The only answers to your growth are the ones you find yourself

When indie founders talk about building a business, they tend to talk about all the things that need doing—essentially it becomes a very large to-do list of things that apparently need to be done to achieve ‘growth’.

Very practical things like:

✅ Write content ✅ Optimize for SEO✅ Capture emails✅ (Don't) use pop-up email captures✅ Create a launch list✅ Write content in this very specific format✅ Have different pricing offerings✅ Reuse and repurpose your content ✅ Charge more✅ Charge less!✅ (Don't) use Twitter✅ Hang out where your people are✅ Launch (on Product Hunt and a million different places)✅ Do TikTok

And the thing is, this isn’t wrong advice. Much of this stuff has to happen in any business. Yet, when it’s thrown out as advice in the open, it’s usually not very relevant or helpful.

The reality that most people don’t want to hear is that building a business is hard. The one tactic that might work for one business won’t necessarily work for another. There is simply no one answer that fits all.

There are so many things at play that it is almost impossible to know what will work.

Sometimes you have the wrong vibe. Or you’re one year too early, or one year too late.

Maybe people don’t listen to you because you don’t play the algorithm game, or because you’re a woman (or insert another minority here).

Could it also be that maybe you didn’t love the problem enough?

Or perhaps you didn’t hold on long enough, maybe pushing for one more month or one more year would have seen you through. Or maybe not. Maybe pushing through is too much for you and where you are at right now.

We are led to believe that we can get to this graph below. But what if we don’t? Is the work to get there truly worth all the sacrifices along the way? Do we have to just keep hustling more? Do we miss out on our kids growing up to get there? At what point do we say ‘no’.

What are we even measuring here? Is money, followers and subscribers the only measure? Surely there is more to life than that?

So many things at play. So many reasons for things succeeding and also for not working out.

I’m not saying not to take advice from people. It’s more to take advice with a pinch of salt and choose to listen to people who care or know your situation well.

I’m not saying not to take a good stab at a successful business. Definitely go for it, but don’t expect your story to be the same as what is marketed to you.

What the growth charts miss

I guess what I am saying is that reality is different.

The constant chasing of attention is unhealthy and mostly a distraction. We get excited and dangerously worship spikes even if we know it’s often meaningless and the trough of sorrow will follow.

As indie founders the spikes in traffic are like drugs. They are chased like an addiction. We worship them. Tell stories of their greatness.

What people also seem to miss out on is how this growth obsession destroy spaces. How they create extra work, noise and waste. How communities get bombarded and drowned out with all the ‘marketing hacks’. How we waste our one precious life sifting through growth stories just so we can hope to get in on it too. How we’re made to feel inadequate because we have not quite achieved those numbers.

Sure, it can work for some, but the reality is that the obsession with growth does more harm than good. It is vanity. And it becomes a game that most can’t sustain. Many burn out and give up along the way.

And we don’t talk about it. Or if we do, it’s years later and we realise we’ve been duped. We’ve been sold a story of one moment in time. A story that if we had known the complete truth we wouldn’t have wanted to be a part of it.

When we look at the growth charts we follow the line with our eyes with excitement. Yet we fail to tell the stories of what got us there and what happened afterwards. The pain. The suffering. The challenges. The failures.

And it is the burnout. The stress. The lack of satisfaction. The unsustainability of it all. That people don’t get to see. It gets covered up to paint a rosie picture.

I love a growth chart. It is motivating. But I’ll create it on my own terms. In my style. In a way that feels good to me because deep in my heart I believe this is how growth does happen.

It’s tapping into who you are, not what others want you to be.

It’s finding a formula that works for you. That you believe in and enjoy doing.

It’s about understanding that sometimes growth is not always about more followers, subscribers or revenue. Often it is personal. About how much you help others grow. Or maybe it’s the growth in quality.

And perhaps most importantly, it’s about growth in confidence and pride in yourself and your work. You can find your path and your journey. And that it is ok that it doesn’t look like anyone else’s.