Seth Godin's blog post today screams INDIE! You can read it here. The idea is that if you're a micro-business owner today, you may or may not want to grow your business beyond a certain point. In other words, you may want to “scale small” instead of “scale big.”
Yes, it's great to grow. And yes, you have to grow in order to make a profit. But growing for the sake of growing can be like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. And if you grow without the intention needed to support and sustain that growth, eventually, your life will break.
Don't Let Your Business Break Your Life
If you make most or all of the products you sell, you have to be realistic. You cannot make the full line of products that large companies do. They have financing and employees and big buildings. There's nothing wrong with those things, but if you're INDIE, you don't have them.
And you may not want them.
To what extent you grow should be up to you, and it should be an integral part of your business plan. You don't have to grow big or fast. As long as you stay ahead of inflation, you can make a profit and not have to turn your whole life over, forever, to your business.
By creating a product line that you can both make and sell, you get to keep your life.
The great thing is that you have a choice. You can choose to scale small. You can choose to scale big.
Who wants to be a millionaire? Not everyone.
But everyone does want to be happy and enjoy life. Everyone does want to make a living — to support themselves and their family members. Everyone does want to be engaged in daily tasks that fulfill them and make the world a better place.
Merging your basic life desires with your work, whether or not you scale big or scale small, is one of life's greatest blessings. Don't ruin it because other people say you need to take out loans, hire a lot of people and make a bunch of money.
By the way, if you're a soapmaker and the ideas here resonate with you, you'll enjoy this post from Michelle Gilbert.
Question: Are you scaling small or scaling big? Why?
