To Grow or Diversify?

There seems to be a large focus on business growth. From funding and investment to scaling up, the emphasis seems to be about taking your business to the next level.

While transitioning from a lifestyle business to more serious revenue generation and then progression into passive income models is great for some…

Not everyone wants to:

Employ staff
Take up office space
Invest more capital
Expand your linear offer
Automate

So what do you do if you don’t want to grow?

What other options do you have to keep energy and enthusiasm in your business offer without increasing your scale and potentially increasing your risk?

Diversification.

If you are not ready to employ staff, rent offices or expand, you can spread your offer to increase your market interest without necessarily growing.

The difference here is about linear vs horizontal growth. Linear growth sees you escalate upwards in the business. You rise because you infill beneath you to fulfil demand. However, with horizontal growth, you can offer limited various products and services that could increase your revenue without giving you the addition of staff and space to worry about.

This also works well if you choose complementary products and services that can feed one another.

An example of this is practice could be:

A person offers beauty treatments.
They could hire staff to increase their offer. – cost, risk and revenue generation
They could buy a salon. – cost and risk
They could continue to employ new staff etc.
Linear growth.

A person offers beauty treatments.

They also invest in some beauty products that are of interest to their clients. – cost and revenue generation
They create a subscription blog where people can access videos, blog and tips. – revenue generation
They write a book about ethical makeup. – business development tool and revenue generation
They offer workshops on ethical beauty practices. – revenue generation

Both of these models allow for growth, both allow for passive income. But in my opinion, the horizontal growth option allows for more experimentation and a little more freedom while maximising revenue.