Skip to content
This one took time.
Not to understand intellectually. I could have told you early in my career that success is personal and that bigger is not always better. Those are not complicated ideas.
But to actually believe it, to make decisions from it rather than just nodding along with it as a concept, that took considerably longer.
Because the pressure to grow, to scale, to add headcount and expand revenue and build something larger than what you currently have, is not just external. It gets internalised and becomes the default measure of whether you are doing well enough. And unpicking that takes deliberate effort and, honestly, a fair amount of time.
Where the bigger narrative comes from
Business culture, particularly the kind that gets shared online, tends to celebrate scale.
The seven figure business, team of twenty, rapid growth story. And don’t get me started on the “pivot that tripled revenue”. These are the narratives that get shared, celebrated, and held up as evidence of success done right.
And (mostly) they are legitimate stories. For some people, scale is genuinely the goal, and building something large is exactly the right expression of what they are trying to do. That’s not wrong.
What is wrong, or at least what I have found to be wrong for me and for many of the small business owners I work with, is the assumption that scale is the goal for everyone. That if you are not growing in size, you are standing still. That a small business that stays small has somehow failed to fulfil its potential.
Oh boy, does that assumption do a lot of damage.
What growth for the sake of growth actually costs
I have watched business owners scale their businesses in ways that cost them the very things they started the business to have.
The flexibility that came from being small disappears under the weight of managing a larger team. The work they loved doing gets replaced by the work of running a business that has outgrown them. The clients they genuinely enjoyed working with get diluted across a larger portfolio that requires a different kind of management. The life they were building the business to support gets pushed further away the more the business grows.
Bigger teams mean bigger overheads. Bigger overheads mean more pressure to generate revenue. More pressure to generate revenue means less space for the kind of thoughtful, values-led work that made the business worth building in the first place.
Growth for the sake of growth is exhausting. And it tends to produce a business that looks more successful from the outside than it feels from the inside.
What success actually looks like
Success is personal. I genuinely believe that, and it is one of the things ten years has confirmed rather than complicated.
For some people it is scale. Building something large, creating employment, expanding into new markets. Yes, that can be a legitimate and valuable expression of success.
For others it is flexibility. The ability to work the hours that suit them, from the places that suit them, on the terms they choose. A business that serves their life rather than consuming it.
For others it is impact. The depth of difference made to a specific set of clients or a particular community, regardless of how large the business gets in the process.
For me, it has always been about doing meaningful work with good people. Not chasing size for ego. Not building something impressive for the sake of impressiveness. Building something that I am actually proud of, that makes a genuine difference to the businesses I work with, and that fits the life I want to be living.
Starfish has never been about becoming a large agency. It has been about being exactly the right support for the businesses that need what I do. And staying true to that, even when the growth narrative gets loud, has been one of the better decisions I have made.
The permission this gives you
I want to be direct about this, because I think it is something a lot of small business owners need to hear.
You are allowed to build a business that fits your life.
You are allowed to decide that the size you are is the size that works, and that optimising for quality and sustainability and genuine enjoyment of the work is a more valid definition of success than revenue or headcount.
You are allowed to say no to growth that would cost you more than it gives you.
That is not settling. It’s being clear on what you want from your business and that is one of the most useful things you can have.
What this means for your marketing
This lesson has a direct implication for how you market your business, and it is one I think gets overlooked.
Your marketing should not be trying to reach everyone. It should be trying to reach the right people. The clients who are genuinely a good fit for what you do, who value what you offer, who you will genuinely enjoy working with.
That kind of marketing is more specific and, ultimately, more effective than marketing that tries to appeal to the widest possible audience. It attracts fewer people and converts more of them, because it is speaking directly to the people it is actually for.
Being clear about what you want your business to be makes your marketing sharper. Every time.
How to actually do it
- Define what success actually looks like for you.
Not the generic version. Your version. What does a good week feel like? What kind of work energises you? What kind of clients do you do your best work with? What does the business need to provide to support the life you want? Write it down and be specific.
- Use that definition as a filter for decisions.
When an opportunity comes up, when someone suggests you should scale, when the growth narrative gets loud, run it through your definition of success. Does this move me toward what I actually want, or just toward bigger? That question cuts through a lot of noise.
- Get honest about vanity metrics.
Revenue, follower counts, team size, these can all be meaningful measures, and they can also be ways of performing success rather than experiencing it. Get clear on which metrics actually tell you whether your business is doing what you want it to do, and focus on those.
- Build your marketing around your ideal client, not your widest possible audience.
If you know who you do your best work with, market to them specifically. Speak their language. Address their particular situation. Be willing to be irrelevant to people who are not your people in order to be genuinely compelling to the ones who are.
- Revisit your definition of success regularly.
What you want from your business can change over time. The definition that was right at year two may not be the right one at year ten. Check in with it annually at least, and be willing to update it as you and your business evolve.
Your action this week
Write down your personal definition of success. Not the one you think you should have, but the one you actually have.
Then look at your business and your marketing honestly. Are they moving you toward that definition, or toward someone else's version of what success is supposed to look like?
If there is a gap, that is your starting point.
Starfish exists to help small businesses do marketing that fits them, not a generic template designed for someone else's goals. If you want marketing that is built around what you are actually trying to achieve, I would love to help you get there. Get in touch here.
This is the tenth in a series expanding on the lessons from ten years of running Starfish. If you have missed any of the earlier lessons, you can find them all below.
Lesson 1: Do what you say you will
Lesson 2: Do not put a lit pipe in your pocket
Lesson 3: Empathy can be learned
Lesson 4: Different is not evil
Lesson 5: Curiosity beats assumption
Lesson 6: You Do Not Have To Agree, But You Do Have To Listen
Lesson 7: Thinking differently is the point
Lesson 9: Collaboration over competition
Frequently Asked Questions about defining your success
How do you know when your business is the right size?
The best answer is that your business is the right size when it is doing what you actually want it to do, supporting the life you want to live, producing work you are genuinely proud of, and serving clients you enjoy working with, without requiring you to operate in a way that costs you your wellbeing or your values. That looks different for every business owner, which is exactly the point. The question is not whether your business matches an external benchmark for the right size. It is whether it matches your own definition of what you are building it for.
Is it possible to have a successful small business without scaling?
Absolutely, and I would argue that many of the most genuinely successful small businesses are ones that have resisted the pressure to scale beyond what works for them. Success is not a function of size. It is a function of how well your business delivers on what you actually want from it, whether that is financial security, flexibility, meaningful work, community impact, or some combination of all of those things. A small business that does excellent work, serves its clients well, and sustains the life its owner wants to live is a successful business, regardless of whether it ever becomes a large one.
How does staying small affect your marketing strategy?
Staying intentionally small actually makes marketing more focused and often more effective. When you are not trying to reach everyone, you can be very specific about who you are talking to, what their particular situation is, and why you are the right fit for them. That specificity is what makes marketing resonate. Broad marketing that tries to appeal to the widest possible audience tends to be generic and forgettable. Specific marketing that speaks directly to the right people tends to attract fewer enquiries and convert more of them, which is usually a much better use of time, energy, and budget for a small business.
