The Gift of Slow Business Growth
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The Squad 🎉voted for “How To Grow Your Audience” as our theme for February.
As I was putting together the presentation for our masterclass, I felt a strong urge NOT to get too into the social media algorithms, search engine optimization, and trend tactics several of the The Squad members had been fretting over.
Why? Not knowing how to game the algorithm wasn’t the problem. Several of them, like me back in the day, were struggling to grow because they weren’t taking actions that demonstrated that they were ready to grow.
And furthermore, this was such a GIFT- not the failure they were interpreting it as.
Allow me to explain.
What if the current size of your audience matches your current capacity to serve it?
I intentionally adopted this thought for a few reasons.
🥭Instead of wondering what I’m doing wrong, I get to wonder what important lessons I need to learn before I hit my next growth goal.
🥭I get to remember to check in with how it’s going serving the people who are already here. How are my business systems doing to accommodate them? How am I emotionally handling the current level of visibility, interaction, & responsibility? Do I have the emotional, energetic, and time bandwidth to welcome in more?
🥭If I find adjustments need to be made in order for me to welcome in more folks and still be able to serve them well without hurting myself, I get to be grateful for the time I have to prepare and make these adjustments before it’s an emergency.
Here are 5 ways that slow business growth in the first 2 years of my business was a gift.
#1- Tending To a Wildfire Takes a Lot of Resources, That I Definitely Didn’t Have at First
Fast growth isn’t always as enviable as you think it is.
Let me tell you, when you get a huge, unexpected influx of people it is stressful learning after-the-fact that you aren’t prepared to serve them.
That’s what happened to me late last summer when I sold wayyyy more 90-Day Custom Content Plans than I was expecting. I had no scheduling limits set up, so in 1 week, I wound up with something like 7 content strategy workshops for different businesses. Plus, since the workshops weren’t spaced out, my usual deliverable turnaround within 7-10 business days was suddenly inadequate to turn out all 7 plans at once while simultaneously hosting additional workshops from new 90-day customers scheduled for the next week, AND serving my other clients.
As I scrambled to keep up, staying up til all hours working, guess what of course happened: I got a migraine. A bad one. It lasted multiple days.
And I had to tell 10+ customers that their deliverables would be late.
And though I physically couldn’t work due to the blinding pain behind my left eye, I went into a huge guilt and anxiety shame spiral because I felt like I was letting everyone down.
This was because I hadn’t yet done the inner work to be able to trust my people to be good, understanding people. Nor had I done the inner work to stop feeling ashamed for suffering from a chronic illness that is outside of my control. Nor had I done the inner work to realize that other people are allowed to be disappointed in me, and not only could I survive their disappointment, our relationship could survive as well- as long as I was transparent and communicated about delays.
That was a lot of inner work!
It didn’t get done overnight. My nervous system needed to see it to believe it that my people would be understanding.
Thank goodness my business grew at a pace that didn’t serve me that situation until I was ready to handle it emotionally, and thank goodness my next launch didn’t sell so ridiculously well so I had time to process and integrate these lessons.
I think if my business, sales, and revenue had grown any faster than exactly the pace that they did, I would have burnt myself out and sent myself into even more chronic illness episodes.
Here’s why: I often don’t know where my boundaries are in new experiences. In other words: I often need new experiences to show me where I need to protect and enforce boundaries. Like putting limits on how many in-depth messaging workshops I host in a week, for instance.
#2- I Had The Luxury Of Finding Boundaries That Needed Protecting BEFORE They Got Trampled By a Stampede
Look, as any recovering people-pleaser knows, learning about your boundaries can be, well, messy. You don’t always communicate them so great on your first or second attempt. You learn that when you stop people-pleasing, people who enjoyed the way you were accommodating them to your own detriment stop being pleased with you. Relationships end… Leaving room for new connections who are willing to respect your boundaries.
With the luxury of slow business growth, you get to practice identifying and communicating your newfound boundaries without the added pressure of widespread public scrutiny, critique, or backlash.
Here are the boundaries I’m glad I had the luxury of the time slow business growth afforded me to process:
🥭 Charging an appropriate rate
🥭 Not over-stuffing the scope of work
🥭 That I’m not for everybody- getting clear on who I was not equipped or attempting to serve
I’m spilling the deets. Read on.
Pricing Out Resentment
I think this is especially a gift when it comes to pricing.
Most of my aligned customers - empathetic, socially conscious, kind folks - have an extreme proclivity for underpricing.
Now I am grateful for the business influencers & mentors yelling at them that they’re worth more and should raise their prices. Which is true. And.
I know personally that if the price you’ve named causes your nervous system to go haywire or short-circuit, you’re not going to sell with confidence. You are likely to go into avoidance- which has serious implications for your marketing.
In sales calls, if you doubt the price, you’re unlikely to reassure the customer that their investment is safe with you.
So, I say this: price in a way that your nervous system can handle.
Bumping it up so that it is a little uncomfortable but you still believe it’s worth the price is fine.
Then do the work. Take on a few of these clients and projects.
Notice how much effort it entails on your part. How much time. How much emotional labor. How much preparation. And when you start to get resentful about delivering what you’re delivering at this price, you can raise the price higher- now fully believing that it is a fair exchange.
Here’s where slow business growth is a gift. Imagine underpricing and having 50 people, 100 people, hundreds or thousands of people buying it at that price! You’d be resentful and playing catch up for quite a while.
Narrowing The Scope of Work To Stop Drowning In It
I opened my business with 36 offers. I was constantly making custom packages for whoever came in the door. Customers would ask for more than we’d agreed to and I’d either do it resentfully or have a private meltdown and agonize for hours over how to say “no.”
I had a hard time relaxing because it always felt like there was a deadline hanging over my head.
But here’s the thing: I needed these experiences to start putting clearer boundaries around what I was offering. I needed these experiences to understand what I actually enjoy doing and what I’m doing out of a financial form of people-pleasing. (Word to the wise: never try to shape your offer just by “what you think they’ll buy.” Don’t factor yourself out like that!!!)
Thank goodness I had the luxury of understanding I was taking on too much with certain projects when I was serving the 10 clients that bought them rather than 2 or 3 times that many.
I am grateful slow business growth gave me the luxury of time to figure out what I’m actually willing and able to offer without hurting myself or undeserving my people.
#3 - I Learned Not To Try to Be Everyone’s Cup of Tea BEFORE Letting Unaligned Folks Become Unhappy Customers
Oh yeah, in theory, it’s easy to accept I’m not for everyone. Of course, rationally I know that my work is not for everyone.
But then someone would show up on a sales call and I would want them to like me or the money would be really nice or the prestige would feel validating. More than once I found myself twisting and conforming to what they wanted me to be, rather than staying grounded in who I want to be.
Now THAT was uncomfortable. It made me feel gross because authenticity is a core value of mine. If I wanted to stuff myself into a little box and stay there, I would have stayed in corporate.
And as I diverted a lot of energy to trying to please clients who weren’t a good fit, that energy was being sapped from my creative powers. I didn’t have as much to give to the work. Yeah, I still got them results, but it wasn’t as good as it is when I’m on fire, passionate, and aligned with my values.
It took quite a bit of experimenting for it to really sink in that when it’s not a good fit, I’m not happy and it’s not worth the money. It took even longer to be able to turn potential clients away for that reason.
But boy am I glad I had the space and luxury to learn that lesson before burning myself out on a flood of bad-fit clients and projects.
#4 - I Learned To Trust My Judgement FIRST Before The Stakes Got Too High
I grew up a Type A- Straight A student. I longed for that “good girl” acknowledgment. I loved checking off all the boxes, extra credit included. For a long time, achieving and overachieving were the only ways I knew how to feel safe. Praise from those I looked up to was the only way I knew to feel validated.
It’s a shame we train so many young women to source their safety this way because it conditions them so thoroughly for exploitation.
Thank goodness my rebel nature kept forcing its way up from the deep, overpowering my people-pleasing and asserting itself whenever I was in danger of conforming into someone other than myself.
For a long time, these two urges battled in me. I’d go with one and feel the wrath, disappointment, and fear of the other.
I learned in conventional jobs, I needed to let the “good girl” drive win or there would be conflict.
But my rebel nature refused to stay quiet for long, so it’s no wonder I wound up opening my own business where my rebel nature could finally hold the reins.
But opening my own business thrust me into uncertainty- a plethora of brand-new experiences. And it terrified me. And since the only way I knew to feel safe was through the approval of those I admired, I started taking way too much advice and factoring in way too many people’s opinions on what I was doing.
To messy results I:
🙃Took my business mentor’s advice even when I knew it was unaligned with my goals & my people
🙃I tried to do what every expert I came across advised
🙃I took critics’ opinions way too seriously even knowing they weren’t who I was marketing to anyway
🙃I doubted myself when others projected their doubts onto me
But I had the luxury to learn through experience why none of this “good girl” shit was going to work for badass CE-Ho me. I had to learn, once and for all, to trust my judgment first. To know, to my bones, that I know what’s best for me and for my business.
This required a lot of inner work. A lot of revisiting a lot of very uncomfortable moments in my past and acknowledging some wounds I had been attempting to ignore for a very long time.
If I had blown up quickly, if I had been an overnight success story, there is no way I would have had the space and bandwidth to do this important shadow work and I’m sure I would have continued to accidentally self-sabotage on an even grander scale to even bigger consequences.
As a result of the inner work I had the space to do, as I continue to get bigger and better, I will be equipped to handle way more clients, way more audience, way more visibility, and, inevitably, exposure to way more peoples’ judgments.
#5 - I Learned To Match What I Wanted To Receive With What I Was Willing To Give Before the Imbalance Left a Major Debt
Look, I’ve got a tiny audience. My followings across my platforms are pretty small. And though I still managed to get tons of customers, and those customers became repeat customers and told their friends, for quite a while, I was really disappointed by the size of my audience.
In 2023, I started really leaning into networking. And I realized that as soon as people met me, it was really easy to sell to them. It was really easy to make friends and have them refer me to people.
I puzzled over why making connections like this seemed to flow so much more naturally to me in my offline life than my online one, even though I’m really good at digital marketing when I’m doing it for other people’s businesses.
This was the main difference: in person, I reciprocated more. Naturally, effortlessly, without even thinking about it.
It was a conversation. I listened to them. We exchanged book and podcast recommendations. I congratulated them on their wins and comforted them on their losses. When someone was looking for help, I’d refer a friend I knew could help them. Everything was a lovely, flowing, abundant exchange.
Online, I’d just been stomping onto the world internet stage, shouting a monologue, dropping the mic & peacing out. Then wondering why people weren’t following me.
Where’s the exchange in that?
In relationships, it’s bad form to ask for what you’re not willing to give in kind.
I had to learn a hard lesson about my own entitlement. Yes, my mic drops were SO GOOD and they helped the people who were listening. But most of the people listening were ones who already felt heard by me in other contexts.
Two years ago, there’s no way I would have known to give The Squad the journaling prompts I gave them yesterday:
A thought re: growing your audience: Are you GIVING as much as you're ASKING for?
🥭If you want participation, are you participating?
🥭If you want vocal appreciation, are you vocally appreciating?
🥭If you want engagement, are you engaging?
🥭If you want to be heard, are you listening to others?
🥭If you want encouragement, are you encouraging?
🥭If you want people to show up for you, are you showing up for your people?
We don't have to do this in an inauthentic way, motivated just to get people to buy. BUT I think there is something to putting out the energy we want to attract. ❤
Thank goodness I had the space to mess up like this, ponder it, and do the deep inner work it took to have this clarity that I could share with my paying customers later.
If I’d blown up overnight, they wouldn’t be getting half so much bang for their buck because I wouldn’t have these valuable experiences of learning-the-hard-way-so-you-don’t-have-to to share.
How Do You Expand Your Capacity?
So how do you grow your capacity to serve more people through your business?
My favorite way: get really good at serving the people who are already there.
Learn from the experience of showing up for them and make adjustments along the way. Evolve your business systems, self-care tools, and time management to protect your energy so that you don’t unconsciously interpret more customers and followers as a threat to your safety and well-being.
The best part? When you get really good at serving the people who are already there, growth happens organically. They tell their friends who become customers. And then they tell their friends. And so on and so forth.
Meanwhile, your experiences help you hone your messaging so that your marketing gets better and better results each time you do it.
If you could use some help and encouragement incorporating the lessons of wherever you are in your business, join The Squad 🎉.
