Slow growth looks like

I spend a lot of time talking about slow growth with my clients, many of whom are caregivers, living with chronic mental or physical illnesses, or recovering from burnout. Recently, L’Oreal Thompson Payton called it “slowth,” which made me giggle and felt spot on. For many of the folks in my world, myself included, we’re doing the deep work of trying to reset the way we work so we can actually feel good, versus running ourselves into ground as we chase unrealistic expectations. We’re walking away from people pleasing, toxic productivity and an extractive system of capitalism that places revenue over people.

But learning how to embrace slow growth can be challenging. Nature provides us with a lot of models of the benefits of slow growth but the world of business does not. So often, the accepted messaging pushes a “hustle and muscle” approach. “Do more,” it says. “Move fast and break sh!t,” it preaches.

The thing is, nothing in nature grows exponentially (except for cancer!). I’ve spent a lot of time on this newsletter talking about how business growth has seasons, just like nature — and how we have to endure seasons of winter if we want to get to a prolific spring. Modeling our businesses off of nature creates something more sustainable but also, frankly, it requires being counter-cultural and enduring discomfort when things slow down.

Today I wanted to provide 4 examples of what slow growth actually looks like in a single-person business. Let’s dig in.