Why I’m Keeping My Business Tiny

Rebel Therapist

I’m grateful to be running a tiny and simple business right now. I have no plans to grow this business up to 7 figures.

I was a bit hesitant to tell you that!

I feel some fear that you won’t think I’m a badass, or you’ll think I have upper limit problems or limited beliefs.

Maybe you won’t want to hire me because I’m not as ambitious as you hoped.

Or if you’re my friend who runs a larger and more complicated business, maybe you’ll think I’m judging you when you hear what I have to say about running a tiny business.

(I’m not. I promise!)

But since I have the desire to be radically honest and I think this serves you, I’m sharing it anyway.

I trust you to identify the parts of this that fit for you and the parts that don’t.

Note: I’m talking about service based businesses, because that’s what I know best.

Capitalism tends to point us towards one vision of what it means to be a successful business owner. And that’s being a business owner who always makes and does MORE.

Capitalism tends to pull us AWAY from noticing when we have enough, or even considering what enough might be.

Us feeling enoughness or satisfaction is NOT helpful to capitalism.

Here’s the default vision of a successful business owner:

• They’ve got a company bringing in revenue of 7 figures or more.
• They’ve hired a big team.
• They expand their business to serve more people year over year.
• These numbers are all as big as possible: total revenue, number of team members, number of followers, and number of people served.
• This person might be a coach who runs a course or membership with hundreds or thousands of members at a time. Perhaps they also have many many other offers at many price points.

But when I look around at my colleagues and friends who are having a good time and feeling fairly stable financially, I tend to see a people with tiny and simple businesses.

Here’s the vision of that (tiny) business owner:

• They’ve got a tiny team, like zero or one employees.
• They’ve got smaller revenue, like under 500k, but they get to keep more than half of that money.
• Their tech is simple.
• They don’t have much overhead.
• They have one or two high-touch offers.

Sometimes people come work with me hoping to create huge empires. I’m delighted to help them because the first phase in creating an empire should be to create a really solid small business. And that is what I help with.

When you start with a tiny, strong and simple business, you focus on creating value. And that’s where every business needs to start.

Listen to the episode to hear

• 2 stories of folks who scaled big, hated it, and decided to simplify and shrink their businesses
• How I keep Rebel Therapist simple
• How you can still serve more people with a tiny business

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/212