If you’ve ever offered—or purchased—something from an exclusively curated collection, you believe in the power of small. Grasp that power for yourself.
Artisanal: produced in limited quantities by an artisan through the use of traditional methods.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The Allure of Unfettered Growth for Growth’s Sake
I have been thinking about Jeff Bezos a lot lately.
When I was a student pursuing my master’s in entrepreneurship in 2005, we were assigned to read Amazon.com – Get Big Fast: Inside the Revolutionary Model that Changed the World. The book detailed Amazon’s emergence as an e-commerce powerhouse fueled by Jeff Bezos’ slogan “Get Big Fast.” Bezos knew that size was essential in obtaining deep discounts from suppliers.
We all know that Bezos went on to create a global phenomenon. Amazon generated over $513 billion dollars in revenue in 2022.
Current-day cultural lore—especially business lore—is filled with Bezos-like messages of the need to scale to create ever-larger enterprises with eye-popping revenue, and to reach dizzying heights with social media “likes,” “downloads,” and “views.” To build bigger and faster.
It is supremely easy to get sucked into that vortex.
If we become intoxicated by chasing growth for growth’s sake, we can find that placing our focus on an external world of validation and approval is a hollow pursuit. We can make ourselves miserable in this never-ending quest that erodes our ability to lead our teams well, generate new ideas, problem-solve, create with passion, and connect with our customers.
Of course, we want our ventures to be profitable, our messages and offerings to have a wide reach, and our impact to be enduring. How, then, do we find a balance that places us on a much more humane, healthy, and happy path that provides steady success?
I’m wondering if a counter-intuitive stance of embracing the power of small is the answer.
Discovering the Power of Small
What does it mean to open ourselves to the power of small? Think: Small, doable goals. Small teams that are highly curated, well-loved, and well-led by an owner who is refreshed, calm, and able to hear herself think. Small batches of offerings that are crystal clear with marketing messaging that is so articulate and resonant that programs, retreats, and products routinely sell out.
What the Power of Small Entails:
- Baking future demand into creating things and experiences of such astounding quality that word of mouth becomes an unstoppable engine of organic sales.
- A focus on delighting our customers in surprising ways, ensuring their time with us was one that made all the difference in their lives.
- Reconnecting with our true selves.
- Returning to the Art of Us and our craft.
- Becoming an artisan of our enterprise.
What this Means for Our Growth:
- We scale in accordance with who we are, rather than who we think we’re expected to be.
- Our offerings remain curated and artisanal; special.
- We find it easier to remain productive, as we’re in alignment with ourselves and our customers.
Highly-designed lives and businesses are ones of clear intention. We begin and end by remembering what brings us alive and why we are so eager to share it with others.
It is there, in that desire to invite a community of fellow explorers to sit around our hearth, that we find the ultimate market fit and success while staying entirely in the flow with who we truly are.
At its most true, the power of small is the power of us. We propel ourselves forward into growth for the sake of artistry, joy, and the kind of success that only we have the power to bring about.
