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Career & Workplace

The New Regular: The pandemic

paradox of business growth
By Jim Blasingame  – Contributing Writer,
Nov 13, 2020, 5:30pm CST
This is the 22nd edition of my New Regular series, which is devoted to helping
your business survive the rest of 2020 and grow in 2021. Normal was last seen
looking for hanging chads in Palm Beach County, Florida.

One of the greatest professional accomplishments is to start a business and grow it

successfully. And just now, emerging from the pandemic punch-down, millions of
pathologically optimistic small-business owners are doing their best to transition
from survival mode to growth.

But we all know the post-pandemic marketplace will impact growth differently than
ever before. Indeed, many coronavirus veterans are watching their business models
being reset in front of their eyes.

Meanwhile, millions more Americans have responded to being unemployed by

morphing into that exciting entrepreneurial quark – a startup. And it’s part of my
tough-love act to point out that members of this group likely have no concept of
what it takes to grow a business.

Consequently, like no other time in my long career, pursuing business growth in

2021 for both a going concern and a start-up will require very similar practices and
execution. In that spirit, consider the following growth perspectives.

Unlike a plant or animal, a business isn’t genetically preordained as to how large it

will get. For a small business, that decision is made by the owner based on answers
to these three questions:

1. Do I want my business to keep growing?

2. How big do I want my business to be?

3. How fast do I want to get to that size?

There are no right or wrong answers – it’s your business, you get to decide. But
there is a paradoxical dynamic at play here: The answers to these questions are
heavily influenced by corresponding natural laws that make it difficult for a small
business not to grow. Here’s why:

 Entrepreneurs are hard-wired to create more of the business object of their

desire.
 The culture of the marketplace encourages, recognizes and rewards growth.
 The marketplace is nothing if not competitive, and the most prominent
byproduct of competing successfully is growth.

But even though there are no right or wrong answers to whether you should grow,
there are wrong reasons. Consequently, you must make sure that when you grow
your business, it’s because you’ve thought about why and how. Remember, growth
for its own sake is organizational suicide.

Here are six articles of faith you must believe to successfully practice the religion of
business growth, each followed by a tough love question and a post-pandemic
observation.

1. The marketplace is pretty full already. What makes you think you have a
realistic opportunity to grow? Because of the pandemic, the answer to this
question is different than it would have been a year ago.
2. Unless you can drop 25% to the bottom line, growth isn’t self-funding – it
must be capitalized. What’s your capitalization strategy to fund your growth
plan? Pushing through to the other side of this pandemic will make
managing cash and deploying capital more complicated and require even
more financial management competence. Carpenters say measure twice, cut
once. You’d better measure three times.
3. The ROI elements of growth are often delayed. If you grow, can your
business operationally and financially wait for the payoff? The acceleration
of change – already at light speed, pre-pandemic – isn’t going to slow. Make
sure your growth steps don’t become obsolete before they’re paid for.
4. Growth will take you into unfamiliar operational territory. Do you have the
staff and systems to blaze that trail without creating a casualty list?
Arguably, this is the toughest question because, pre-pandemic, the right
number and quality of employee prospects were already in shorter supply
than cash. In 2021, that ratio won’t get better.

And finally, here are perhaps the two most important growth truths to reconcile:

5. Tough love alert: No one is less interested about whether you grow or not than
your customers. How do you know if customers will see the benefit of your bigger
company? As we’ve discussed in this series, whatever you thought you knew about
customer expectations pre-pandemic is as obsolete as a flip phone. You can’t ask
customers what they think about your growth plans if you haven’t reconfirmed that
they still care that you’re still in business.

6. Being a business owner should be a source of happiness. Do you know if having a

larger business will make you happy? In a perverted way, the pandemic has helped
many small business operators answer this question. It took a pandemic to create
the gut-check opportunity to ask ourselves if we want to make a career change.

Believe it or not, many business owners – who either didn’t like their pre-pandemic
reality or had gotten into a rut – will use the pandemic as an excuse to reset their
future by:

a. taking their business in a new direction, or

b. stop being a business owner and get a job or retire.

Finally, in the true nature of a paradox, for every growth advantage there’s a
corresponding element of baggage. And smart CEOs don’t launch growth steps
without coming to terms with both sides of this paradoxical pendulum swing.

Write this on a rock...

Successful business growth is not genetic or accidental – it’s deliberate. Even

during – especially during – a pandemic.

Jim Blasingame is the author of two award-winning books, “The 3rd Ingredient,”
and “The Age of the Customer.” jimb@jbsba.com.