Grow or die?

I had breakfast the other day with a friend who started his business around the same time I did. He was a one man shop to start with, but now has fifteen employees. In the course of conversation, he mentioned that he needed to add another sales person, and specifically wanted that person to go after larger accounts.

That does seem to be one of the problems of growth: the organism makes its own demands. He needs more sales effort because he has too many tech service people. He could scale back, but few of us want to do that. Instead, we'd rather push for more business.

I took the opposite path. I sometimes have less business than I'd like, but more often I have more. Rather than grow, I stay as I am. Neither of us is "wrong", but I think I worry less. When you are on a growth track, you are constantly pulled by the demands of that growth: more people may mean more office space, better communication methods, more management - on it goes. If you like that kind of challenge, it can be fun, but if you don't, you'd be happier staying small.

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