El crecimiento no es el camino para todos los negocios
Escribe Barry Glassman en Forbes.com, recogido en el Boletín Electrónico de CEDE–While a full-blown economic recovery remains far from certain, business owners can’t escape the notion that if you don’t grow, you die. If a recovery is near, therefore, there could be ample new opportunities for your business to pursue.
But not all growth is good. I think that all too often successful business owners eventually lose sight of why they started their business in the first place, trading off those values for the sake of growth itself. While building a new product line or pursuing client opportunities overseas may result in a larger business, it might not be, in the end, a more profitable or satisfying business for you.
In other words, I believe that business owners need to rethink the mantra that all growth is good. That’s also the key message of the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. Burlingham’s book isn’t new, it was first published in 2005, but its message, which is illustrated through 15 company case studies from a diverse range of industries, is more important now than ever. That’s why I continue to hand the book out to every one of my small business clients.
Consider the example of Gary Erickson, the co-founder of Clif Bar – the energy bar company that Erickson named for his father. After a few years of furious growth, Erickson and his co-founder agreed to sell the company to a large corporation for a reported $60 million. Now, I’m not sure how many entrepreneurs would walk away from that kind of payday, but, after a sleepless night, Erickson did just that. As Burlingham writes, Erickson said: “I had to answer for myself, ‘Why am I keeping this company? Why are we in business?’ I decided that our reason for being here was to prove that you can have a healthy, sustainable company that grows by natural demand and that is profitable.”
