I am on a constant quest to downsize.
That’s not to say I don’t ever buy new things. But for every new shirt that goes in the closet, two go into the Goodwill donation pile. I keep this mindset with everything. It’s a gradual process. I’m not about to have a mass exodus of all my possessions in order to embrace the van life anytime soon. But I do try to generally operate under the concept of “less is more,” wherever that may lead me. I often think about a surf instructor I once met in Australia who literally lived out of a duffel bag and how freeing that must’ve felt.
This type of mentality is often at odds with the business world. A “bigger is better” line of thinking usually trumps “less is more.” If you’re not on a continuous growth trajectory, adding employees, customers, equipment and services, it’s easy to think that you’re doing business wrong. But is it always better?
One of the companies profiled in this month’s issue, Baker Plumbing out of Alberta, Canada, used to be on that journey of constant growth. When owner Bob Baker took control of the company from his father in 2006 he immediately started scaling the company larger, different from his father’s approach that had kept the business a smaller operation. By 2014, Baker Plumbing employed 18 people and was running 12 service trucks. But for Baker it wasn’t necessarily “better.”
“You think that if you keep hiring more guys and buying more trucks, you’re going to make more money,” Baker says. “But it doesn’t always work out that way. I was stressed out beyond belief. It was just awful. We had all these high-end jobs, working on big, beautiful restaurants and $50 million hotels — the kind of customers that had far higher expectations for customer service and craftsmanship. And with that many employees, there always was someone not meeting those high expectations. I just got tired of apologizing every day for not meeting the expectations of customers who were extremely important to our cash flow.”
In 2015, Baker decided to shift the company in the other direction and today it numbers six employees, half of which are Baker and his two sons.
“I was stressed out beyond belief. It was just awful.” Those are the comments from Baker that stuck out to me.
The concept of growth is sold as the business ideal, but at what cost? More of everything — employees, customers, revenue — can also mean more headaches.
It’s March and that means the spring season (or close to it as I’m sure winter is lingering in many places) is here and all that is associated with it. A time of decluttering and organizing for many people. Spring cleaning can apply to a business as well. Going smaller is the antithesis of how we typically view running a business, but sometimes it is the right move.
Enjoy this month’s issue.
