The power of thinking (small)

Hey Hustla’,

I’ve been seeing a lot of “you’re thinking too small” and “think bigger” posts lately. This is a common occurrence around the time people attend a lot of conferences and is a GUARANTEED sentiment if and when you visit New York City. You’ll come out of there like Superman comes out of the phone booth.

But, as with anything, there is flip side. There are some traps to thinking only bigger.

Fact is a lot of the growth of your business or career is not up to you. Market forces, recessions, and industry trends are far more powerful than you anything you can do in your business.

Growth is almost never linear. The ‘hockey stick’ Silicon Valley likes to brag about is an anomaly. Take a look at the actual revenue chart from one of my companies:

In 2019 and 2023 (and this year for that matter) this business is/was in a clear recession. We haven’t changed a thing, in fact, if anything we’re getting smarter about our business. But consumer spending is way down in our industry.

In these years you have to think SMALL. You have comb the credit card statement and get rid of unneeded expenses. You have to cut back on personnel sometimes. You need to focus on the tiniest details of your customer interactions to keep them coming back.

Going hammer down on marketing and growth and thinking ‘big’ will bankrupt you.

Thinking big has created a business nightmare for a friend of ours. He built a $50 million company on the back of Facebook ads. But Facebook’s marketing costs have exploded while results have tanked. He’s back down under $10 million and probably cutting inventory, staff and office and warehouse space like crazy.

He started off small, like we did, by doing simple DTC marketing through email. But that wasn’t big enough.

You think he’s thinking big right now? No, he’s wondering how he’s going to make payroll next week.

Thinking big is also dangerous when you’re starting. I have coached countless people who have million dollar dreams before they’ve sold a single thing. They built the thing to be so big and complex - before they ever had any customers - that it was too unwieldy to manage before they even started.

They had designers, patent attorneys, distributors, manufacturers, marketing agencies, and much more “lined up”, whatever that means. They forgot to start small. Sell a thing. Get feedback. Make it better. Sell a few more. Make it better. Repeat.

Big got in the way of small. So nothing happened.

We started all our big businesses by doing something small. We started small in new marketing channels. The good ones grew to be big. The bad ones died. We survived because we made SMALL bets.

So next time you’re stuck, next time you can’t start, next time the big dreams seem to be dying, pay small a visit.

Have a great weekend y’all ✌️

Car Wash Guy Kriss