Episode 193 | Knowing When to Stop Growing

Welcome back this week. I wanna talk about a topic that’s been talked about a lot lately, and that’s the idea of how to know when to stop growing. It’s something that feels ambiguous because. As you grow, it just feels like there’s so much need for that. It wouldn’t be hard to continue to grow. So there isn’t this natural stopping point or place that you can get to where you feel like, yep, this is our growth has sort of kept.

And this is as big as I wanna get. It’s really this space that everyone feels like, how will I know that now is the time to stop growing? So I wanna talk a little bit about this. And there are a few things that you can think about when it comes to just initially knowing when to stop. One of the things is the idea of the law of large numbers.

The larger a business is the more, the entire business needs to work harder in order to work well. And it’s a concept that doesn’t make sense when you’re smaller. And those of you that are really large well-established group owners will know what I’m talking. There’s this assumption that the larger you get, the easier it is because your press factor for your business is established.

Clients are calling without having to do a lot of marketing. Maybe it’s easier for you to find employees to hire, but in reality, those things might all be easy, but the larger you get, just the more work, all of the cogs and the wheels need to have. In order to be successful. There’s a lot of work and people have to work a lot harder in leadership systems structures that need to be put in place and refined and made better constantly in order to be successful.

And so it’s actually a lot of work and sometimes the law of large numbers tells us, Hey, I’m getting tired. And at the size that I’m at, can’t grow anymore without being too much on all of the leaders that we have. There isn’t really a need to have more people in leadership. The second thing to think about is just market maturity.

You might have limited geographic growth. If you have a single location, there’s going to be a natural stopping point in market maturity. Unless you decide to expand into other geographic areas, or maybe you are just less willing to market new offerings. So maybe you have kept yourself on what type of offerings.

Maybe it’s just one on one therapy. Maybe you do therapy in groups. Maybe you offer therapy and psych testing and med management, but you are in a space where you’re just not willing to add new types of services or offerings to help grow your business. And if that’s happening, you’re reaching market maturity and.

Sort of making a decision that you don’t wanna expand your market into other types of services, which is totally okay. The last thing is psychological self-protection. If you’re finding yourself in a space of complacency or being apathetic, or just not wanting to take risks anymore, or you’re cutting corners, or you’re feeling disengaged in your business.

It might be signaling to you that it’s time to stop growing because you need to protect yourself psychologically. You might be getting burnt out or just be in a place where the growth phase is not causing or giving joy anymore. And when I talk about stopping growth, It’s not a forever thing. It can be right.

We might decide that we are at the growth stage that we wanna be at. We don’t wanna grow anymore, but it could also be that we just don’t wanna grow anymore right now. And maybe that, uh, psychological self-protection doesn’t need to happen in six months or a year from now when you’ve been able to rest and coast.

And it’s actually really healthy. For businesses to go through growth phases and go through rest phases. If you’re in a continuous state of growth, it’s actually really unhealthy for your business. And there’s a potential for growing too quickly for your ability and your capacity or your business’s ability, your capacity.

And so having time to coast and stop growing, even if it’s just temporarily is actually really healthy for the business. So when thinking about stopping or growing. You know, it’ll be time to stop at least temporarily, but potentially long term. If you’re not aligned with your vision anymore, if you’re not motivated or you’re feeling burnt out, if you don’t have scalable systems in place, you wanna have scalable systems in place in your business.

Before you continue to grow, you don’t wanna retroactively have to change or shift your systems to meet where your business is at size-wise. You wanna. proactive. Maybe you’ve hit a speed bump. It’s time to stop and work on that speed bump and stop growing. Maybe you’ve reached an inflection point, which is like this moment or an event that requires change before growth.

a good example of that is COVID was an inflection point, right? It was a moment. It was an event that required all of us to make a change shift. Remote work right telehealth before we could focus on actually growing our businesses anymore, or maybe you’re in a space that you’re unwilling to delegate anymore than you have.

And that it signals it’s time to stop growing. Because if you continue to grow without wanting to delegate, you were gonna get burnt out some signs that it is time for you to grow. It would be your systems are scalable. You have all the support you need in place, both in leadership and in person. Your office space maybe is not be maximized and has the space to actually grow.

There’s a community need your community is telling you by way of calls or by way of emails that they’re looking for therapists it’s in line with your vision to continue to grow. And you’ve pruned any unnecessary services that allow for your business to grow in a healthy sort of way. And that’s something we also don’t talk a lot about is the pruning of unnecessary services.

Oftentimes business owners. Add services continuously and then not look back at those services to see are they doing what they’re intended to do? Are they as successful as I want them to be? Whether it’s in revenue, whether it’s in the actual need in the community. And so sometimes pruning or getting rid of services.

It might feel like it’s a lack of growth because you’re taking away, but that pruning is similar to shrubbery and plants, right? Is when you prune, it actually allows for better growth in the areas that are the most needed in your community. So I want you to end with some self-reflection and thinking about whether are you not aligned with your vision?

Are you not motivated? Are you feeling burnt out? Do you feel like your systems are not scalable right now? Do you feel like you’re in a space where you’ve hit a speed bump that needs to be focused on, is there an inflection point at this moment that you need to be focusing on that requires change before you start to grow again?

Are you feeling like you’re unwilling to delegate anymore right at this moment? Or are you feeling like you’re ready to slow down? Think about those questions or those statements. And if you’re resonating with any of these, it might mean that it is time to stop growing at least temporarily, but potentially long term.

All right, I’ll see you next week. Thanks for listening to the group practice exchange podcast. Like what you heard. Give us five stars on whatever platform you’re listening from. Need extra. Join the exchange, a membership community just for group practice owners with monthly office hours, live webinars, and a library of training.

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