Everybody wants it now.
That's one of the major difficulties of our time.
Having the courage, or the patience, or the vision or the stubbornness or the temerity to invest in slow growth for later, that's the hardest thing to do.
Everyone is interested in what they have now or tomorrow, while planting a tree that you might never see is one of the most extraordinary things you can do.
Strategies are around and available for slow growth, we used to call it sustainable growth, until along came Google with 10x growth and then everyone was obsessed with 10x.
The true reality, and particularly for small businesses, is that growth above 10% or 15% is hard or almost impossible to manage. The stresses and strains that this level of growth produces make it really hard to keep things together at the bottom end.
Hayley and I learned this years ago on a level 7 business management course where we sat with guys who owned a printing company that went very quickly from 2 million to 5 million and then very, very quickly back to 2 million again because they simply did not have in place the structures and the processes and the guardrails to exist as a business that was 2.5 times the size of the one they were currently working in.
That I think is the bit that people don't get.
It's better to lay the foundations in front of you and then move into them than move in and try to build the foundations while you're still there.
For all of us, it's difficult; the urge for self-gratification and instant approval is almost unmanageable, it's almost impossible to handle, but handle it we must.
There will be no significant future without looking at things for the longer term, for people who will come after us, for the others.
Blog Post Number - 4226