Growing a firm means business owners need to make a significant adjustment to their mission. Surprisingly, growing a firm means it is not about your vision for your firm any longer. It’s time to pivot.
Growing a firm means it’s their organization now, not yours. In leading a growing firm, your new role is to be more sounding board and less driver. That’s a toughie, isn’t it? When I shared this concept with a business owner, to think of the business as no longer hers, but her employees’, she balked. A few years later, she sold her practice to an external party. After a few frustrating cycles of shrinking and growing both her team and revenue, it was easier for her sell her practice than to grow it.
What does it mean when the organization belongs to your team, not to you? It means, you must now do what the organization requires, rather than what you want to do, or what you may want for the organization.
Based on all the businesses I’ve observed who have attempted and failed at growth vs. the ones that are making a successful run,, if you are unable to make the transition of thinking of the firm as “theirs,” not yours, then you may already have already killed your growth plan before it got truly underway.
When it comes down to it, growing a firm requires an entirely different skill set than starting a firm. One of the key steps I believe, is this mind shift: It’s theirs, not yours. If you can’t embrace this concept, growth may not be the best avenue to pursue your dreams or fund the next stage of your business plan or your life.
As Clate Mask, CEO of Infusionsoft says, “Entrepreneurship is an exercise in letting go.”
So, go ahead, ask yourself the hard question. Is it yours, or theirs?
