The Growth-by-Addition Trap & The Way Forward to a Simpler, More Profitable Business

What do founders do when we want to grow? We sow seeds. This is the conventional approach of growth, growth by addition, growth by expansion:

• Another strategy, marketing channel, or tactic
• Another product, service, or offer
• Another target audience
• Another biz dev project
• Another experiment
• Another role

Stuff beyond our control happens, curveballs and extenuating circumstances, and what do we do when we lose a big account by no fault of our own or one falls in our lap?

We think, “Maybe I ought to…” and we fill in the blank by sowing more seeds:

• Revamp the CRM
• Hire a salesperson
• Get a bigger office
• Redo the website
• Launch a podcast
• Start a newsletter
• Build a DIY product

This type of experimentation and organic growth is the most natural thing in the world, and some new things are worth pursuing. Your business may be missing the right channel, audience, positioning, authority, offer, pricing, or process. Markets do evolve, and we need to reinvent. Addition can solve problems.

Addition also adds complexity. Whether we are full of optimism or dissatisfied with our businesses for whatever reason, the first impulse many of us have is not to prune but to try something new. Each net-new thing makes sense at the time, and each one takes up space.

The end result is not an elegant bonsai tree but an overgrown garden of once-shiny commitments and plans, half-finished projects and assets, obsolete offers and processes. Some of them worked and added genuine value. Others didn’t. Proactive pruning rarely happens.

Eventually, we find ourselves caught in the growth-by-addition trap:

Complexity grows over time as founders solve problems and try new things, and because the founder lives inside the clutter and has as many attachments and blind spots as anyone else, you struggle to see the simpler, more profitable business hidden in the complex one.

The last insight is worth repeating: Inside of your complex business is a simpler, more profitable one, but you struggle to see it because you live inside the complexity.

The trap represents an opportunity, and we’ll get to that in a moment. First, I want to rub salt in the wound by telling you who is most at risk of walking into the trap and why staying inside the trap is so damaging.

The founders most at risk are the ones who are good at a variety of things, the multipotentialites and platypuses of the business world. We’re naturally curious. We learn quickly and connect dots easily. We acquire a multifaceted skill set and can solve lots of problems. We have tons of ideas, spot opportunities other people miss, and can make any number of businesses work.

This versatility becomes a liability, especially when we pair it with a tendency to evaluate opportunities individually, in isolation: Will I enjoy it? Can this work? Is there demand? Can it make money?

I have pursued plenty of these oh-so-enticing opportunities, and you already know what lurks on the other side of the metaphorical door: extra tasks, factors, and wrinkles that didn’t factor into my calculations.

Those extra demands on my time and resources make the new opportunities decidedly less shiny, and worse, they’re now in direct competition with the better opportunities which I already had. Aargh! Why do I do this to myself?

Unlike corporations, small agencies and expertise-based businesses cannot spin up dedicated teams and pursue multiple missions at once. We have finite attention and energy, and thus growth by addition comes with real operational, financial, and emotional consequences.

Remember how I shared that I didn’t allocate enough time for my book launch and was disappointed by the book sales? In my experience, growth by addition and compulsive overcommitment lead to regret.

So we have to be honest about what will happen and what we stand to lose if we don’t change how we pursue growth. These are the stakes:

• Addition can increase revenue at first, but it also increases the cognitive load of knowledge, decision-making, and coordination required to operate the business.
• Addition increases the number of moving parts in the business, which in turn increases stress, friction, and the amount of effort required to do anything.
• Addition creates complexity, which increases the likelihood that something breaks or that some task or detail slips through the cracks.
• A more complex business needs more processes, more oversight, more vigilance, more attention, more effort, and that reality becomes a lot for founders to carry. The pressure; the backlog of problems, decisions, and tasks; the sense of being perpetually behind with no end in sight—all of it feels heavy.
• These challenges chip away at the passion that got us into business in the first place. They lead to overwhelm, and the business we build so eagerly at first we start to resent. Our partners and families resent it, too.

We’re successful enough that walking away feels foolish. And though growth by addition is natural and can sometimes solve the problem, this approach becomes the problem when we don’t curb it with careful, proactive pruning.

A line attributed to Einstein comes to mind:

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

We must recognize the growth-by-addition trap for what it is and get back to the roots of what got us into business in the first place—not growth for its own sake, which we call “cancer,” but control over our calendar, doing work we’re proud of with and for great people, financial upside, and designing a beautiful life.

We must envision a business that we can love again, a simpler, more profitable business.

To get that business, we must make some hard calls and bittersweet cuts. We must practice subtraction.

If you don’t know where to begin with subtraction and think you may want some help, email me at hello[at]austinlchurch[dot]com. Let’s talk about your situation and what you’d like to see happen, especially if you’re the founder of a creative agency or expertise-based business.

The homing pigeons kept disappearing—planes? eagles? politicians?—so email is the most reliable way to get in touch.