Question: If you reach one million in revenue by following a certain system and infrastructure – would you change the system and infrastructure to reach your second million?
Answer: Of course not! If it ain’t broke don’t fix it!
Okay, let’s try this again…
Question: If your plant grew to one foot inside its current pot, would you change the pot so it could grow another foot?
Answer: Duh! Of course I would!
So what if I told you your business is the plant, and your organizational infrastructure – the people, systems & processes are the pot. 
Because of your diligence and commitment to watering and fertilizing your plant – it grows and grows. Accordingly, you pat yourself on the back and admire your green thumb. Your plant continues to grow healthily to a certain point in its initial pot.
Eventually, however, the plant stops growing and maybe even starts to die – instead of recognizing that the pot is now too small and is preventing further growth – you try to force the plant back to health by doing what worked the first time – you add more water and fertilizer!
This time the plant refuses to respond and you can’t understand why the same actions are not providing the same results. It just doesn’t follow that the environment and formula for growth the first time – aren’t working this time. So then you start looking at external forces to blame, maybe it’s the tap water – or maybe there is a parasite eating at my plant?
On that point, allow me to digress for a moment; for my one year anniversary I bought my wife a bonsai tree to keep on her desk – if I remember correctly I said something romantic like “so that you can watch the flower blossom year after year just like our marriage”. I know – smooth right!? Well hopefully what happens next isn’t indicative of my marriage’s fate – but, well, let’s just say that my wife is no green thumb.
One day she calls me up and informs me that her office mates took a vote and the bonsai tree had to go – it seems that it was attracting a swarm of flying critters! She blamed these same critters on the demise of her tree – saying they must have killed it by feeding on it. So unless I had any ideas on how to get rid of the bugs – the bonsai was bon voyage!
So I did as any good business consultant would do when we don’t know the answer – we research it (thank heavens for Google!). Turns out the bugs weren’t killing the tree after all – the tree was actually dying and rotting on the inside from over watering. The rotting wood and roots is what was attracting the bugs to feast!
Moral of the story? When your business is affected by outside forces (i.e. market conditions, competition, etc.) the first place to look for problems is within the business – not outside of it! A strong healthy business can withstand an assault from outside (a slow down in the market, natural disaster, etc.), but a sickly business will be eaten up by the bugs (its competition, liability, etc)!
This brings us back to your plant, so when it is obvious that the business has outgrown its pot, why is repotting the last thing we think of? It’s amazing how quick small business owners will invest and upgrade the physical building we operate out of as soon as it becomes apparent it can no longer sustain our business activities – and yet we are so slow and reluctant to upgrade the organizational infrastructure of our business! Why is this?
Perhaps it’s because the skill set required to develop an organizational infrastructure, with systems and processes geared towards productivity, simply falls outside the collective entrepreneurial genetic code. It’s just not what entrepreneurs are made of! Growing plants is fun and exciting – that weeding, trimming, repotting stuff (read: management) is for the birds!
So the small pot – the one you started with – was one that came somewhat intuitively. It basically can be called the “Getting my product/service to market” pot. It’s an infrastructure created with the following primary concerns in mind: 1) Get Customers, 2) Get Products/Services to customers, and 3) Get Paid. This is not something you spent hours analyzing and flow charting! You just did it and as you grew you showed others how to do it and unwittingly created a system.
This basic infrastructure works well enough, as your focus at this time is on growing the plant. And the plant does grow. So much that it cannot grow any further until you provide an improved pot – an improved infrastructure for it to grow in! And this is where the entrepreneur/small business owner runs into trouble because repotting is also known as “working on your business”.
Small business owners are notorious for doing everything else but work on their business. Even as a business consultant – it is difficult to practice what I preach in that regard as I often find myself drawn to working on my clients businesses before my own!
And that’s actually okay! It is very likely that your business has grown because you played up to your strengths of watering and fertilizing. If you are not a repotting expert (or you just simply lack the patience for it!) – hire someone who is! Every business needs its repotting champion. That individual or group or team who’s primary function is to work on the infrastructure of your business so that your business can continue to grow in it!
So in review, your business is the plant; your organizational infrastructure is the pot. The pot that sustained your initial growth will just not do for the next phase of growth. You need a new and improved pot. We’ll call it the “Make my business sustainable” pot. Not only are you concerned with getting your product/service to market – you want to get it there better. You are no longer concerned with just getting customers – you want to define the best customer for you and focus on those. And getting paid is no longer good enough either – now you want to make sure you keep more of what you make!
If that’s the stage you are at in your business – then congratulations! Its repottin’ time!
Mark A. Sandate is the Chief Repotting Officer of MASSolutions, LLC – a small business advisory firm, and an accredited Executive Associate of the Institute for Independent Business (IIB). For more information and to inquire about a free, repotting workshop, please email mas@mas-solutions.biz.
