As any gardener can tell you, not all growth is good. After all, sunlight and water—the conditions that yield beautiful flowers and ripe veggies—also foster weeds that choke out healthy plants. And the pests you were able to manage on one plant will overwhelm an entire greenhouse before you notice they've crept in.
That same dynamic exists in fast-growth companies: As revenue scales, so do problems. When order volume increases, the Excel sheet—the one you've used to track orders since launching—is going to crash. Now you need a new inventory management platform, but should it be out-of-the-box or custom-built? Either way, you're going to need an engineer to implement it—make that three, actually. In fact, you're going to need to hire a bunch of new people to tend your particular garden. And are you spending enough on marketing to keep things growing after that first flush? You're going to need new customers to keep scaling, right?
We get it—success is exhausting. The founders, business leaders, and growth experts on the following pages can certainly attest to that. Most of them helm companies that have repeatedly landed on the Inc. 5000, and their hardearned insights into managing growing pains reveal some themes—like organization and the value of data-backed decisions. They learned that when it comes to hiring, less is often more, that simplified products and processes are always best, and that as your company grows, you have to grow with it. Read on for a bumper crop of advice.
Hire ambitious people, never stop improving, be attentive to your customers, and mine their feedback for insights. These are just a few of the ways these leaders say you can cultivate loyalty and expand to new audiences without diluting your brand.
1 | Stacy Spikes
Co-founder and CEO
MOVIEPASS
“Becom ing obsessed with the details—and the data—is what gives outsiders the hidden advantage. I call five customers every week. Good or bad. They canceled; they quit. They love it; they don't love it. I learned that from Steve Jobs. He used to answer customer service emails himself. What I get from doing that is amazing, and I've been doing it my whole career.”
Spikes is a veteran of the Black Founder: The Hidden Power of Being an Outsider.
