Don't Grow with Your Customers
Rework is a great book as it influence the values I want to have in my business.
One of those values in Rework is: Don’t grow with your customers. Your customers will grow and need more - celebrate that. Don’t grow with their needs.
This makes a lot of sense - because when you grow with your customers, you essentially become part of their business. You start to solve the problems they have - whether you want to or not!
Why?
When that customer fails, your business also fails! Your business starts depending on their success and failure.
On the flip side, this forces you, as a business owner, to decide what kind of customers you want - how big are they? Until when will you support them?
In essence: set good boundaries between your business and your clients’ business.
There’s two sides to this - you may lose out on more money because of a customer’s success AND you may have to decide your future on your own terms.
Right now, I am tending towards not growing with customers - setting a limit on how big a customer can be and when they are larger than that, letting them find better solutions for their needs.
There’s other things to worry about in the business and other customers that I also want to help.