Chapter 9. Myth No. 9: It’s Easy to Start a Business, But It’s Difficult and Stressful to Grow One
Truth No. 9: Businesses Can Be Grown Profitably and Enjoyably

Introduction

A fear that many prospective business owners have is that once they get their businesses started, they won’t be able to grow them successfully. It’s easy to understand where this fear comes from. There is a prevailing notion that successful businesses are growth businesses, which has been bolstered by common phrases such as, "If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards," and "Businesses either grow, or they die." There are also signals that remind us of just how difficult growing a business can be. Think about the number of times that we’ve all heard about businesses that have downsized or laid off employees. While there may be many reasons for those events, it’s easy to infer that these businesses weren’t able to sustain their growth. There are also sobering statistics that pertain to business growth. For example, Chris Zook, an expert on firm growth, has found that over a 10-year period only 1 in 10 businesses achieve more than a modest level of sustained and profitable growth (defined as 5.5% or more per year).¹ Reading that statistic would cause any prospective business owner to pause and think, "Wow, if only 1 out of 10 existing businesses grows by more than 5.5% per year, what chance does a new firm have?"

The reality is that if that you have a business that meets a defined need, and are a capable owner, in most instances you can grow your business profitably and enjoyably. It doesn’t happen by happenstance, however. Growing a business successfully takes preparation, good management, and an awareness of the key issues involved. It also takes a business owner with a high degree of self-awareness and a strong, consistent sense of the type of business that he or she wants to have. Growing a business can be a joy or a nightmare. There are many businesses that have started, grown prudently, and are thriving, returning to their owners just the sort of lives they had hoped for. Sadly, there are also many businesses that have done just the opposite—they’ve started, grown either too slowly or too quickly, and have failed, leaving their owners financially and emotionally damaged. In most cases, these businesses had no plan for growth, and their owners didn’t try to build their companies in a focused and purposeful manner.

The key to keeping the myth described in this chapter from coming true is to take determined steps to prevent it from happening. All businesses would rather grow profitably and enjoyably rather than in a difficult and stressful manner.

Improper growth can also ruin a business. For example, some businesses start slow and then get a string of large orders. If they’re not careful, they can over commit and find themselves struggling to fill the orders and manage their cash flows in ways that allow them to regularly pay their employees. Similarly, early success can cause a business to become overconfident and hire too many people or lease too much manufacturing or office space, resulting in financial hardship. It’s easy to err in either direction, which makes it doubly important to remain vigilant and follow a growth plan.

To discuss these important topics and further dispel the myth that it’s easy to start a business but difficult and stressful to grow one, this chapter is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on preparing for growth. The second part focuses on managing growth. The third part describes the most common strategies businesses use to grow their firms.

Preparing for Growth

While there is some trial-and-error involved in starting and growing any business, the degree to which a firm prepares for its future growth has a direct bearing on its level of success. Many of the early decisions that a business makes, such as whether it will focus on a single product or become a multi-product firm, have an influence on the nature of its growth. This section focuses on three issues that are important as a business starts and prepares itself for growth. These issues are:

• Appreciating the nature of business growth
• Determining a business’s core strengths and capabilities
• Planning for growth

Appreciating the Nature of Business Growth

The first issue that helps business owners prepare for growth is to gain an appreciation of the nature of business growth. Not knowing much about business growth, including the full range of outcomes that can occur, might cause a well-intended business owner to make decisions that cripple or ruin his or her business. The best way for a business owner to learn about growth is to access resources described throughout the book, such as talking to a SCORE advisor, attending a class on business growth hosted by a Small Business Development Center, or finding a mentor. Many businesses also form a Board of Advisors, which is a panel of experts who are asked by a business’s owner to provide counsel and advice on an ongoing basis.

The first thing for a business owner to appreciate about growth is that not all businesses have the potential to be aggressive growth companies. The businesses that have the potential to grow the fastest over a sustained period of time are ones that solve a significant problem or have a major impact on their customers’ productivity or lives. This is why the lists of fast-growing firms are often dominated by healthcare and technology companies. These companies have the potential to make the biggest impact on their customers’ businesses or lives. This point is affirmed by contrasting the sporting goods industry with the biotechnology industry. From 2004 to 2006, the average sporting goods store in the United States grew by 3.3%, while the average biotechnology company grew by 13.1%.² While there is nothing wrong with starting and owning a sporting goods store, it’s important to have a realistic outlook of how fast the business will likely grow. Even though an individual sporting goods store might get off to a fast start, as it gets larger, its annual growth will normally start to reflect its industry’s norms.

The second thing that is important for a business owner to appreciate about growth is that businesses can grow too fast. Many businesses start fast and never let up, which is stressful for everyone involved. Other businesses start, grow at a measured pace, and then experience a sudden upswing in orders and have difficultly keeping up. This scenario can transform a business with satisfied customers and employees into a chaotic workplace with people scrambling to push the business’s product out the door as quickly as possible. The way to prevent this from happening is to recognize when to put the brakes on and have the courage to do it. This set of circumstances played out early in the life of The Pampered Chef, the company that sells kitchen utensils through home parties. Just about the time the company was gaining serious momentum, it realized that it didn’t have enough inventory to serve what it expected to be a busy Christmas season. This reality posed a serious dilemma. It couldn’t instantly increase its inventory (its vendors were all low), yet it didn’t want to discourage its home consultants from making sales or signing up new consultants. One option was to institute a recruiting freeze (on new home consultants), which would slow the rate of sales. Doris Christopher, the company’s founder, remembers asking others for advice. Most advised against instituting a recruiting freeze, arguing that the lifeblood of any direct sales organization is to sign up new recruits. In the end, the company decided to institute the freeze and slowed its sales enough to fill all orders on time during the holiday season. The freeze was lifted the following January, and the number of Pampered Chef recruits soared. Reflecting on the decision, Doris Christopher later wrote:

"Looking back, the recruiting freeze augmented our reputation with our sales force, customers, and vendors. People saw us as an honest company that was trying to do the right thing and not overestimating our capabilities."³

Other businesses have faced similar dilemmas and have sometimes made the right call and sometimes haven’t. The overarching point is that growth must be handled with kid gloves. A business can only grow as fast as its infrastructure allows (a subject we talk more about later). A list of indicators that a business is growing too fast in provided in the following bulleted list.

• Borrowing money to pay for routine operating expenses.
• Extremely tight profit margins.
• Over-stretched staff.
• Quality is slipping.
• Customer complaints are up.
• Employees dread coming to work.
• Productivity is falling.
• The business’s accountants are starting to worry.

The third thing it’s important for a business owner to appreciate about growth is that business success doesn’t always scale. What this means is that the very thing that makes a business successful might suffer as the result of growth. For example, Wadee, a company talked about throughout this book, sells hand-made gifts and toys for children. It would be hard for Wadee to grow quickly and still produce hand-made products. There might also be an upward limit on the number of people who are willing to pay extra for hand-made goods. To accelerate its growth, Wadee could start selling machine-made children’s gifts and toys along with its hand-made products. But it would then lose its distinctiveness and cease being what it once was.

Similarly, businesses that are based on providing high levels of customer service often don’t scale or grow well. An investment brokerage service, for example, that initially provided high levels of customer service can quickly evolve into providing standard or even substandard service as it adds customers, opens new offices, adds new product lines, and starts automating key functions. Its initial customers might find that it’s harder to get individualized service than it once was and start viewing the company as just another ho-hum business.

There is also a category of businesses that sell high-end or specialty products that earn high margins. These businesses typically sell their products through venues where customers prioritize quality over price. These businesses can grow but only at a measured pace. If they grow too quickly, they can lose the "exclusivity" they are trying to project or can damage their special appeal.

Determining a Business’s Core Strengths and Capabilities

The second issue that helps business owners prepare for growth is to clearly identify their core strengths and capabilities. While this recommendation may seem self-evident, it continues to surprise us how many businesses aren’t sure of what their most important strengths and capabilities are. The reason this topic is so important is that a business achieves healthy growth when it matches its strengths with opportunities. If a business doesn’t know what its strengths are, it can easily stray into areas where it finds itself at a competitive disadvantage. This happened to Amazon.com early in its life as a company. Just months after it announced that it intended to become "a place where you can buy anything for anyone," Amazon laid off 15% of its workforce and started eliminating product lines under the slogan "Get the Crap Out." The company quickly realized that it was competing in areas that were not well-matched with its strengths, and its competitors had a decided advantage.⁴

The way successful businesses typically evolve is to start by selling a product or service that is consistent with their core strengths and capabilities and increase sales by incrementally moving into areas that are different from, but are related to, their core strengths and capabilities. Apple is a good example. It utilized its core strengths and capabilities in the areas of technology and design to create the Macintosh and its iMac line of computers and is now using those same strengths and capabilities to produce MP3 players (the iPod) and digital phones (the iPhone). In fact, Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and CEO, has been quoted as saying Apple is as proud of the things it doesn’t make as the things it does. All of the company’s products have fit within the scope of its unique strengths and capabilities.

Planning For Growth

The third thing that a business owner can do to prepare for growth is to establish growth-related plans. This task involves a firm thinking ahead and anticipating the type and amount of growth it wants to achieve.

The process of writing a general business plan greatly assists in developing growth-related plans. A business plan normally includes a detailed forecast of a firm’s first three to five years of sales along with an operations plan that describes the resources the business will need to meet its projections. Even though the business will invariably change during its first three to five years, it’s still good to have a plan. Many businesses periodically revise their business plans and allow them to help guide their growth-related decisions.

It’s also important for a business to determine, as early as possible, the strategies for growth that it will try to employ. For example, Proactiv, the acne medicine company discussed in several chapters of this book, is a single-product company and has grown by steadily increasing its domestic sales, introducing its product into foreign markets, and by encouraging nontraditional users of acne medicine, like adult males, to use the product. Proactiv’s decision to stick with one product and to avoid growing through initiatives like acquisitions and licensing has allowed the company to focus on marketing and building its brand. Similarly, Cranium, the board game company discussed in Chapter 7, has grown rapidly but made the decision early on to avoid the temptation to simply take its flagship Cranium game and develop "age appropriate" versions of it. Instead, each of the 14 games the company has developed has been built from the ground up and has been extensively tested within their age groups. For example, Cadoo is a board game for kids seven years old and older. The game fits in a backpack and is designed for two players (instead of four, like the original Cranium) given that kids normally have only one friend over at a time.⁶

On a more personal level, a business owner should step back and measure the company’s growth plans against his or her personal goals and aspirations. The old adage, "Be careful what you wish for," is as true in business as it is in other areas of life. For example, if a business has the potential to grow rapidly, the owner should know what to expect if the fast-growth route is chosen. Fast-growth normally implies a quick pace of activity, a rapidly rising overhead, and a total commitment in terms of time and attention on the part of the business owners. The upside is that if the business is successful, the owner will normally do very well financially. The tradeoffs implied by this scenario are acceptable to some business owners and aren’t to others. If a person is starting a business to improve his or her quality of life, running a fast-growth firm might not be worth the sacrifices involved. A person in this situation might deliberately throttle back a business’s growth potential in exchange for more leisure time and a less stressful life.

Managing Growth

Many business owners are caught off guard by the challenges involved with growing their companies. One would think that if a business got off to a good start, steadily increased its sales, and started making money, things would get progressively easier for the business owner. In many instances, just the opposite occurs. As a business increases its sales, its pace of activity quickens, its resource needs increase, and the owner usually finds himself or herself busier than ever. Major challenges can also occur. For example, a business might project its next year’s sales and realize it will need more people and additional equipment to handle the increased workload. The new equipment might need to be purchased and the new people hired and trained before the increased business generates additional income. It’s easy to imagine a business owner tossing and turning in bed at night trying to figure out how that will all work out.

The reality is that a company must actively and carefully manage its growth for it to expand in a healthy and enjoyable manner. As a business grows and becomes better known, there are normally more opportunities that present themselves, but there are more things that can go wrong too. Many potential problems and heartaches can be avoided by prudently managing the growth process. This section focuses on two topics regarding how to manage growth: knowing and managing the stages and challenges of growth.

Knowing and Managing the Stages of Growth

The majority of businesses go through a discernable set of stages referred to as the organizational life cycle. The stages, pictured in Figure 9.1, include introduction, early growth, continuous growth, maturity, and decline. Each stage must be managed differently. It’s important for business owners to be familiar with these stages, along with the unique opportunities and challenges that each stage entails. The introduction, early growth, and continuous growth stages are discussed in the following sections.⁷

Figure 9.1. Stages of growth

Introduction

This is the start-up phase where a business determines what its core strengths and capabilities are and starts selling its initial products or services. It’s a very "hands-on" phase for the owner who is normally involved in every aspect of the day-to-day life of the business. The business is typically very nonbureaucratic with no (or few) written rules and procedures. The main goal of the business is to get off to a good start and to try to gain momentum in the marketplace.

The main challenges for a business in the introduction stage are to make sure the initial product or service is right and to start laying the groundwork for building a larger organization. It’s important not to rush things. This sentiment is affirmed by April Singer, the founder of Rufus Shirts, a company that makes high-end shirts for men. Before growing her business beyond the introduction stage, Singer made sure that her unique approach for making men’s shirts worked and that it resonated in the marketplace:

"Before growing too much too fast, I wanted to spend two seasons making sure that the concept worked, that I shipped well, and that consumers liked the product. They did."⁸

This affirmation gave Singer the confidence to expand her business and move into a more aggressive growth mode. In regard to laying the groundwork to build a larger organization, many businesses use the introduction stage to try different concepts to see what works and what doesn’t, recognizing that trial-and-error gets harder as a business grows. It’s important to document what works and start thinking about how the company’s success can be replicated when the owner isn’t present or when the business expands beyond its original location. Betsy Ludlow, the founder of Slim and Tone, a fitness center for women, documented nearly every move she made during the early days of her business. This practice paid off when Slim and Tone moved into its early growth phase and became a franchise organization. Reflecting on her experience, Ludlow recalls:

"I documented everything. When I bought something, I kept receipts. I made notes of every step I went through to open my first club. By the third club, I realized, hmmm...I have material to start putting together the training curriculum and operating manuals so that someone could do exactly what I just did. That’s how I turned it into a franchise concept."⁹

Early Growth

A business’s early growth stage is normally characterized by increasing sales and heightened complexity. The business is normally still focused on its initial product or service but is trying to increase its market share and might have related products in the works. The initial formation of policies and procedures take place, and the process of running the business will start to consume more of the owner’s time and attention.

For a business to be successful in this stage, two important things must take place. First, the owner of the business must start transitioning from his or her role as the hands-on supervisor of every aspect of the business to a more managerial role. As articulated by Michael E. Gerber in his excellent book The E-Myth Revisited, the owner must start working "on the business" rather than "in the business."¹⁰ The basic idea is that early in the life of a business, the owner is typically directly involved in building the product or delivering the service that the business provides. As the business moves into the early growth stage, the owner must let go of that role and spend more time learning how to manage and build the business. If the owner isn’t willing to make this transition or doesn’t know that it needs to be made, the business will never grow beyond the owner’s ability to directly supervise everything that takes place, and the business’s growth will eventually stall. After all, even the most energetic people have limits on how much they can do.

The second thing that must take place for a business to be successful in the early growth stage is that increased formalization must take place. The business has to start developing policies and procedures that tell employees how to run it when the owner or other top managers aren’t present. This is how a McDonald’s restaurant runs so well when it’s staffed by what appears to be a group of teenagers. The employees are simply following the policies and procedures that were originally written down by Ray Kroc, McDonald’s founder, and have been added to and improved upon over the years. An early growth stage business will not develop policies and procedures as elaborate as McDonald’s, but it must start formalizing how it achieves its success. This task was clearly on the mind of Emily Levy, the founder of EBL Coaching, a tutoring service for children who are struggling in school or trying to overcome disabilities, when she was asked by Ladies Who Launch early in the life of her business her growth plans:

"My future goals include continuing to spread EBL Coaching’s programs nationally, using our proprietary materials and self-contained multi-sensory methods. I have already developed a series of workbooks, called ’Strategies for Success,’ addressing specific study skills strategies, that are being used in a number of schools across the country. The real challenge will be figuring out how to replicate our programs while maintaining our high quality of teaching and personalized approach."¹¹

Levy was clearly trying to envision how her business would replicate its initial success in other locations. This is a task that all business owners need to do during the early stages of growth.

Continuous Growth Stage

As a business moves beyond its early growth stage and its pace of growth accelerates, the need for structure and formalization increases. The resource requirements of the business are usually a major concern, along with the ability of the owner and manager to take the firm to the next level. Often, the business will start developing new products and services and will expand to new markets. Smaller firms may be acquired, and the business might start partnering with other firms. When handled correctly, the business’s expansion will be in areas that are related to its core strengths and capabilities, or it will develop new strengths and capabilities to complement its activities.

The toughest decisions are typically made in the continuous growth stage. One tough decision is whether the owner of the business and the current management team have the experience and ability to take the firm any further. This scenario played out for Rachael Ashwell, the founder of Shabby Chic, a home furnishing business. Ashwell expanded her company to five separate locations, inked a licensing deal with Target, wrote five how-to books related to her business, and hosted her own television show on the Style Network before she concluded that her business had stalled. Her choice was to continue running the business or find more experienced management to grow it further.

She opted for the latter, and Shabby Chic is growing again.¹² Another decision that often is made is whether to continue to grow a business or sell it to a larger company. This is often a very personal and difficult decision for a business owner.

The importance of developing policies and procedures increases during the continuous growth stage. It’s also important for a business to develop a formal organizational structure and determine clear lines of delegation throughout the business. Although "formalization" is a term that is often frowned upon by business owners who want to free themselves from the trappings of Corporate America, well-developed policies and procedures lead to order, which typically makes the process of growing a business more organized, enjoyable, and successful.

Challenges of Growth

There is a consistent set of challenges that affects all stages of a firm’s growth. The challenges typically become more acute as a business grows, but a business’s owner and managers also become more savvy and experienced with the passage of time. The challenges illustrate that no firm grows in a competitive vacuum. As a business grows and takes market share away from rival firms, there will be a certain amount of retaliation that takes place. This is an aspect of competition that a business owner needs to be aware of and plan for. Competitive retaliation normally increases as a business grows and becomes a bigger threat to its rivals.

The following is a discussion of the four most common challenges of firm growth.

Cash Flow Management

As a firm grows, it normally requires an increasing amount of cash to service its customers. In addition, it must carefully manage its cash reserves to make sure it has enough money in the bank to meet its payroll and cover its short-term obligations. There are many colorful anecdotes about business owners who have had to rush to a bank and get a second mortgage on their houses to cover their business’s payroll. This set of events usually occurs when a business takes on too much work, and its customers are slow to pay. A business can literally have a million dollars in accounts receivable but not be able to meet a $25,000 payroll. This is why almost any book you pick up about growing a business stresses the importance of properly managing your cash flow.

Growth usually increases rather than decreases the challenges involved with cash flow management because an increase in sales means more money is flowing into and out of the business. Some businesses deal with potential cash flow shortfalls by establishing a line of credit at a bank or by raising investment capital. Other businesses deliberately restrict the pace of their growth to avoid cash flow challenges. The latter option is preferred by Dave Schwartz, the founder of Rent-A-Wreck, a discount car rental company, who grew his firm through earnings rather than debt or investment capital. Commenting on this issue, Schwartz said:

"One of the main things I tell people starting out is not to grow too quickly. Often it’s better to grow slowly, and when you do expand, try to grow with cash flows [meaning grow with your own money]."¹³

Price Stability

If a new business grows at the expense of a competitor’s market share, price competition can set in. For example, if a new video store opens near a Blockbuster store, and the new store starts to erode Blockbuster’s market share, Blockbuster will probably fight back by running promotions or lowering its price. This type of scenario places a new firm in a difficult predicament and illustrates why it’s so important to start a business by selling a differentiated product in a niche market. There is no good way for a small firm to compete toe-to-toe against a much larger rival on price. The best thing for the small firm to do is avoid price competition by serving a different market and by serving that different market very well.

Quality Control

One of the most difficult challenges that businesses encounter as they grow is maintaining high levels of quality and customer service. As a firm grows, it handles more service requests and paperwork and contends with an increasing number of prospects, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. If a business can’t build its infrastructure fast enough to handle the increased activity, quality and customer service will usually suffer. What happens to many businesses is that they run into the classic chicken-and-egg quandary. It’s hard to justify hiring additional employees or leasing more office space until the need is present, but if the business waits until the need is present, it usually won’t have enough employees or office space to properly service new customers.

There is no easy way to resolve this type of quandary other than to recognize that it may take place and to plan for it the best you can. Many businesses find innovative and inexpensive ways to expand their capacity to try to avoid shortfalls in quality control or customer service. An example is an online merchant that utilizes drop-shipping rather than maintaining its own inventory as discussed in Chapter 8. Another example is a firm that utilizes temporary workers to plug resource gaps created by faster than expected growth.

Capital Constraints

Although many businesses are started fairly inexpensively, the need for capital is typically the most prevalent in the early growth and continuous growth stages of the organizational life cycle. The amount of capital required varies widely among businesses. Some businesses, like restaurant chains, might need considerable capital to hire employees, construct buildings, and purchase equipment. If they can’t raise the capital they need, their growth will be stymied.

Most businesses, regardless of their industry, need capital from time to time to invest in growth-enabling projects. Their ability to raise capital, whether it’s through internally generated funds, through a bank, or from investors, will determine in part whether their growth plans proceed.

Growth Strategies

The practical side of growth is the actual strategies that businesses employ to grow their companies. It’s helpful for business owners to be acquainted with the breadth of growth-related strategies that are available, so they can select the strategy or strategies that make the most sense at a certain point in time in light of their individual situations.

This section discusses the most common strategies for growth utilized by expanding businesses. The strategies are divided into internal growth strategies and external growth strategies, as shown in Figure 9.2 and discussed here.

Figure 9.2. Internal and external growth strategies

Internal Growth Strategies

Internal growth strategies involve efforts taken within the firm itself, such as new product development, other product-related strategies, and international expansion. Almost all firms start by featuring internal growth, and many firms, such as Flavorx, Proactiv, and Daisy Rock Guitar, stick with this strategy as they grow. A firm that features internal growth relies on its own strengths and capabilities to spur its growth, rather than going into the marketplace and creating growth through an acquisition or a strategic alliance. The full range of internal growth strategies available to businesses is shown in Table 9.1.

Table 9.1. Internal Growth Strategies

Many businesses prefer internal growth because it typically leads to an incremental, even-paced approach to growth. For example, a company like Shabby Chic, the home furnishing business introduced earlier, is growing by opening stores and selling its products through distributors. By growing in this manner, the company can control its pace of growth and time its store openings and new distribution agreements to coincide with the resources it has available. It’s also easier for a business to control its culture by growing through internal means. If a company grows by adding employees as new products come online, it can socialize the employees into its culture. In contrast, if a firm grows via an external strategy, such as an acquisition, it will have employees who have been raised in different corporate cultures and will normally have a more difficult task creating cohesion among its employees.

The primary downside of internal growth is that it tends to be a slow form of business growth. While a slow, deliberate approach to growth has many advantages, in some industries, relying strictly on internal growth does not permit a firm to develop sufficient economies of scale or broaden its product offerings fast enough to remain competitive. An example is Google. Google has completed a number of acquisitions, like its recent acquisition of YouTube, to stay ahead of Yahoo! and Microsoft in online search, pay-per-click advertising, and related activities. Google’s industry is moving too fast for it to develop all of its new products and services internally.

External Growth Strategies

External growth strategies rely on establishing relationships with other firms, such as mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, licensing agreements, and franchising. It is increasingly common for businesses to utilize one or more external growth strategies as early as the early growth stage of its organizational life cycle. The full range of external growth strategies available to businesses is shown in Table 9.2.

Table 9.2. External Growth Strategies

A business can normally grow faster through external growth than internal growth because it immediately adds a product or capability that might have taken months or years to develop internally. For example, when eBay acquired PayPal, it acquired PayPal’s proprietary electronic payments system, something PayPal worked diligently to perfect over a period of several years. Similarly, by forming a strategic alliance, a firm can tap into the resources of its alliance partner and reach new markets without having to build out its own infrastructure. For example, many American food companies have strategic alliances with large European food companies, like Nestlé, to gain access to their European distribution networks.

The primary downside of external growth is that by relying on other firms to help develop its growth, a business losses some of its flexibility and decision autonomy. It also complicates its business and runs the risk of joining forces with an unreliable partner. The net result of engaging in external growth is usually to speed up a business’s pace of growth. As a business’s pace of growth increases, the challenges of growth, such as cash flow management, quality control, and capital constraints, are usually exacerbated.

Many businesses blend internal and external strategies for growth as they pass through the stages of growth and expand their businesses. The important thing to remember as a business owner is that you should select the means of growth that is best for you and your company, given the conditions you face.

Summary

There is no topic more deserving of study on the part of a business owner than how to successfully grow a firm. It is not uncommon for a business to start successfully, provide an initial period of satisfaction and joy for its owners, and then turn sour as the owner struggles with the pressures and challenges imposed by growth. The good news is that it doesn’t have to turn out that way for you. If you start a business and decide to grow it beyond the scope of a small firm, reread this chapter periodically and seek out mentors and other forms of assistance and advice. Businesses can be grown successfully, but it does take perseverance, hard work, and a willingness to make tough choices.

As you glance down and realize that this is the final paragraph of this book, we’d like to leave you with one final piece of advice. There are some books that will tell you that starting a business is the smartest thing you can do—regardless of your alternatives. We hope we haven’t conveyed that message. Starting a business is the right thing for some people, and it’s the wrong thing for others. What we do believe, however, is that you shouldn’t let the myths discussed in this book make your mind up for you. Our guess is that if you picked up this book and spent the time to read it, you’re a capable, passionate, and responsible person. If starting a business is the right decision for you, you can do it!

Endnotes

1. Chris Zook, "Find Your Next Core Business," TheStreet.com, http://www.thestreet.com (accessed November 2, 2007).

2. IBIS World, http://www.ibisworld.com (accessed on November 4, 2007).

3. Christopher, The Pampered Chef, 166 (see chap. 4, n. 6).

4. Bruce R. Barringer and R. Duane Ireland, Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2006).

5. W. Joyce, N. Nohria, and B. Robinson, What Really Works (New York: HarperBusiness, 2003); D. Darlin, "Getting Beyond a Market Niche," Forbes, November 22, 1993, 106.

6. "Cranium Builds on Success to Enter Toy Category," Cranium Press Release (May 2006); J. Bick, "Inside the Smartest Little Company in America," Inc., January 2002.

7. Ladies Who Launch, accessed November 5, 2007 (see chap. 1, n. 4).

8. Ladies Who Launch, accessed November 5, 2007 (see chap. 1, n. 4).

9. Ladies Who Launch, accessed November 5, 2007 (see chap. 1, n. 4).

10. Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

11. Ladies Who Launch, accessed November 5, 2007 (see chap. 1, n. 4).

12. Chris Penttila, "When Success Isn’t Enough," Entrepreneur.com, http://www.entrepreneur.com (accessed November 4, 2007).

13. D. Bartholomew, "The Perfect Pitch," Priority, December/January, 2004.

14. Greg Galant and Derek Sivers, "VV Show #19—Derek Sivers of CD Baby," Venture Voice: Entertaining Entrepreneurship, http://www.venturevoice.com, November, 2005.