1-Minute Thought: Robert Herjavec Changed My Mind About Scaling And Growth

Scaling and Growth are two different things. Here's why...

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Recently, as is my usual habit before I start reading or writing or before I go to bed, I was watching YouTube videos and shorts about entrepreneurship, business, leadership, innovation, technology, marketing, writing, and all the other boring stuff people like us watch on YouTube (cat and dog videos, game videos, and funny stuff). I stumbled upon one of Shark Tank's most iconic characters, Robert Herjavec.

While binge-watching his videos and shorts, I came across a clip where he discussed scaling and growth.

Here are his exact words:

"People talk a lot about scale. That word always makes me nervous. When I was smaller. And I don't mean like really small. I mean, when our business was 50 million, 100 million, 300 million, we never sat around and talked about scale. We talked about growth. We had a vision, but we talked about getting to the next plateau. Business and what you find as you grow is you grow in stages. You don't take massive leaps. You grow in stages, and every time you hit a new plateau, guess what? You've new problems, and you have new expectations. It's kind of like you climb a mountain, and you get to the top, and you look around and say, wow, this is really good. It was a great journey, but then you look at the horizon and see a bunch of other mountains. My worry about scale is if you build scale and systems too quickly when you are a small business, you're going to use resources like cash for something that may not happen for a long time. So, it's a fine balance."

Robert's perspective on scaling had a profound impact on my understanding of business growth.

I used to think that businesses should be concerned about scaling. But after listening to Robert, I realized that it's not about scale but steady growth—one step at a time. As a growing business, your goal should not be to scale, but to grow.

I found this post to be an insightful read if you want to learn more about growth and scale, I recommend checking it out here.

What are your thoughts? (leave your thoughts in the comment section. I want to learn from you and someone might learn something from you).

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I have started sharing 1-minute thoughts on innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship, business, growth, personal development, productivity, interesting ideas, facts, or even an argument or POV—this is the first one.

The goal is to condense an interesting thought into a 1-minute read (about 350 words) for my readers (and anyone) to quickly read and absorb the core idea/thought, and I also share link(s) for further reading to content I have read myself.