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Back in 2018, I was convinced my business needed a huge team to grow.
I hired 5 people in one go for my small marketing agency in Austin, thinking more hands meant more money. The tip-off was seeing our monthly profit drop by 30% for three straight months while our workload stayed the same. I finally saw we were just busy, not smart, and paying for roles we didn't really need. Anyone else get stuck thinking growth just meant adding more people?
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hayden_martin291mo ago
Honestly though, sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Bringing on a bigger team could have set you up for way more work later, like landing those bigger contracts you need more hands for. Maybe the profit dip was just a short term thing while everyone got up to speed. A small team can only do so much before they burn out, and then you lose everything. It feels risky but staying tiny forever has its own limits.
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craig.grant1mo ago
That's a really fair point about short term pain for long term gain. Scaling up the team could have been the exact push needed to go after bigger, more profitable projects. Sometimes you have to build the capacity before the work actually shows up, otherwise you're stuck in a cycle of turning things down.
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