Why
the Best Growth Move for Your Small Business Right Now May Be to Stop Expanding
Hunkering down and holding on tight to
what you have is often the best way to survive a hurricane.
BY Howard Tullman
Nov 3, 2026
I spoke recently to a
select group of small business owners and operators with revenues under $10
million who were looking for suggestions and some guidance on how they should
grow their businesses in the next 18 to 24 months. I think that many of them expected
an aggressive endorsement of rapid expansion and a host of tips on how to
quickly and cost-effectively pull off that modest miracle. These are anxious
times for all of us and entrepreneurs clearly have a bias for action,
especially as a cure for anxiety. They clearly believe that doing anything is
far better than doing nothing. And they feel that to reach the next level, they
need to add people, structure and additional resources to their companies to
support the growth that they’re hoping is just around the corner. The truth is
that hope is a lousy strategy. You get what you work for, not what you wish
for.
Today, the best way to
secure and save the business that you currently have may be to slow down. Having lived and suffered through the
pandemic with dozens of businesses; having endured the ups-and-downs of more
bubbles than I care to recall; and facing the next two years with the likely
prospect that the political and economic situation will be even more abrupt,
uncertain, irrational and inconsistent given our demented, immoral and corrupt
government, I just didn’t have the heart to urge them on to greater heights,
more serious commitments and expenditures, and larger challenges at this point.
And while I have often
said that you can’t save your way to success and that the greatest opportunities for market expansion
are often found in the worst of times, I believe that we as entrepreneurs and
new business builders in a country that’s been roughly turned upside down may
have never faced such an unclear, risky and perilous time. I’m not sure right
now that any of us is looking for more change or disruption. Hunkering down and
holding on tight to what you have is often the best way to survive a hurricane.
And actually, at the
moment, there are plenty of things that you can do which will be additive and
productive for your business but racing off in some direction just for the sake
of keeping busy isn’t one of them. Busy-ness isn’t good business. So, here are
a few rules and suggestions about what not to do to help save you and your
business from yourself and your best/worst instincts.
Go deep, not wide
Understand that the
lowest-hanging fruit and the most likely avenues for additional revenues are
your existing customers. Don’t take them for granted and don’t assume that
there’s not more money to be found and extracted. Even your best salespeople
tend to be looking for the next sale rather than securing and building on
current relationships, using their present knowledge of and connections to
their customers to offer further products and services responsive to their
particular needs, and actively operating to grow with their users and clients
rather than having them go elsewhere when their needs and requirements change.
Conquest marketing is
expensive, land and expand efforts are right in front of you.
Make sure the whole team
is telling the same simple story
Stick to your knitting
and make sure that your people aren’t overpromising, changing the basic terms
and conditions of delivery, or—worst of all—trying to customize your offerings
to close a sale and ending up committing to some unique and bespoke and costly
version of your product or service. Complexity is the enemy of execution. You
can tell when a startup has begun to mature and
that’s when every sale doesn’t have to be completed and closed by the CEO. Your company will never scale successfully if every deal
is a one-off variation. Focus, do a few things really well, and don’t be
tempted to change your program to suit someone who may not even be a serious
prospect. Save me time or money, make me more productive, or help me make
better decisions and I’ll love you forever. Nothing else really matters.
Don’t try to do things
cheaply that you shouldn’t do at all
The best business
builders that I know say “No” all day long to all kinds of offers, invitations,
tempting shortcuts, and cosmetic changes which might even make folks feel
better in the short run, but which are painful and costly deflections which can
cripple your company down the road. You don’t want to get a reputation—inside
or outside your walls—for compromising, cutting corners, settling for less than
you should, or doing a halfway job. Don’t waste your team’s time and resources
by saying “Maybe” when you know you want to say “No.” “No” is a complete
sentence and doesn’t require explanations, excuses, or made-up justifications.
It’s easy when cash is tight and the choices are complicated to try putting
lipstick on a pig. But the pig still looks like a pig, and you look like an
idiot.
Use A.I. tools to
streamline and improve your processes and to augment, not eliminate, your
people
In case it’s not
obvious, to date, we have seen almost no increases in productivity or
reductions in headcount in the vast majority of U.S. businesses because every
competent management team has concluded that you still need a human link in any
and every A.I. decision and implementation chain unless you want some random or
rogue machine to blow up your business or blow off your customers. Use A.I.
tools to help your people get better and smarter about what they’re doing
instead of thinking that you’re going to get rid of some of them because you
spent a lot of time and money building your team, they’re experienced and
loyal, and they know a great deal about the nuts and bolts of your operations.
Putting A.I. beside talented people with substantial domain expertise is the
way to produce the best results for now.
Don’t fall for the
warehousing fallacy – Don’t hire for the future now
Yes, sometime in the
future, if and when your business grows, you’ll need some HR help, you’ll need
to grow your back office, you’ll definitely need to get some additional tech
talent and you might even need a strong CFO to tell you to your face that what
you’re planning to do and spend money on makes no sense. Every good business
needs both an accelerator and a brake. But you don’t need to hire now for the
future even if you are seeing terrifically talented people walking around.
Entrepreneurs think that they can hire good people and then find important work
for them to do—I call this the warehousing fallacy—and it almost always results
in costly failures. Not just in dollars and cents, but also in company morale
and momentum, and in damage to the culture of trust and loyalty that you’re
trying to build. Lateral hires are really hard—startup cultures are both more
fragile and more resistant to change than anyone imagines. And having expensive
people sitting around on the sidelines while everyone’s waiting for the company
to really need their talents and services is a bad bet for all concerned. In
many cases, those very people leave of their own volition because they see
better and more immediate opportunities elsewhere. Try to grow your own talent
before you start looking elsewhere.
