Businesses That Grow Better

Kyle Jepson
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read
There’s more than one way to think about growth

I’m always a little torn when my four-year-old asks me to read The Lorax to him. I mean, I’m an environmentalist at heart, so I love the story’s message of caring for the earth and all the critters on it. It’s the villain that bothers me. He’s called The Once-ler, and he’s an entrepreneur with an insatiable hunger for business growth:

I meant no harm. I most truly did not.

But I had to get bigger. So bigger I got.

I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.

I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads

of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth

to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North!

I went right on biggering… selling more Thneeds.

And I biggered my money, which everyone needs.

Even though I’m an environmentalist, I’m also a capitalist. And I don’t think there should have to be a trade-off between economic growth and environmental responsibility.

In fact, I’d say “responsible growth” is the only kind of growth there is. By the end of The Lorax, the Once-ler has fully exhausted the natural resources he uses to make his Thneeds, and so he’s forced to close up shop and go out of business. That’s failure by any measure, no matter how much money he made along the way.

Just like the Once-ler was accruing an environmental debt that would inescapably come due, a lot of companies accrue social and moral debts that they will have to pay for eventually.

But that isn’t the only way to grow. It’s just the most famous.

My employer is on a mission to help millions of companies grow better. They’ve even made a little video to explain the concept:

And this isn’t some hippie nonsense being spouted by a head-in-the-clouds tech company (or at least it isn’t just that). There are lots of companies that are growing better right now.

Here are some just off the top of my head:

  • River Pools and Spas — Made famous by Marcus Sheridan, River Pools and Spas went from an unknown local business to the world’s #1 seller of fiberglass swimming pools. How? By fearlessly answering the questions their customers were asking. Even if the questions were uncomfortable (How Much Do Fiberglass Pools Cost?) or embarrassing (Do Fiberglass Pools Pop Out of the Ground?). By talking about the things every other swimming pool company were afraid to talk about, they won the trust of their market, and that trust fed their financial success.
  • LovePop — The greeting card company co-founded by Wombi Rose and John Wise is deeply invested in the happiness of their customers. In fact, they have a Customer Happiness team. You might expect the greeting card industry to be transactional and impersonal, but LovePop is proving that eCommerce can be human, helpful, and fun.
  • Globalization Partners — If you’ve ever thought that a business has to be a soul-sucking dollar factory in order to grow, let Nicole Sahin prove you wrong. She founded Globalization Partners with a two-part mission. The first is obvious: to help their clients expand globally. The second you might not know unless you’ve met someone from the team, but it’s to prove that “corporate life doesn’t have to suck.” And apparently she’s right because Globalization Partners has repeatedly made Inc’s list of fastest growing companies in America.
  • Belgian Boys — If you’ve been on a Jet Blue flight recently, you probably saw some mustache-shaped cookies. Those cookies aren’t just cheap in-flight entertainment — they’re a social media campaign that donates to charity. This is my favorite Grow Better play of all. Though it remains to be seen how effective it’ll be, I have high hopes for it. It’s good for the customer because they get to post funny pictures online while donating to their favorite charity. It’s good for the world because charities are receiving donations. And it’s good for Belgian Boys because they’re getting cool exposure online. Win-win-win — the best sort of growth.

So throw out your old notions of reckless biggering and instead start thinking of ways that you and your company can grow better.

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