How Do You Know When Your Business Is Big Enough?
I’ve got a confession to make. I don’t want to have a really big business. And at the same time, I constantly feel this push to grow just for the sake of growing. But what is “enough”?
Here’s the thing, a lot of my clients feel the exact same way once we really dig into their businesses. They come to me overwhelmed, working 60+ hours a week, feeling like the ceiling is always moving. They’ve hit goals that they were supposed to hit, only to set new ones and the cycle continues.
Why is this? And if you followed that pull to keep growing, where or when would it stop? That question keeps a lot of business owners I work with up at night. It kept me up too.
It’s a narrative deeply ingrained in our modern-day society. For some people, striving to constantly grow their business to infinity and beyond is absolutely the right thing to do. But it’s not right for everyone. And this doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.
In our present-day culture, we’re told that more is always better. That no matter where you are, there is always a goal post further away that you need to strive for. For the past 10 years, this just hasn’t sat right with me.
Why is growth beyond a certain point always a good thing? Why is it supposedly true that if we’re not growing, we’re dying? And what would it look like if that wasn’t the case?
That’s the topic of today’s piece. What is the opposite of more, more, more?
It’s enough.
I’ve been obsessing over what an “Enough Business” would look like. Not as a finish line you’re crawling toward, but as the destination you’re actually trying to reach, and then actually stop at.
What Do I Mean by an Enough Business?
The first thing people hear when I say “Enough Business” is “good enough”, like settling or mediocrity. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
What I mean is this: set an intentional goal for what you want your business to give you financially, in terms of your time, your team and your life outside of work. Once you get there, don’t automatically move the goal posts just because you can.
Here’s my personal example:
My Enough Business nets me $240,000 per year. Am I there yet? Nope. Can I, and do I live on less right now? Absolutely. Could my business eventually make more than that? Sure. But once I get there, I’m no longer focused on growing just to get bigger. I may even shift into what I call profitability mode, which is making the same amount with less revenue by getting more efficient.
In my Enough Business I maintain as small a team as possible and keep overhead to an absolute minimum. In my Enough Business, I can take time off throughout the year, decide not to work on Fridays, and only work with clients who fit within the systems I’ve built. My business is operations coaching and consulting, so my overhead looks different than a business with a physical location or a larger team to manage. But the core principle is the same: set the goal that makes sense for your life, work to achieve it, and don’t automatically blow past it the moment you get there.
The Core Principles of an Enough Business
At its core, an Enough Business is built on two things:
• You define what “enough” looks like financially, in time and in lifestyle, and those parameters don’t move just because you’ve hit them.
• The variables outside your business including your health, your relationships, your time and your peace of mind are weighted just as heavily as the business outcomes themselves.
Why Would You Ever Limit the Growth of Your Business?
Our culture hands us two pieces of advice simultaneously that flat-out contradict each other:
• Work hard, set bigger goals, never settle.
• Be present.
If you’re always focused on the next destination, so much so that the moment you arrive somewhere (of even before you’ve arrived), you’ve already set a further one, you cannot be present. Most business owners chalk this up to a mindset issue, but more often than not it’s a structural one.
Think about it like climbing a mountain. Being present means focusing on each step rather than fixating on the peak. But what happens when you reach the summit you originally set out for, only to look up and see a higher one? Suddenly, the summit you’re standing on doesn’t feel like the goal. It never did, you realize. So, you keep climbing. Summit after summit. Never stopping to take in where you are. Wondering why nothing feels like enough.
I worked a sales job in my 20s that had a mantra I fully bought into: “The worst thing you can be is content.” I said it every day. Now I’m in my 40s, and I know that statement is nonsense.
When you break down most people’s drive for more, it almost always traces back to a feeling they’re chasing. Some version of: “If I can just get to X, then I’ll feel successful.” But external things such as status, revenue milestones and validation never deliver that in a sustainable way. The reward lasts only a short time. It isn’t until we decide we have enough that we actually do.
I see this constantly with the business owners I work with. They come to me stressed, overwhelmed, and stuck. They’ve been successful by most definitions, but they still feel like they’re behind. Not because their business isn’t working, but because they’ve never actually defined what winning looks like. So they can’t recognize it when they’re close to it.
The Enough Business isn’t about working less or wanting less. It’s about being intentional enough to know what you’re actually working toward, and being okay shifting out of growth mode once you get there.
How to Put This into Action
This doesn’t have to be complicated. Start here:
Step 1: Set your Enough goal financially. Decide what you want to take home from your business each year. Then work backwards: add operating costs and taxes to figure out the average monthly revenue you need to generate to get there.
Example: You want to take home $150,000/year. Your operating costs run $3,000/month ($36,000/year). Estimated taxes are $40,000/year. That means your business needs to generate roughly $226,000/year (or about $18,800/month) to hit your Enough number.
Step 2: Add in your time. How many hours a week do you want to work? What does your year look like in terms of time off? What are you actually doing with your time? Set a goal for how many hours you want to work and still achieve your financial goals. These two things need to coexist.
Step 3: Describe the rest of your business. Team size, business model, scope of impact, how you want to deliver your work. A great way to pull all of this together is through a Life Vision Exercise which is one document that maps out what your ideal business and life outside of work look like side by side.
Step 4: Identify where you are now. How much revenue are you generating? What are you actually taking home? How many hours are you working? This is your starting point.
Step 5: Work backwards from your Enough point. Break the gap into milestones. Then pick one area to improve first, either generating more revenue or putting systems in place to reduce the time it takes to run your business. Not both at once.
If you need help putting this into action, you can contact me here to see if we’d be a good fit to work together building your Enough Business.
What to Take Away From This
If you only do one thing after reading this, do this: ask yourself “what is enough?” Then pause before you answer. Really pause.
This style of business isn’t for everyone. But if you find yourself constantly unsatisfied, no matter how much you achieve or how successful your business looks from the outside, maybe it’s time to stop moving the goal posts and start figuring out where you actually want them to land.
The Enough Business isn’t where you end up when you give up. It’s where you end up when you’re finally being honest about what you actually want.
