Most founders think the goal is to grow as fast as possible. I think that’s exactly what breaks most businesses.
The real edge isn’t speed — it’s knowing when not to scale. I recently sat down with Research Snipers to talk about the philosophy behind running multiple ventures without letting size become a liability. If you’ve been conditioned to believe that headcount equals progress, this one will challenge you.
The piece opens with something I’ve carried since my days as a Division I golfer: you cannot bully a golf course into submission. You have to be precise. You have to be patient. The same discipline applies to building companies — one reckless decision can unravel a careful foundation you spent years constructing.
The core idea I kept coming back to in this conversation is what I call “stay small long enough to become big enough.” That sounds counterintuitive when everyone around you is celebrating growth metrics. But the founders who scale too fast — before their processes are tight, before their team is right, before their offer is genuinely proven — tend to build revenue on a foundation that cracks under pressure. The money comes in. Then the problems multiply faster than the money does.
One thing the article captures well is how I think about team design. I’ve built operations across DevOps, marketing, and entertainment — and none of them run on large teams. My approach is to treat hiring like product development: custom, lean, and matched to the actual demands of the business. Not to an org chart I think I’m supposed to have.
There was also an honest moment in the piece about deliberately slowing client intake at certain growth stages to protect quality and reputation. That decision runs against every instinct you develop in early-stage hustle mode. But the cost of a bad delivery or a strained client relationship almost always exceeds whatever revenue it generated.
If you’ve ever felt pressure to scale before you were ready — or wondered whether staying lean is a strategy or just a constraint. Read the full article on Research Snipers →
Precision beats aggression. That’s true on the course, and it’s true in business.
