You Can’t Afford Not to Grow Your Creative Business: Why Growth is Essential for Long-Term Success
Running a creative business is more than just a passion project; for many of us, it’s a calling. A vocation even. You’re not in it for fortune, nor even freedom. You do it because you can’t not.
Some creative entrepreneurs embrace expansion, eager to scale their impact, reputation, and revenue. Others hesitate, worried that growth will dilute their creative vision or introduce overwhelming complexities (it will by the way).
Everyone knows that I’m all about growth; I’m not shy about it. But people often misunderstand all the types of growth that are available to us. To me, growth isn’t synonymous with “make more money;” there are lots of ways to do it (here are 15 that have nothing to do with revenue, in fact).
Today, I want to pose a point of view of why you should pursue growth, in some form. And I don’t want you to take it from me. I want you to hear the wisdom of our beloved Julia Jaksic of Café Roze and Roze Pony:
If you want long-term success and a top-performing team, you can’t afford not to grow your business. Stars are looking for growth. Top talent wants to work for a business, where they can grow.
Growth isn’t just about making more money (in fact, you will make less before you make more). It’s about ensuring that your business, your employees, and your career have a future.
The Case Against Growth: Why Some Creative Businesses Resist Scaling
Many creative business owners hesitate to grow because they fear:
- Loss of Creative Control: They worry that expanding means sacrificing quality or originality.
- Financial Risk: Hiring, inventory, rent, and larger operations come with higher expenses. (It’s true).
- Management Responsibilities: More employees and customers mean more processes and less time for creative work. (Again, this is true – but only for a period of time).
- Burnout: The bigger the business, the heavier the weight of responsibility. When it’s not managed proactively and carefully, your well-being can pay a price.
These concerns are valid. Growth done poorly or too quickly creates chaos and overwhelm. But staying small also has risks—stagnation, disengagement, and limited career paths for you and your team. And please note my mention of your career. A limited career path for you, the owner, is a thing too.
The Case for Growth: Why It’s Essential for Long-Term Success
1. Growth Creates Career Paths
If your business stays the same year after year, your team will outgrow it. I’d even go so far to say: if your business is growing, a little bit of churn is a sign of a healthy creative business. Not everyone wants to or has the capacity to grow in the way your business may require. Being on the same page about that, to make room for new talent with new skills is a win-win.
Growth-minded employees crave the opportunity to develop their skills, take on new challenges, and advance in their careers. Truly talented people seek learning pits. Without growth, they may leave for opportunities elsewhere, forcing you into an exhausting cycle of hiring and training new staff.
Likewise, as the Small Business CEO, you need career growth too. Personally, I spent a lot of time thinking about this in 2024: what’s my next phase of professional development? I have a responsibility to keep myself sharp, evolving, and seeing my own career through the telescope. Evolving my own role and stepping “up” in the business creates opportunities for others.
2. Growth Fuels Engagement and Innovation
When a business isn’t growing, it’s easy for operations to become stale. A lack of new goals and challenges leads to disengagement for you, your employees, and your clients. Growth encourages:
- Fresh ideas and creative problem-solving,
- Exciting opportunities for your team to develop new skills and own follow-through of their ideas, and
- A dynamic workplace culture that keeps people motivated.
A couple weeks ago, a client asked me something to the tune of: “Will I have to push this hard forever?”
Now, you must know: this person is remarkably growth oriented. Like… remarkably. In his case, I told him: it’d really be up to him. He doesn’t need to push as hard as he has this past year, forever. That could certainly lead to burnout.
BUT – to truly play the long-game in business, you can’t ever fully rest in cruise control. The market won’t allow it. You have to remain vigilant, constantly seeking opportunities to win – whether on offense or defense. They don’t always have to be Superbowl-style plays; but yes, you must remain vigilant. And that means growing in some way, year after year.
3. Growth Increases Your Impact, Longevity, & Legacy
Creative entrepreneurs often start businesses because they want to share their vision with the world. Growth allows your ripples to have a further-reaching effect on the world around – and beyond – you.
Growth is the fuel that allows you to reach more customers, launch new products, expand into new markets, and create healthy and creative livelihoods for more vendors, contractors, and employees.
How to Grow Without Losing Your Uniqueness
If the idea of growth feels overwhelming, start small. Here’s how Ellevated Outcomes helps creative business owners expand sustainably, while staying true to your creative vision:
1. Stabilize. Not every creative business is in chaos when they come to us, but some are. If things feel overwhelming and out of control, there are likely two places to start (depending on the size of your business): Product & Pricing or People.
2. Optimize. If you’re not in overwhelm state, hooray! There’s good news and bad news (but mostly good news): there’s still lots of work to do, to get you ready for growth.
Once again, I’d direct you to Product & Pricing. We have literally never seen a business that didn’t have more “juice” to squeeze in this category. It’s the reason whyl Product & Pricing is the foundation of our Ellevated Outcomes FrameworkTM. If you have cracks in your foundation, you won’t get the best bang for your buck.
After Product & Pricing, you should build your operations and systems. You need a system for everything: Marketing & Business Development, Processes, Financials…
3. Grow. Now, you’re ready to add fuel to your fire, in the most efficient and effective way possible. This fuel will be mainly in the forms of the aforementioned Marketing & Business Development and People.
And don’t get me wrong; these 3 steps aren’t going to happen in a perfectly linear process. For those who are really incentivized to grow, you’ll be planning, testing, implementing and back around, simultaneously.
Growth Isn’t Optional. It’s the Path to Long-Term Success.
Staying small might seem like the “safe” route; but in reality, it can lead to stagnation, disengagement, and financial instability. To keep yourself and your team engaged for the long haul, your business must evolve.
Growth doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity or authenticity; it means ensuring that your creative business thrives for years to come. It means ensuring that your creativity thrives for years to come.
Having and growing a creative business isn’t a zero-sum game. You don’t have to choose between business and creativity. Afterall, it was the great Andy Warhol who said:
Business is the most fascinating kind of art.
