That's Not Growth

Nothing goes out the door until you've looked at it, and your customers can tell. Episode five closes the owner dependence arc with the version that feels the most like a virtue: the owner as the standard. John Oestreich looks at what it costs when the quality customers are paying for is a person's eye instead of a company's system, and why you can't find out how much they'd miss you until you leave.

Every line of credit, every bond, every equipment note has your name on it personally, and you've stopped thinking about that as anything but normal. Episode four of the owner dependence arc is about why the business keeps needing you to stand behind it, what that says about how cash moves through the company, and why the guarantee is the symptom, not the problem.

You can price a job in your head faster than your best estimator can open the spreadsheet, and that is exactly the problem. Episode three of the owner dependence arc is about the knowledge that never got written down, why it feels like expertise instead of a gap, and what it does to a business that's trying to get past five million.

Your three biggest customers ask for you by name, and you take it as a compliment. In episode two of the owner dependence arc, John Oestreich looks at what it means when the relationships that keep the lights on belong to a person instead of a company, why that feels like strength right up until it isn't, and what someone outside the business sees when they look at your customer list.

If every approval, every price, and every hard customer call still lands on your desk, the business has a ceiling, and it is exactly the size of your calendar. In the first episode of That's Not Growth, John Oestreich of 37 Business Planning names the most felt and least understood of the eight growth gaps, takes apart the reason owners give for staying in the middle of everything, and walks through the thirty-day test that shows you what your business is actually made of.

Most owners of businesses between $2M and $50M are told the answer to every problem is growth. Growth isn't the goal. A business that gives you options is.

In this 90-second introduction, John Oestreich of 37 Business Planning explains what the show does: one thing per episode, what it feels like from where you sit, why the story you tell yourself used to be true, where it lives in the business, and what it's costing you. New episode every week.