Growing Business by Joseph H

Last year in December I wrote:

“One thing that I hated about the company was that we were always focusing on sales.  We didn’t focus enough on having fun, creating a great company, product and service.  We focused on the sales but we didn’t focus on whether our customer’s loved our product and company.  At this cafe I made an agreement with myself that I would completely dedicate myself to the company again, only if I was having fun.  If I decided I was no longer having fun, I would sell the company.”

I can’t say that things have been perfect this year, but I am really and truly enjoying myself.  Everyday we are getting better at doing what we do which is manufacture custom products.  The quality of our product is continuously improving, our service is improving, and our processes are getting better.

Our company grew 50% last year.  We will grow between 50% to 100% this year.  The company employs over 70 people.  We are attracting really great people to work with us.  And our team that is actually growing at the fastest rate is our US team.

These past few months have been extremely tiring, and I don’t have any time to rest.  But its the exhilarating sort of busy, where you can’t believe so many good things are happening all at once.  And probably the part I am enjoying the most is that we are really growing our management team so that I only need to focus on what I’m good at and what I enjoy.

Of course there are still areas that we need to improve, but the momentum is in our favor.  The other scary thing is that we are growing so quickly that we are constantly having to add staff, and when I look at our accounting its sometimes scary the numbers we need to put up just to break even.  However, I get scared for 3 seconds and then I realize that we are already at the point of no return and there is no going back.  We either blow up or I go home (literally).