How much should your business grow? Growth, scale, and hyper-scale get used interchangeably, but they’re different goals. Growth (around 10%) might just mean keeping pace with inflation. Scale (25–100%) means covering the cost of growth itself — marketing, hiring, new systems. Hyper-scale (1,000%+) means growing fast, usually with professional investor backing.
Profit… it’s so hot right now
In case you missed the news over the summer::
- A former VC is back with the evergreen case that you shouldn’t take venture capital and why building more slowly from repeatable profits is a better approach.
- A scion of private equity told Columbia Business School students that they should start a business instead of a private equity fund.
- Then there’s the guy who wrote The Lean Startup. He’s got a new book out about why founders need to keep control and grow with non-equity sources of capital in order to maintain customer focus and avoid “corruption.”
- The head of Rivian says building quality products for consumers will finally make the company profitable. And they do need to be profitable. Huh.
Here’s the thing, though: we’ve heard this song and dance around profit before.
🔎 Read more: Bookkeeper vs. accountant vs. controller (+ other questions)
In the late ’90s, the mid-2000s, and then again the late 2010s, whenever money gets less easy to come by, high-flying “look at my unicorn, kids!” business leaders suddenly rediscover the same remixes of the same refrain:
- Do profits even matter?
- Is the best path to growth setting truckloads of money on fire in the hopes of becoming number one or two in a really big, high-potential but unproven market?
“Up next, Profit, the Greatest Hits (Remastered)!”
What does this shift mean?
Is operating profitably just an outdated vestige?
Maybe.
But if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably not chasing the last wave of AI investment in the hopes of minting yourself a billionaire.
Instead, you’ve likely spent the last year or more on your heels, getting roiled by the federal government’s never-ending chaos parade of inconsistent policies while trying to run an actual business in the middle of it.
🔎 Read more: Here’s what I do for my self-funded founder clients
So, while everyone else is busy repackaging the same lukewarm takes about profit and growth, you’re probably sitting with a much more immediate question:
How am I going to continue to grow, make profits, and respect the things that are important to me?
To answer that question, you have to answer another one first.
What do you mean when you say you want to grow?
Growth, scale, and hyper-scale are different things, but we tend to say “grow” to describe all of them.
Here’s what they actually mean:
- Growth: Maybe you want to grow 10%. That could be enough to keep your compensation ahead of inflation and cover increases in other expenses.
- Scale: Maybe you want to grow 25% or 30% or even 100%, which might mean covering the cost of growth itself: more marketing, another employee, debt service, new systems, or other investments you need to make before the revenue shows up.
- Hyper-scale: Or maybe you want to grow 1,000%, which means you’re trying to get really big, really fast. This approach usually comes with professional investors.
As I’ve talked about before, quantifying what “enough” growth looks like for you is a personal decision.
🔎 Read more: How to build a values-based business without compromising growth
That means figuring out:
- How much do you actually want to grow?
- How much investment will that take?
- Are you willing to have negative cash flow for a period of time to get there?
- Are you willing to borrow money?
Saying “I want to grow next year” without knowing what that means doesn’t give you enough to go on. And because “growth” means different things to different people, you might walk into your 2027 planning with 10% in mind, only to find your team has concocted a two-year plan to 5X the company.
But as the founder, you have to look at what growth will really ask of your business:
- What customers, products, and activities will achieve your desired growth levels next year?
- How does your marketing need to change to support that?
- Does that revenue growth contribute toward covering your overhead?
- Does this break any of our non-negotiable pillars?
🔎 Read more: Do you have a messaging problem or a business problem?
For perspective, growing about 30-35% per year as a privately funded company lands you solidly on the Inc. 5000. (For 2026, ANC Group nabbed the 5,000th spot with 12% growth over 3 years.) If you ultimately decide your goal is to outpace inflation, that’s also perfectly fine.
But if you’re not growing, here’s what you should do
That said, if your revenue is staying mostly flat and you don’t plan a growth push in the near future, I would advise you to shift strategically to leaner operations:
- Where can the business become more efficient?
- Where have you been investing in growth, that can now be shifted to maintenance?
- Are there cash leaks you need to address sooner rather than later?
- Do you know the health of your current pipeline?
- Do you have a schedule for checking in with current customers?
- Do you have a right-sized marketing plan?
- Are you conducting monthly and quarterly business reviews?
I would also be careful with debt.
By no means am I anti-debt. I’m taking robust advantage of all the rights afforded to me by 1974’s Equal Credit Opportunity Act and 1988’s Women Business Ownership Act. Borrowing money doesn’t get you kicked out of the “self-funded”/”Built Not Bought” founder club.
🔎 Read more: How to run a quarterly business review (QBR) that works
However, when you’re not growing, it becomes harder to have the cash flow to pay back your borrowing. If you’re using credit or loans to cover operating costs, and it’s not increasing efficiency or profitability, you’re creating a problem for yourself.
Don’t worry too much about the Unicorn Heads
Sure, they’ve got great rainbow hair and a few nuggets of wisdom tucked away somewhere. This “unprecedented” decade has likely forced all of us who run companies to rethink how we do business at least once, and they’re no exception.
Still, your relationship with growth and profit is yours to define.
With clear eyes and a plan, of course.
So as you look ahead to 2027, yes, ask yourself:
- How much do I want to grow?
- What will it take to get there?
But also consider whether the version of your business required to hit that number respects the things that are important to you. You’re still the one who has to run this thing when 2027 actually gets here.
