What a couple of weeks I’ve had! Since I got back from California, I’ve been pretty well focused on what we need to do with the company moving forward. We had a game plan set running through February 2015. Unfortunately, through our rapid company growth, I’ve made some errors in judgment. (Note: I’m not passing the buck on this to anyone else – as the CEO, ultimately everything falls back on me.) Growing pains are not uncommon, I know. It just stinks when you hit them. It stinks even worse when you realize that you’re moving to a place where you’re risking no longer being happy with the work you do.
The past several days have been about a major regrouping – both for me personally as well as our plans for the company moving forward. A lot of tough decisions had to be made. A lot of decisions that make sense for me, Steve, our team, our clients and the company as a whole.
16 months ago when we started what we are doing now, I had the idea in my head of “let’s see how far we can take this and let’s not ever put the brakes on growth.” I’m a big advocate of keeping a slim to-do list in a business. But the 2 things (growth and keeping a pared down to-do list) are mutually exclusive at a certain point – unless I want to continue to hire a bunch of people at higher levels.
Some lessons learned through this (and yes, nothing I didn’t know but knowing and acting in accordance with knowledge all the time is a flaw most of us have):
1) Continued growth isn’t always the answer and to deal with it, the infrastructure really has to be in place.
2) I need to make sure to have backups for backups for everything in place – and if it’s not financially feasible, then I shouldn’t move forward with plans.
3) When dealing with rapid growth, having a long timeline planned out is not a good idea because inevitably enough of things will happen to throw plans out the window. Instead, focusing on the end picture of where I want us to end up and the next few steps seems like a safer plan.
4) Before bringing new people onto the team moving forward, everything has to be ready for them.
My plate is still pretty damn full but it’s now full with things that will provide stability and a lot less stress – at least I think. 🙂
