Beth Ewen:
bewen@upsizemag.com
dev.divistack.com
Zen moment
by Beth Ewen
“I feel kind of guilty,” said Stacy Anderson, the founder of Earth Wizards Inc., when meeting with Upsize Growth Challenge participants in October to report her company’s results.
Guilty? But why? I asked. It’s because she felt at peace with her business, for the first time in a long time. And she thought instead she should be charging and striving and growing like she usually is.
When Anderson met with Upsize in July, she detailed a number of ambitious and varied plans. She expressed worries about her liability in employing people who drive heavy machinery all over town. She wondered if she should stick to consulting and designing rather than installing complicated asphalt projects that make up 50 percent of her revenue.
But then she spent three months doing the homework prescribed by the Upsize Growth Challenge experts. She put specific numbers and cash flow projections to various business ideas. What would the company look like if she did this? What would happen to revenue and profits if she did that?
She listened to feedback from employees, customers and trusted advisers such as her long-time banker, and realized how much she relied on her seasoned and accomplished staff, her loyal and intelligent customers, and her insightful and encouraging advisers. She hadn’t paused to consider their crucial contributions in a while.
Isn’t that the way business goes? As owners we’re rushing and striving and ducking and dodging and growing and scheming and surviving and changing. The metaphors demand it: “Go big or go home,” business owners like to say.” “If you’re not changing you’re dying.” “Swim with the sharks.”
No one says, “Be at peace with your business. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhm.”
But that’s where Anderson wound up, and she discovered she thoroughly enjoyed the feeling. “What the business has become – it’s perfect. We’re uniquely positioned,” she said, speaking at the second workshop in October. In the daily scrum of running a company, “you don’t even realize that you’re where you need to be. I just need to revel in it.”
Of course Anderson is not standing still. But instead of chasing a new business model or launching an expensive new idea, she’s focusing her energies on internal, incremental improvements to her existing, successful company. And she’s taking some time to thank those people who helped her build it to date and who will help her take it to the next level.
