problem you are facing is one of the most common and most significant problems entrepreneurs face when they move into what I think of as the third stage of growth.

But Stage Three for most businesses happens when sales are at around $10 million, with positive cash flow and 50+ employees. The fact that you are asking this question now makes me wonder about the protocols and systems you’ve already set up. I wonder why they are such that you feel you need to be adjusting and revising them when you are so early in your growth.

I can’t answer that question for you outside of a conversation, but you might be able to answer it yourself by answering another one: What is the worst thing that could happen if you ignored the operational issues for the time being and focused on growth?

If the answer is “My company could go bust,” you have a problem you need to address sooner rather than later. If the answer is “My company would continue to grow, but I worry that when I do get around to reorganizing it, the work will be that much more difficult,” my bias would be towards continuing to focus on growing your business, your revenues, and your sales.

I suspect from what you’ve told me that your business is still in Stage Two. And that means you should be focusing on the challenges and opportunities that I outlined in that section of Ready, Fire, Aim. Stage Two is a very critical phase of your business growth. As founder and CEO, it is your opportunity to develop additional vertical and horizontal marketing campaigns that will move your profit margin up to a level where you can afford to lighten your load by (1) hiring a smart, hardworking, and pro-growth person to take over all the operational issues, and (2) promoting a few of your marketing and salespeople to marketing- and sales-management roles.

Hope this helps.

From KD: “Your latest about the exponential rate of AI adoption is going to change my life.” 

“The reason I’m reaching out today is because I wanted to thank you for once again giving me insights that could profoundly affect the quality of our future. Or at the risk of sounding dramatic… our future survival.”