Stop Chasing Growth — Start Controlling It
Most business owners say the same thing: “We want more customers, more revenue, more profit.”
It sounds logical. But it’s also the reason many businesses stay stuck.
The reality is, you don’t directly control any of those outcomes. You can’t wake up tomorrow and decide to “have more profit.” What you can control are the small, measurable drivers that sit underneath it. So rather than chasing growth, you end up controlling it.
In our latest 5 ways to grow your profits session, this was framed simply: there are five levers that determine everything in your business. The number of leads you generate. How many of those leads convert. How often customers buy. How much they spend each time. And the margin you make on each sale.
That’s it.
Once you understand this, growth stops being vague and starts becoming practical. Instead of chasing growth and bigger numbers, you start asking better questions. Where are we losing opportunities? Which lever, if improved slightly, would have the biggest impact?
This is where many business owners go wrong. They try to grow everything at once, or they chase the most obvious lever—usually leads—without fixing what’s already broken. It’s like pouring water into a leaking bucket.
A much more effective approach is to break growth down into manageable steps. One of the most powerful ideas discussed was that you don’t need dramatic change to see dramatic results. Even a modest improvement across each lever can completely transform a business.
A small uplift in conversion. A slight increase in pricing. Encouraging customers to buy just a little more often. On their own, these changes don’t feel significant. But combined, they compound.
And that’s where the real impact lies.
Margin, in particular, stood out as the most misunderstood lever. Many businesses focus heavily on sales and turnover, but overlook whether those sales are actually profitable. It’s entirely possible to grow revenue while quietly eroding profit.
One example shared made this clear. If your margin is 40% and you increase your prices by 10%, you could afford to lose a portion of your customers and still make the same profit. That idea alone challenges one of the biggest fears in business—putting prices up.
The hesitation is understandable. Nobody likes the idea of losing customers. But the discussion highlighted something most people already know, yet rarely act on: the customers who push back hardest on price are often the ones who create the most friction anyway. They demand more, appreciate less, and rarely contribute to long-term growth.
On the flip side, discounting—something many businesses rely on—was shown to be far more damaging than it appears. A small discount doesn’t just reduce profit; it creates a gap that has to be filled with significantly more work. More sales, more effort, more complexity, just to stand still.
It’s not growth. It’s just busyness.
Another important thread running through the session was how easy it is to get stuck in the day-to-day. Technology has made businesses more efficient, but it hasn’t made them calmer. If anything, it’s created more noise, more tasks, more pressure to react.
And that’s where progress gets lost.
Because growth doesn’t come from reacting. It comes from stepping back and asking a simple question: “Is what I’m doing actually moving the business forward?”
The answer, more often than not, is no.
The real shift happens when you carve out time—not for more work, but for better thinking. Time to review your numbers. Time to test small improvements. Time to focus on the levers that actually drive results.
What makes this powerful is not the scale of change, but the consistency. There was a great reference to the idea of compounding—how small improvements, repeated over time, lead to exponential outcomes. Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, but underestimate what they can achieve in five.
And that’s the opportunity.
Because while others are chasing quick wins or jumping between strategies, the businesses that grow sustainably are the ones making steady, deliberate improvements. They understand their numbers. They focus on what works. And they keep refining it.
Stop chasing growth, it’s something you build—one lever at a time.
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