Did you know that 70% of fast-growing companies fail within their first decade? The statistic becomes even more sobering when you consider that many of these failures aren’t due to lack of opportunity or market demand—they’re the result of pursuing growth at any cost. I recently witnessed a serial entrepreneur, someone who had built and sold multiple companies, nearly watch their latest venture crumble under the weight of unsustainable expansion. Their story serves as a powerful reminder that in the race to scale quickly, we often forget to ask the most critical question: are we building something that can actually last? For small and medium business owners, this lesson couldn’t be more relevant in today’s growth-obsessed business climate.
The Growth Trap That’s Claiming SME Victims
The entrepreneur I observed had all the right credentials—previous exits, investor connections, and an impressive track record. Yet when I watched their latest company teeter on the edge of collapse, it wasn’t due to external market forces or competitive pressure. Instead, they had fallen victim to what I call the “growth trap”—the dangerous assumption that rapid expansion equals business success. They had scaled their team from 12 to 45 employees in eight months, opened three new locations, and diversified their product line, all while their core operations were still finding their footing.
For SME owners, this scenario probably sounds familiar. The pressure to grow quickly is everywhere—from investors demanding hockey stick projections to competitors seemingly racing ahead. But here’s what that entrepreneur learned the hard way: growth without foundation is just expensive chaos. Their customer satisfaction scores plummeted as quality control suffered. Their cash flow became a rollercoaster as they struggled to manage increased complexity. Most critically, they lost sight of what made their business valuable in the first place. Ask yourself: when did you last evaluate whether your growth initiatives are strengthening or weakening your core value proposition?
Building Worth Over Scale: The Sustainable Advantage
The turning point came when this founder was forced to make brutal cuts—laying off 60% of their workforce and closing two locations they had opened just months earlier. In the aftermath, something remarkable happened. With a smaller, more focused team, they rediscovered what made their business special. Customer satisfaction rebounded. Profit margins improved. Team morale, surprisingly, soared as everyone understood their role and impact again.
This experience illuminates a crucial distinction for SME leaders: there’s a fundamental difference between building something big and building something worthwhile. Consider a local manufacturing company I work with that deliberately chose to turn down a major contract that would have doubled their revenue overnight. Why? Because taking on that work would have required them to compromise on their quality standards and overwhelm their proven systems. Instead, they focused on optimizing their current operations, improving their processes, and deepening relationships with existing clients. The result? They’ve grown 35% year-over-year for three consecutive years, maintained their reputation for excellence, and built a business that competitors consistently try to poach employees from. Which scenario sounds more appealing: frantic scaling that might collapse, or steady building that compounds over time?
The Framework for Meaningful Growth
So how do you distinguish between worthwhile growth and growth for growth’s sake? Start with what I call the “Foundation Test.” Before pursuing any expansion opportunity, ask three questions: Does this strengthen our core competency? Will this improve the experience for our best customers? Can we execute this excellently with our current systems and culture? If you can’t answer yes to all three, you’re probably looking at growth that will weaken rather than strengthen your business.
Take the example of a regional marketing agency that was offered the chance to expand into web development services. On paper, it made sense—existing clients were asking for it, and it would increase revenue per client. But when they applied the Foundation Test, they realized web development required completely different talent, systems, and quality metrics. Instead of diversifying, they deepened their marketing expertise, developing specialized knowledge in healthcare marketing. This focus allowed them to command premium pricing, attract top talent who wanted to specialize, and build a reputation that generates referrals without any business development effort. They grew, but they grew in a direction that made them more valuable, not just bigger.
Practical Steps for Worth-Centered Growth
The shift from growth-focused to worth-focused thinking requires practical changes in how you evaluate opportunities and measure success. Start by establishing what I call “strength metrics”—measurements that reflect the health and sustainability of your business rather than just its size. These might include customer retention rates, employee tenure, profit per customer, or the percentage of business that comes from referrals. Track these alongside traditional growth metrics, and give them equal weight in your decision-making.
Create a simple decision-making filter for opportunities: will this make us better at what we’re already great at, or will it distract us from our core strengths? Implement quarterly “foundation reviews” where you assess not just what you’ve grown, but what you’ve strengthened. Most importantly, build a culture that celebrates depth over breadth, quality over quantity, and sustainable progress over rapid expansion.
Your Next Move Toward Sustainable Success
The businesses that thrive over decades aren’t necessarily those that grew the fastest—they’re the ones that grew most thoughtfully. They built something worth keeping, worth working for, and worth customers’ loyalty. As you look ahead at your growth opportunities, remember that every expansion decision is also a choice about what kind of business you want to become.
This week, I challenge you to audit your current growth initiatives through the lens of worth rather than scale. Identify which activities are making you genuinely stronger versus simply bigger. The entrepreneur whose near-failure taught me this lesson has since rebuilt their company—smaller than it once was, but more profitable, more focused, and more sustainable than ever before. They discovered that the real measure of business success isn’t how quickly you can grow, but whether you’re building something that will still matter years from now. What will you choose to build?