A Second Big Growth Spurt

. .     A balancing act They always say that a small business has to be careful to not allow any one client to represent more than one third of your revenue. They are right. But it’s tempting to take work that comes pouring in. I’d say it’s almost impossible to refuse. To please the increasingly voracious marketplace, we took on more employees, more space, more phones, more data processers and translators and office staff. We were hoping that this would increase our visibility in the market and launch us on a growth pattern that would be unstoppable. One way I rationalized something I knew to be a mistake was that our work was done for many different advertisers, so it felt like we had many different clients, but all of the work was channeled through one company, and that was the problem. So the big mistake I made was to fall in love with growth at any cost and I broke the one-third rule and it ended up, years later, costing me dearly. Still, I did learn a lot along the way and made a lot of friends and met the person who would eventually guide the purchase of my company and lead me into the promised land of big corporate research. Honestly, from this remove, I don’t regret it. Related articles: Small Business Revenue Growth and Success Brand Growth And The Randomness of It All 6 Lessons Learned From Managing Growth