You'll regret focusing so much on business growth.

Posted on March 21, 2018 by Michael Zemrose, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.

You may even want to quit in spite of the success achieved due to focusing on growth.

Whoa did I just say that? I mean, after all, I work with small business owners to grow their businesses!

Now, I don’t mean to not focus on getting new clients, bringing in new customers, and becoming more profitable. That is essential to staying in business and achieving the dream. After all, the famous saying goes, “no margin, no mission.”

But many will also say that if you’re not growing you’re dying. Therefore to grow to is to survive right?

True, but this focus on growth and survival is where so many business owners start going down the wrong path. Since it’s so obviously important it becomes all they focus on. What then do they lose sight of?

I’ll tell you.

What they lose sight of is what they really want. Their “why.” Whatever you want to call that main driving desire to start a business in the first place.

Let me tell you a story about some clients of mine.

These two partners had one of the most successful real estate agencies in their region. All the success on paper you could want and plenty of momentum going into the next year.

Yet they realized they were no longer living the lives they dreamed of. They were even contemplating leaving the business behind them.

They were working very long hours
Their relationships suffered
Their health and wellness dropped
So…

Guess what their original “why” was….

[To have a successful business while having more time for family and friends and help their agents achieve independence like them ]

Well well well! Look at that.

Not until shifting back to focusing on their “why” did they achieve the growth they really wanted. Growth in time, growth in happiness, and growth in their business simultaneously.

And how did they do it?

Well here’s another thing they discovered:

Not only does focusing on growth distract you from creating what you really want, it also blinds you to the means to achieve it.

Because of their focus on growth and sales, they never began to delegate and empower others around them. That concept was in their blind spot due to where their focus was – they forgot their “why.”

This isn’t a lesson in learning to delegate, that would be missing the heart of the issue. These clients knew how to delegate and understood the importance of it – it was just completely forgotten because their focus was elsewhere.

So, what is the lesson here?

1a. The more you focus on growth the more you drain yourself. The more you focus on the “why” the more you grow!

1b. Remember that we build businesses because they provide us the possibility of something we really want. Focus on that.

Unless your passion is to build things that grow. Don’t just build a thing that grows. Build what you really want.

Or you’ll regret it.