Do you like “What I’d do if I started again today” articles?

Well I don’t and this isn’t one.

They hook us because anything that’s going well, we wish we had done earlier.

We are looking for shortcuts. Can this person that’s been there help us pick the right path the first time?

But what we have in front of us isn’t a set of routes we can choose from.

When you start a business there is no map. You are looking at uncharted territory.

There are decisions to make but every decision changes the terrain and opens up a new set of options and obstacles.

When the way ahead does seem to appear, outside forces come along and shift things around.

If you started again today it wouldn’t be easier.

You wouldn’t be able to take a shortcut. To take a shortcut you need to know where you are going. Where you went today would be different.

You don’t pick a path, you find your own.

When you try and pick a path based on other’s advice you run the risk of slowing yourself down.

Even when that person is currently exactly where you want to get to.

The processes and strategies suitable for one phase of growth are not suitable for another. Particularly some of the more sophisticated tactics so often cited in the “I wish I’d done it sooner” piece.

You have to try out everything within your own context.

And while you are experimenting you need to be flexible.

Adopting processes, systems or strategy too early reduces that flexibility at a time when need to be agile.

There is pain at every stage of growth. You can’t avoid it, you have to go through it. Spend your energy in the places that matter.

The question to ask about anything you are working on:

Are you solving for a problem that you don’t have yet?

Don’t sit at your desk crafting your positioning or configuring a CRM. Go and meet people. Try out your offering. Learn and improve.

We all want our flexibility back

As you grow your small and agile agency will start to harden into a shape.

If you get it right that shape will be bigger and more powerful, but it won’t be perfect.

Part of you will want to go back and do it a different way.

Part of you will want to be standing right back where you are now.

With the opportunity to create something new.