Don't grow too quickly.

[00:00:00] You are listening to the Daily Five, an experimental podcast by Aurooba, where I talk about something for five minutes. So let's get to it, shall we? Did you know that in this season of tech companies doing major layoffs, Apple, the company has not done that? I thought that was really interesting, and I think there are a bunch of like analysis news pieces that you can find about it, but it all boils down to one thing.

[00:00:40] During the pandemic, they did not go on a hiring craze. They did not overhire just because things were a little bit better and more intense during a certain period of time, which meant that when things inevitably did come [00:01:00] down from a weird peak, they were fine. And I think that is a lesson for all of us, not just for other tech companies, but for all of us who try to do new things in our life.

[00:01:20] And that is: that there is a danger – a this deep disadvantage – to growing too fast, growing too quickly. You have to be careful when you do that. And I've read about this concept called the discipline entrepreneur. This is something that I learned about when I was reading everything I could about this company called Balsamiq, which is a wireframing tool, but they have a lot of company values that they share in [00:02:00] public, and I went on a reading frenzy, I guess, and read every single article they have in that category on their website.

[00:02:11] It's something that I do. And I learned about this concept of discipline, entrepreneurship. And one of the things that it talks about is how there are certain things when you're running a business, for example, that should be in line. You don't hire more people until you have the revenue to support it.

[00:02:31] You don't have, you're not gonna have enough revenue to support something unless your product is a certain amount of good, you know, things have to work in tandem with each other. Instead of saying, oh, I'm going to hire a bunch of people and that's gonna help me generate more and then I'll have revenue. There are certain things that come first, but for example, in the case of the pandemic, right, things [00:03:00] were really great for a lot of tech companies and so they hired, they hired lots.

[00:03:04] I think maybe they even hired more than they even had to. Apple on the other hand, constantly had back orders and they were like, yep, we're out of this and we're out of that. And you know what? It was fine. Nobody hated Apple. Nobody was frustrated with Apple on a big scale. When that happened, we were all fine.

[00:03:24] We got on waiting lists, you know, same thing goes for like Ikea, who was constantly out of furnitur , but they're not a tech company, so I digress – and it made me realize that when we grow too quickly in a, in any given moment, we do ourselves a long-term disservice and to the people that we serve or want to serve, our community.

[00:03:49] And before you grow too quickly, before you add more features too quickly, or go from a tiny little product to something really [00:04:00] massive in your brain, you know, take a beat. Think about whether this makes sense, and think about when it makes sense to do it. If it does make sense, because that time might not be right now, have the numbers to support it, whether those numbers are revenue or something else.

[00:04:20] Have the – have a reason, do things when they're backed by a good reason to do 'em, especially when it's about growing or taking something small and making it really big.

[00:04:35] I don't know. That has been on my mind in a lot of different ways today. And yeah, so don't grow too quickly. Be intentional. Thanks for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.