How to thrive during rapid company growth
Richard Turner | 5 minute read
Article summary:
- Delegate to grow your company.
- Protect your wellbeing.
- Adapt and learn.
Company founders need support for success
When you start a company, particularly when you are young, it can become all-consuming. Entrepreneurs are passionate people. We focus intensely on what we are building and, especially in the early years, it can feel as though everything depends on us.
I know this because I lived it as founder of several companies.
Forty years ago, when I was developing computer systems for my family’s business Holbrook Meats, I was receiving calls at three or four in the morning if something didn’t work properly. I was up early, working late and obsessed with having things right. I worked as it was required, all day and all night. Later, when my brother and I built Regency Food Services, we were also running a 24-hour operation, and that took its toll.
Entrepreneurs, by nature, are focused people, but we’re in danger of losing sight of the people around us. And forgetting about the people who matter and support us the most. It’s not surprising that entrepreneurs have a very high divorce rate.
I learnt a lot of those lessons the hard way. In building a successful company, you need to take care of yourself.
Don’t try to carry everything
Important lessons I’ve learnt building multiple businesses are to put the right systems, processes and procedures in place and, most fundamentally, be consistent in everything you do.
When you have a young company and you’re employing people and growing quickly, there can be queues of people outside your door asking: “How do I deal with this? What do I do here?”
If every answer sits inside the founder’s head, you become the font of everything. Eventually you become the bottleneck for your own growth. The founder’s role must evolve as the business grows; from doing everything yourself to building structures and systems that enables others in your company to do it.
This means delegating authority, spreading the load and bringing your top team instead of carrying the whole organisation yourself.
Find your people
Running a business can be incredibly lonely and isolating. I wish I had understood the importance of peer-to-peer support earlier. When I was building Regency Food Services, none of my friends owned a business. But when I founded the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation (EO) in South Australia in 1998, I created groups of business leaders called Forums within EO. It discussed both business or personal issues and met people navigating similar experiences and challenges. At one point, six out of eight members of my forum were going through divorces. That tells you something about the pressures founders can put themselves under.
The forum wasn’t about someone telling you what you should have done. We shared experiences and how we dealt with it personally. The various perspectives were tremendously helpful and many of us became lifelong friends. More recently I have founded the Coraggio peer to peer Advisory Boards in a more structured format for high growth companies in Adelaide to serve the same fundamental purpose.
Learn to switch off
Immense pressure within a growing business calls for outside interests to help you switch off.
I played basketball, was a runner and loved arranging music and writing songs to relieve stress. When I sit at the piano or pick up a guitar, for that period, I step away from everything else.
Entrepreneurs must find ways to consciously create some separation from their company to avoid burnout.
Recognise when your role needs to change
Looking after yourself as a founder means understanding that you don’t have to do everything or remain in the same role forever.
During a time of rapid growth at ZEN Energy, we were suddenly navigating energy markets, regulation, grid-scale batteries, solar farms and wind farms. That required a completely different commercial skill set. Different from the technical innovation I had done to pioneer the solar and battery industry in Australia. I knew my time was up as CEO and I went to the board to request a role transfer. We created the role of “Director of Innovation”, so a specialist could step in to commercially lead the company into its next phase. A key tip here is not to be bound by titles.
Founders can find changing their role extraordinarily difficult. The company can become part of your identity and stepping away feels like you’re giving up. But the right decision for the business, and for you, is to recognise that the organisation has changed and your role needs to as well.
Learn lessons from others
When you’re young and building your first business, you simply don’t know what you don’t know. You may not have found the right networks exist or met people who’ve already experienced the problems you’re facing. Too many entrepreneurs learn those lessons only after paying a heavy price.
If I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to join a peer-to-peer network and a business learning program much earlier. Doing so it would’ve helped me skip a lot of pain and trouble.
After four decades in business, I can confidently say a successful company shouldn’t require its founder to sacrifice everything. The earlier you learn how to look after yourself while building your company, the better chance both you and the business have of succeeding long-term.