Do You Have To Grow?

I was on vacation recently with a friend that works at a large (5000+ person) company. This person was talking about the issues with growing the large company because they didn’t have a large impact on how things might change or the business might decide to enter into a contract with someone. They pined for a smaller company where they could have an impact and achieve that year after year growth.

But is that necessary?

Do you really need to grow your business year after year? It seems that in modern American business we’ve gotten caught up in this constant growth cycle and not ever looking at business to see if it’s viable and sustainable. Sustaining zero growth, or low growth, but having regular, repeat customers, seems to be a failure.

After all, if you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.

I see that quote often, but I’m not sure it’s true. I think it is valuable to reassess where you are, how your business is doing, but I don’t think that this is a race. It’s a journey, and I think you can continue on that journey in business and be fine. There are plenty of people that want to run a business, not just make an investment that they’ll sell in 5 years.