Stair stepper businesses 🧱⬆️ - Ben's 1x1x1 - December 6, 2024 🚀
For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
One thought from my week. One interesting find/tool from my week. One image from my life.
Let’s dive in 👇
Thought from the week
Stair stepper businesses.
Just like all of us unique flowers, businesses grow in lots of different patterns.
Large companies grow like this.
Venture backed businesses grow like this.
Bad businesses be like…
But my favorite is the bootstrapped business. Bootstrapped businesses grow in a stair stepper fashion.
I say stair stepper because there usually isn’t a linear path of growth. I’ll give you an example:
You need more sales, so you hire a salesperson. Great! Now you’re drowning in orders, so you scramble to fix operations. Cool, but now your ops cost too much, so you need even more sales. On and on it goes, step by step.
This can be really discouraging to a first time founder, but stair stepping is really common and also healthy.
The light at the end of the tunnel? Once you get through your first few waves of stair stepping, the stairs get shorter and a solid growth arc starts to occur as the business becomes its own living organism.
This is the goal state. What you push for because once you reach that tipping point, the business really starts to scale.
So if you’re in the stair stepper phase, keep climbing. You’re doing the right things, facing the right challenges, and the stairs will only get shorter with good execution.
PS - All those pieces of art work I drew are for sale. Just reach out ;)
Interesting find/tool of the week
Had coffee with another founder, and they wouldn’t stop raving about Die With Zero. So I finally cracked it open. It’s basically the financial equivalent of YOLO—but with spreadsheets.
The book flips the whole ‘save every penny for retirement’ mantra on its head, and now I’m spiraling about my estimated lifespan. Ran the numbers, and I’m clocking in at 85. Not great Bob! Time to either live faster or eat more kale. Probably both.
Image from my life
We’ve been enjoying some epic early season conditions in the mountains!