Sharing thoughts and learnings

The growth dilemma - how to scale success?

Lately I have met quite a lot of business people that have the same dilemma: they are great at what they do, they have a special skill to offer and they do it great, but they don't have time to grow their business as they would like.  Why? They are busy... meeting with lawyers, going to the post office, searching for a solution with their new email server, updating their software... and taking care of all kinds of administrative stuff they happen to be not the most effective at.

But even when you make others take care of the non-core stuff (that would be wise), an even bigger dilemma could happen to you:  A lawyer that is a specialist in the GDPR topic is experiencing the most busiest time ever...  he said to me: you know it is good there is interesting work to do, but I started on my own because I wanted to offer certain quality of service that others don't.  Now I start to neglect my clients and I suffer because I know I cannot manage all my accounts as I would like to.... it is getting difficult...I cannot say no...  but I don't enjoy it the same as before.

There is a key question professional independent workers shall ask themselves: Do I want to earn money with a just a few clients or do we want to expand to all potential clients out there?  What is my differentiating value? Can I keep the service levels I committed to if I expand this business?

This is not a new dilemma.  Businesses from all sizes face this situation sooner rather than later if they do things right.  And as they scale their model, they start to face a different challenge: People.  How to attract the best people that wants to help you scale your vision to something bigger?  How do you avoid to have employees that will not care after 18:00 if a client calls?  Seems it all goes down to a single question:  Do you want a follower or a leader?  Are you prepared to co-create and share success with a partner?  Sometimes the answer is not outside.  What do you think?