I was recently quoted in an Inc. Magazine article about balancing growth and profitability, and I want to expand on what I said because there’s a lot more to it than a few paragraphs can capture.
“When you invest in growth, your profitability will take a hit. You can’t simultaneously grow and post record profits, especially when you are a small business. This past year, I had to take a step back to build, which meant I wasn’t out there selling, and as a result, our revenue is down. It’s your responsibility as the business owner to anticipate trends, read the economy, and plan for the worst. It’s why we expanded our business to add a complementary offering, but it’s going to be a hefty lift and require additional capital to build. Growth is painful but worth the risk. You need to believe in yourself because no one else will.”
We glorify entrepreneurship like it’s all sunshine and unicorns, but behind the scenes, it’s burnout, decision fatigue, and the crushing weight of being the person responsible for everything. The year before this one, 8THIRTYFOUR had our best year ever, and I made a deliberate decision to not replicate it. I stopped replacing employees when they left, I offboarded clients who weren’t the right fit, and didn’t pursue new business. I knew revenue would take a hit, and I did it anyway because I needed the bandwidth to build something new.
Building a new business line while running an existing one is like changing a tire while the car is still moving. I spent months pursuing SBA funding, writing a business plan, building financial projections, researching market opportunity, determining buildout costs, and restructuring the company to support something that doesn’t exist yet; all while still being responsible for client deliverables, team management, cash flow, and operations. The hustle culture crowd tells you to bet on yourself, but they conveniently leave out the part where the bet requires you to exist in 47 places at once while operating on faith, caffeine and adderall.
For 20 years I’ve been talking about personal branding and the importance of being in front of your business; people buy from people, not logos. I also got the opportunity to build theI the Women’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship through the Small Business Association of Michigan for second-stage women-owned small businesses and another program (hopefully launching in the Spring). What became undeniably clear was the gap; established business owners who’ve survived the startup phase and are trying to scale don’t have anywhere to go. The resources available are either too basic, too corporate, or delivered in a way that makes everyone fall asleep. Nobody’s teaching resilience, boundaries, and operational sanity in a format that business owners and people with short attention spans can actually absorb and retain.
It’s why this spring, 8THIRTYFOUR Schools, a suite of coaching, workshops, facilitation, elearning, and program development offerings, will launch. Every single program came from actual requests from business owners, and each offering is built by business owners and delivered in a way
Big Deal Energy coaching teaches you to show up with intention and passion while being unapologetically authentic, to embrace the messy, imperfect, quirky parts of yourself as your greatest assets instead of obstacles to overcome. The Swanson Method — yes, named after Ron Swanson — is for business owners who are done being owned by the thing they built and are ready to operate with decade-long clarity, unflinching boundaries, and zero tolerance for the bullshit keeping them stuck in reactive mode. The Gen X Survival Guide teaches the workforce the things Gen Xers had no choice but to learn: conflict resolution, problem solving, how to handle failure, critical thinking, and all the other hard shit life throws at you. We raised ourselves watching The Goonies in wood-paneled basements and drinking from garden hoses, and now it’s our job to teach this new generation the survival skills we picked up along the way.
The pendulum of business swings from growth to profitability and back again, and as long as it doesn’t go unchecked, your business will keep moving in the right direction overall. Growth requires sacrifice, and you have to account for the revenue dip or make hard choices about what you’re willing to give up. The key is anticipation — reading trends, planning for the worst while building for the best, and understanding that investing in growth means your bottom line is going to take a hit.
You need to believe in yourself because no one else will. Your accountant will tell you the numbers don’t make sense. Your well-meaning friends will suggest playing it safe. Your own brain will wake you up at 3 a.m. with every possible worst-case scenario. And you do it anyway, because building something meaningful has never been comfortable, and growth only happens when you push yourself out of the safe zone and into the terrifying unknown.
Is it painful? Absolutely. Is it worth the risk? Every single time.
