Go BIG or Go HOME

I know many of you have heard of the term go big or go home. Truth is in business you can’t for ever remain small, your existence as a business comes down to continuous growth at some point in that if you fail to grow then you’ll end up closing or like I love to say the business will out grow you.

I know very many people who get easily comfortable.If the business can put food on the table, take care of the basics then they’re fine. No intentional effort is put in trying to grow the business whatsoever.

I’ve seen many small businesses close because they didn’t try to grow. As you operate your business and the years go by alot of things keep changing in the environment in which your operating. Inflation is a natural force you don’t have control over and with inflation comes increase in costs which comes with the decrease in profits. For a business to survive it has to maintain a healthy balance between costs of operation and incomes/revenue incoming.

When that balance gets tilted or drastically shifted then the business starts facing the risk of collapse. Let’s look at an example. An average shop in town about 10 years ago went for about 2M a month. You’d hire a shop attendant and pay them 150k a month and a guy that loads and unloads stuff and pay them 100k a month. This meant that if you made 5M a month you’d remain with a cool 2.750M a month. Sensible to live off you would say.

Now that shop goes for about 4M and the attendant can’t work for anything less than 400,000 and the boy that loads 200,000. That’s 4.6M a month meaning if you still kept making 5M a month you’d be left with 400k. Is that comfortable enough to live on any more? Based on this trajectory time will reach when you can’t even pay the costs of operation if your income doesn’t grow. The end result would be closure in the long run.

Now this means for you to keep operating you have to keep growing. For you to grow your revenues you have to grow your clientele. For you to grow your clientele you need to market more, reach more people. If you succeed at doing this it would automatically mean increased production to meet the new demand created. Increase in demand means increase in factors of production with labour being one of the main factors. So you’d have to hire more people.

With time comes new competitors in the markert and this changes the markert forces. So first thing will be competition for the best labour around which will automatically raise the cost of this labour. The the drop in cuurency value and so many other factors. All these are things you have to be prepeared for better still plan and make them happen than wait for them to happen without your control.

That would mean growth of your business should be intentional, well planned and something you aspire for regardless of how comfortable your current situation seems and feels. As the winds around you keep changing at some time/point you’ll find you boat sailing towards a direction you dont understand or like.