These Decisions Get Harder As You Grow
A friend just walked away from a six-figure contract.
She'd outgrown it.
About a year and a half ago, she took on a contract role alongside her consultancy. Her business was in its early stages. She needed income. Ten hours a week for steady revenue while she built her own thing.
At that point in her journey, it made sense.
She traded some of her time for money. That was time that she took away from growing her consultancy. Things like networking, business development, community engagement, etc.
For everything you say "yes" to, you're saying "no" to something else.
She still had some of her time available to grow her business. Just not as much.
That's the trade-off. She secured the big revenue stream, but growing her consultancy would take longer.
Fast forward to about a month ago. She was at a networking event and booked four prospect calls. Not unusual for her.
But as she did the ROI math in her head afterward, the answer came out different than it had before. Her time was now more valuable spent full time on her business than on that guaranteed contract.
The math had flipped. She'd grown.
She gave notice, and she and the company both moved on.
That's a major milestone for a founder - when you've made your time worth enough you start making different choices.
Both of her yeses were right. The first because at that stage, the math said take the income. The second because at the new stage, the math said the 12 hours were worth more than the dollars.
The math flipped because she grew.
That's opportunity cost. Every founder needs to understand it.
As your business grows, the opportunities get harder to read. You'll have more high quality options to choose from, with the differences between them subtle, but significant.
That's why developing the skill of identifying which opportunities are actually right for you is the operator's real job.
It's more than simply learning to say no more often. It's learning to recognize what each yes is actually costing you, in real time.