Running your own business this day in age is a rough go of it, the aspirations of success are often accompanied by a mountain of responsibilities and trials that could test any business owner’s resolve. However, any good business whiz knows that it’s not success all the time. As Business Coach, Karie Kaufmann, expertly states, “...people often envision a linear graph moving from the bottom left corner upward, but the reality is that business is a series of valleys and plateaus. There’s growth, and then there’s the valley you face to make those big jumps to the next level.”
I recently interviewed Kaufmann to get her perspective on pulling yourself out of the ‘death valley’ of business when growing toward that first million. The Death Valley of business, as Kaufmann explained, is a point at which a company is too big to be small but too small to be big. A transitional period in which businesses have outgrown some of their old practices but don’t have the means to escape the valley. The considerable detriment of this valley on companies is so substantial that the vast majority of businesses stuck within its confines never reach the other side and end up falling short or shrinking back to a more manageable size.
All businesses face valleys, and unfortunately, that means the prospect of getting out of these valleys is always something business owners must be aware of and prepared to handle. While many businesses can escape the first valley, a significantly fewer number of them can grow past that first million that they make, which means that many of these businesses still hinder their own growth despite escaping that first valley. This is where that adaptation is crucial. Kaufmann says in her video on the Valley of Death, “So if you’re on the cusp of a valley of death you have two choices, you can either stay where you are right now, but if you’re looking to scale up your business, be prepared because there is a valley of death standing between you and that next level.”
Adapting in the business world is necessary, and nowhere is that greater exemplified than in the death valley. Kaufmann states that many businesses fall into the ‘it’s how we’ve always done it’ mentality. Illustrating that companies often fail to adapt once they’ve found a comfort zone that worked, past tense, as they no longer apply now that the business itself has grown. Many organizations fail to realize that sacrifices sometimes must be made to sustain that growth. Growth requires change, and sometimes that requires that old practices, whether that be systems, business models, or even clients, must be left behind for the business to continue to evolve and reach that escape from the valley to achieve the next level of growth.