How We Chose Not to Scale: A Deep Dive into Our Business Growth Strategy

00:00:00: - It's time for the next episode of our podcast.

00:00:03: - And today, we talk about business,

00:00:06: - because we talk about the importance of growth

00:00:10: - when running a business.

00:00:11: - And we also talk about how we handled that, handled

00:00:15: - and handled that growth topic.

00:00:18: - Right.

00:00:19: - And I think it's also important to say right away

00:00:22: - that there, of course, are different kinds of growth.

00:00:25: - You can talk about revenue growth.

00:00:27: - You can talk about growth in the number of employees

00:00:33: - and probably some other measures as well, I would assume.

00:00:38: - And of course, all these things are also kind of related.

00:00:42: - And we specifically made a decision,

00:00:45: - like in 2018 already, I would say,

00:00:49: - that we don't want to grow the number of employees a lot

00:00:55: - or at all, right?

00:00:57: - At all, because what you typically learn

00:01:00: - also at university and at school,

00:01:02: - we have a business administration background

00:01:04: - from an educational perspective,

00:01:06: - is that to grow, you need to make your business bigger.

00:01:11: - So bigger in terms of you need more employees,

00:01:14: - you need more people to outsource tasks, for example,

00:01:18: - that can do things you did before

00:01:19: - so that you can focus onto the core business, so to say.

00:01:23: - So this could be supporting activities,

00:01:25: - this could be a marketing department,

00:01:27: - whatever you want to call it.

00:01:28: - And the problem we saw quite early,

00:01:31: - if we grow our company that way,

00:01:34: - we will lose the focus on the actual content creation,

00:01:38: - which was also the reason why we started that company.

00:01:41: - So the problem is, the bigger you get,

00:01:44: - the more employees you have,

00:01:46: - the less you do what you initially started.

00:01:49: - Yeah, the less you do what you like to do, right?

00:01:52: - I mean, maybe there definitely are people

00:01:54: - who like managing people

00:01:57: - and who like running a business as a manager

00:02:01: - and growing a business and having more employees,

00:02:04: - but that's not what we like.

00:02:07: - And we found out that we don't like that relatively early,

00:02:10: - thank God, because you hear a lot about other creators,

00:02:16: - be that on YouTube or also instructors like us

00:02:19: - who think that, well, they start earning money,

00:02:23: - now they need to hire people

00:02:25: - so that they can create more videos, better videos,

00:02:29: - or create more courses in our case, whatever.

00:02:32: - And as you said, they start doing things

00:02:35: - they don't really like that much,

00:02:37: - and they reduce the amount of time they spend

00:02:41: - on the things they actually do enjoy.

00:02:43: - So then they end up in that weird situation

00:02:46: - where you started a business,

00:02:49: - you started doing something because you liked it,

00:02:52: - but then you end up in a situation

00:02:54: - where you are only doing things

00:02:56: - or mostly doing things you don't like.

00:02:59: - And that's a situation we did not want to get into,

00:03:03: - and we're fine with sacrificing some potential growth

00:03:08: - because obviously we're limited.

00:03:09: - We can't scale infinitely if it's just the two of us

00:03:13: - with some freelancers, but it's mostly just the two of us.

00:03:16: - Obviously, that means that we can't scale infinitely

00:03:20: - revenue-wise and also regarding our output,

00:03:23: - which of course correlates with the revenue.

00:03:25: - On the other hand,

00:03:26: - this approach has one big advantage for us

00:03:29: - and I guess also for students,

00:03:31: - still the courses are made by us.

00:03:34: - So there is no other person talking in the courses,

00:03:37: - no other person prepares the courses,

00:03:40: - and every single minute of content that gets published

00:03:44: - is reviewed by one of us.

00:03:46: - So we have the full control of the content that is created

00:03:50: - because we create it on our own.

00:03:52: - And if you think about our Academy platform, for example,

00:03:55: - then we have 50 courses,

00:03:57: - and in these 50 courses, you see one of these two faces.

00:04:00: - So as Max said,

00:04:02: - we could have grown this platform a lot bigger

00:04:04: - and have like 100, 200 courses,

00:04:07: - also covering topics we are not experts in,

00:04:10: - but for our approach, for our goal personally,

00:04:13: - how we want to run this company,

00:04:15: - but also because we discussed this a few years ago,

00:04:18: - we want to make sure that our content is created by us

00:04:22: - and we don't become another course content platform

00:04:25: - that offers courses created by 50 different instructors.

00:04:30: - And I don't want to talk bad about such platforms,

00:04:34: - that's totally fine to do it like that,

00:04:35: - but for us, our approach is the more satisfying one,

00:04:40: - I would say,

00:04:41: - and we also feel better to sell courses

00:04:45: - because our courses obviously cost money

00:04:48: - when the people know, okay,

00:04:50: - I know what I get when paying a course on academy.com.

00:04:53: - Yeah, absolutely.

00:04:54: - And it's also that thing I, and you also mentioned before,

00:04:59: - that we want to do what we enjoy.

00:05:02: - And of course we don't necessarily enjoy

00:05:05: - every single aspect of creating every single course

00:05:10: - and like all jobs, and this is a job in the end,

00:05:14: - there are days where you are not all just smiling

00:05:18: - the entire day and it's super great,

00:05:20: - but I think it's fair to say we like what we do.

00:05:24: - And we started doing what we do because we wanted to do it.

00:05:27: - And it's good that we can still do the things we like.

00:05:33: - We can still prepare the courses ourselves,

00:05:36: - build the slides, the demo projects,

00:05:38: - come up with the curriculum, do all these things.

00:05:43: - And also, and that's another important aspect in my opinion,

00:05:47: - if you start hiring a lot of people,

00:05:49: - you need to give these people work to do

00:05:52: - because that's why you hired them.

00:05:54: - But what if you decide that you now,

00:05:58: - you maybe want to take a break for like a couple of months,

00:06:01: - you want to travel the world,

00:06:02: - or maybe there is some other project you're excited about

00:06:07: - and you want to invest more time

00:06:09: - like we did in improving our website,

00:06:11: - or you maybe want to try out some new technologies

00:06:15: - where you don't necessarily know yet

00:06:17: - if you'll be able to create a course on them

00:06:19: - or where maybe you know there isn't a lot of demand for that

00:06:22: - but still for personal reasons,

00:06:24: - I might want to learn some new programming language.

00:06:26: - All these things become much harder

00:06:29: - if you have employees who need work

00:06:31: - because you can't just tell them,

00:06:34: - hey, I'm doing something else.

00:06:36: - You sit here and do something if there is nothing to do.

00:06:40: - I mean, it might sound like a great job initially

00:06:42: - if you get paid for not doing anything,

00:06:44: - but I guess everyone can relate

00:06:46: - that this is not how you want to be treated as an employee.

00:06:50: - And I totally agree.

00:06:51: - And there are two other factors that you have to consider

00:06:53: - when having employees.

00:06:55: - As you said, you need to give them work,

00:06:57: - but to give them work also means

00:06:59: - that you need to take your time

00:07:01: - to talk to your employees about the work

00:07:03: - because you can't just tell them build X, Y, Z

00:07:06: - and then done.

00:07:06: - You have to review these things

00:07:08: - and your people might also have questions

00:07:11: - because you have something in your mind.

00:07:13: - You might take a paper and show them

00:07:16: - this is what it should look like,

00:07:17: - but that's your idea.

00:07:18: - But the person or the employee

00:07:20: - has to turn this into a reality, a digital reality.

00:07:24: - And this again means they will come back to you

00:07:26: - not only once a week, but every day maybe.

00:07:29: - So if you have 10 employees

00:07:30: - and you have to talk to each of these 10 minutes per day,

00:07:34: - have fun.

00:07:35: - It's two hours per day.

00:07:36: - It's two hours per day.

00:07:36: - It's okay to do that,

00:07:37: - but it's a decision you have to make

00:07:39: - if you want to do that.

00:07:40: - You become a manager.

00:07:41: - Indeed.

00:07:42: - And the second point is the way we work is not very strict.

00:07:47: - So we make a decision.

00:07:49: - We say that's how we want to do it.

00:07:51: - And then we see, no, that doesn't work.

00:07:52: - Let's change it.

00:07:53: - We can do this because we run this company,

00:07:55: - but your employees, if you constantly change your mind,

00:07:59: - we don't change our mind every day,

00:08:00: - but generally it is possible that we decide two weeks ago,

00:08:04: - we do this and that.

00:08:06: - And then we find out, no, we have another focus now.

00:08:08: - But for employees, this is crazy

00:08:10: - because how can they dive into a project,

00:08:14: - focus onto that,

00:08:15: - learn things they need to understand to finish this project.

00:08:18: - And then you hear, oh, well,

00:08:19: - actually this project doesn't matter anymore.

00:08:22: - Yeah, it totally destroys motivation.

00:08:24: - Totally.

00:08:24: - It's the same with our courses.

00:08:26: - I mean, we have started working on courses

00:08:29: - and spend hours or weeks on courses,

00:08:32: - which we then threw away

00:08:33: - because we weren't happy with the quality.

00:08:36: - You can't do that with employees.

00:08:39: - I guess you can, but if you do it too often,

00:08:41: - that's simply not great.

00:08:43: - This is not a job you want to have.

00:08:46: - And this is, as you said, flexibility we have

00:08:49: - because we have this super small team,

00:08:52: - which is essentially the two of us.

00:08:54: - And I totally agree.

00:08:56: - That is a huge advantage we have here.

00:08:59: - At the same point, we also have a disadvantage

00:09:03: - because we run this company for seven years now.

00:09:07: - And we certainly have specific skills

00:09:10: - that allow us to run this company that long,

00:09:13: - but we also lack certain capabilities

00:09:16: - because we don't have employees.

00:09:18: - Because when managing people, you also learn,

00:09:20: - well, how to work with people,

00:09:23: - how to manage a project,

00:09:25: - how to assign people to a project.

00:09:27: - How to communicate.

00:09:28: - How to communicate.

00:09:29: - We talked about this earlier this year,

00:09:31: - actually quite often,

00:09:32: - that we are lacking certain skills,

00:09:34: - certain capabilities that you should have

00:09:36: - after running a successful company for seven years now.

00:09:40: - So I guess it all has its price, so to say,

00:09:44: - but for us, it perfectly works the way it is at the moment,

00:09:48: - though we certainly see some restrictions.

00:09:50: - And when I think about that,

00:09:52: - I want to jump to another topic

00:09:54: - because at the beginning you said

00:09:56: - that growth can be defined differently.

00:09:59: - Revenue, employees, amount of content produced.

00:10:03: - And we don't only limit ourselves

00:10:06: - regarding the employees we have.

00:10:08: - We also limit ourselves regarding the growth

00:10:11: - in terms of revenue.

00:10:13: - Because for example, we never did.

00:10:17: - No, I guess we never did any kind of paid collaboration.

00:10:21: - We might consider doing something like that in the future

00:10:23: - if it works, because as I just mentioned,

00:10:25: - we want to grow as business people also,

00:10:28: - so we might see if this works.

00:10:29: - But still, so far, our core focus was to grow this company

00:10:35: - solely based on our content, that's all.

00:10:37: - We also have no advertisements on our website, for example,

00:10:41: - nothing like that.

00:10:42: - And that's absolutely true.

00:10:46: - These are deliberate decisions

00:10:49: - because, also because this allows us to keep our flexibility

00:10:55: - and our freedom, right?

00:10:57: - If you have a lot of collaborations,

00:10:59: - you again have a lot of requirements

00:11:01: - or demands that must be met.

00:11:03: - You have contracts and we are pretty free there.

00:11:07: - We do, of course, have some obligations,

00:11:09: - but we're generally pretty flexible

00:11:12: - and we decide on our own how we want to spend our time

00:11:16: - or on which projects we want to focus.

00:11:18: - And this was one of the reasons why we became self-employed,

00:11:23: - why we started this,

00:11:24: - and that's why it's really a great thing

00:11:27: - that we're still mostly able to do that.

00:11:30: - Because I think one thing a lot of,

00:11:34: - or maybe not a lot of,

00:11:35: - but some people have when they start growing,

00:11:38: - no matter if that means that they're hiring employees

00:11:41: - or that they start accepting a lot of collaboration offers

00:11:46: - and enter a lot of contracts and obligations,

00:11:49: - I think some of these people then realize

00:11:53: - that now suddenly they feel employed again.

00:11:56: - Because yes, it's their business, it was their decision,

00:12:00: - and theoretically they can revert these decisions,

00:12:03: - though obviously it's not that easy

00:12:05: - to get rid of employees.

00:12:07: - It's hard for legal reasons in Germany,

00:12:09: - but even if you're in a different country,

00:12:12: - there is like a moral obligation as well.

00:12:15: - You're dealing with humans.

00:12:16: - So it's possible, but it's hard.

00:12:19: - And suddenly you are yourself an employee again.

00:12:23: - You could feel like this.

00:12:25: - And I'm super happy that for us, this is not the case.

00:12:28: - And that's also not limited to employees.

00:12:30: - As you said, if you have any kind of collaborations,

00:12:32: - any kind of contracts stating that you have

00:12:34: - to publish a video about topic XYZ on Friday,

00:12:38: - then you have to do that, right?

00:12:40: - You have to, you have a contract.

00:12:41: - So you can't say,

00:12:42: - oh, I don't think that's a topic I'm interested in now.

00:12:46: - And I guess the core problem is,

00:12:48: - and that's something everybody

00:12:50: - who is having his own company faces at some time,

00:12:53: - you have to be careful if you only chase the money.

00:12:57: - That's a big problem,

00:12:58: - especially in the online education

00:13:00: - or in the content creation world,

00:13:01: - because there are plenty of opportunities to make money.

00:13:04: - I guess we can say that we didn't try too many of these,

00:13:07: - but you know that money can be made online.

00:13:10: - So you can make lots of money

00:13:13: - if you have lots of collaborations,

00:13:15: - if you have lots of people having an impact

00:13:19: - on the way you do your work, right?

00:13:22: - But the more you commit yourself

00:13:24: - to such money-based decisions, as you said,

00:13:27: - the less you will be your own boss,

00:13:29: - because all you do is working on a list of topics,

00:13:34: - on a list of deliverables that you have to do.

00:13:36: - And that, in my opinion,

00:13:37: - is the definition of not being self-employed.

00:13:40: - It's the definition of having a normal job, right?

00:13:43: - This also maybe leads to a topic

00:13:45: - we will talk about in another video

00:13:47: - about this whole trend that many people quit YouTube now.

00:13:50: - So we'll talk about this in a separate video,

00:13:52: - but I guess losing that initial drive,

00:13:55: - that initial job you actually did

00:13:58: - when starting your own YouTube channel,

00:13:59: - your own course creation company,

00:14:02: - whatever you want to call it,

00:14:04: - this chasing money attitude,

00:14:07: - which I can totally understand, by the way,

00:14:09: - in my opinion, leads to many, many problems

00:14:12: - the longer you do this kind of job.

00:14:14: - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:14:16: - And I think there is a huge danger

00:14:20: - if you start your own company,

00:14:24: - or I guess that's a bit too vague

00:14:26: - because different companies have different requirements,

00:14:28: - but if you are a creator,

00:14:31: - or if you do something like we do,

00:14:33: - create online videos or courses,

00:14:35: - do something which you can do on your own.

00:14:37: - If you do something like this,

00:14:39: - then I think there is a danger

00:14:40: - that you feel almost pressured

00:14:45: - to hire people and to grow

00:14:47: - and to not keep on doing that on your own

00:14:51: - because that is what a lot of people tell you.

00:14:54: - That's what the business theory kind of tells you, right?

00:14:59: - It's what we learn in university, as you said.

00:15:01: - So you can really feel the pressure

00:15:04: - to grow your number of employees

00:15:07: - and hire people and so on.

00:15:09: - And I think it's worth

00:15:12: - to at least think about this critically

00:15:14: - and think about what you really want.

00:15:17: - And even if you could theoretically scale your business

00:15:21: - to a multi-million, or depending on the idea,

00:15:24: - maybe even more than that,

00:15:27: - business, the question is, is that what you want?

00:15:31: - Because if you don't want it,

00:15:32: - I'd say chances are high that you will also not succeed

00:15:36: - because if you're doing something you don't like,

00:15:39: - you can't do it forever.

00:15:40: - If you end up in a job you don't like,

00:15:43: - if you end up being a manager

00:15:45: - when you don't wanna be a manager,

00:15:46: - you won't be a good manager

00:15:48: - and you won't be able to do that forever, I think.

00:15:54: - Now, of course, you can gather some skills,

00:15:56: - you can improve, you can learn being a manager

00:15:59: - and that might be something that might work for you

00:16:02: - and everything's great then,

00:16:03: - but it is at least worth thinking about that.

00:16:06: - And it's not a good idea, in my opinion,

00:16:09: - to do something just because you think you have to do it

00:16:12: - because everyone does it like that.

00:16:14: - That's not how you should do it,

00:16:16: - at least that's not how we did it

00:16:17: - and thus far, I think we're fine with that,

00:16:20: - even if it means, as you said,

00:16:23: - that we, of course, also limit our revenue growth

00:16:26: - because obviously we won't become a multi-billion company,

00:16:31: - I guess we never would have with creating courses,

00:16:35: - but if it's just the two of us, we definitely won't

00:16:38: - and that is more than fine.

00:16:39: - I guess you will have to accept

00:16:41: - that you will miss opportunities

00:16:44: - because if you always want to make the best

00:16:48: - out of anything you can get, then you won't succeed.

00:16:51: - And as you talked about,

00:16:52: - or as we talked about this theory you learn,

00:16:55: - once again, as you said,

00:16:56: - it totally depends on what you want,

00:16:58: - but you also learned that you should take your money,

00:17:01: - invest it into marketing, for example,

00:17:03: - it's not important to be profitable,

00:17:04: - you should maybe have investors in your company

00:17:07: - providing money to grow your company faster.

00:17:09: - You can do all this stuff,

00:17:11: - but once again, at least in our opinion,

00:17:13: - you have to be aware of the fact

00:17:15: - that you lose control about your own company,

00:17:18: - about the thing you started,

00:17:19: - and what you don't do then is you maybe won't sleep well

00:17:23: - because we sleep well, we can say this,

00:17:26: - and this is a profitable company

00:17:28: - because we have control about our costs

00:17:32: - and we also have control about the people

00:17:34: - who are invested into this company

00:17:35: - because these people are sitting here.

00:17:37: - So that's another thing you have to be very aware of.

00:17:41: - As Max said, think about the way

00:17:44: - or the type of company that you want to have.

00:17:47: - If you want to grow it as fast as possible

00:17:49: - and have a multi-million, multi-billion exit,

00:17:53: - do your best, try it, if it works, great,

00:17:57: - but if that's not your goal,

00:17:59: - if you just want to have your own business

00:18:01: - and do your stuff, in our case, creating content,

00:18:04: - then at least for people like us,

00:18:07: - at the moment, that's the current state of our company,

00:18:10: - this works way better.

00:18:12: - Yeah, absolutely.

00:18:13: - And as you said, you can definitely follow

00:18:16: - a lot of different paths

00:18:18: - and all these paths exist for good reasons

00:18:20: - and obviously it's fine

00:18:23: - and there also are certain business ideas

00:18:27: - which probably won't work without investors.

00:18:30: - Like if you're now building a company that trains AI models,

00:18:34: - you need a lot of compute power,

00:18:35: - you probably won't be able to afford that on your own

00:18:39: - or you don't want to take all the risk on your own

00:18:40: - and that's a different story.

00:18:42: - Obviously, creating courses has a very low cost footprint,

00:18:48: - there isn't a lot of things we have to pay for,

00:18:51: - it's some equipment and so on, but that's about it.

00:18:55: - So that, of course, differs,

00:18:56: - but since a lot of people are pursuing these careers

00:19:00: - on YouTube or Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is

00:19:03: - and online careers, solopreneur careers in general,

00:19:08: - I think it's pretty important to always think about

00:19:13: - what your next steps should be

00:19:15: - and if you really wanna hire people and grow, grow, grow

00:19:19: - or if your path to happiness maybe is

00:19:23: - to stay a bit smaller, to stay independent

00:19:27: - and then hopefully keep the fun in your business

00:19:33: - because that is super important.

00:19:35: - It's, I would say, the fuel that powers being self-employed

00:19:40: - and staying self-employed.

00:19:42: - And this, or having fun, also doesn't mean

00:19:45: - that you won't change the way you create your content,

00:19:48: - by the way, you will adapt throughout the years,

00:19:50: - you will grow, you will change the way you create videos,

00:19:53: - you will have times where you create less output,

00:19:56: - take our YouTube channel last year,

00:19:57: - there were less videos than in 2019 or something like that.

00:20:00: - So you will have these different cycles in your company,

00:20:03: - but as you said, if you are aware of the fact

00:20:06: - that you wanna have fun

00:20:08: - or you wanna keep the fun in what you're doing

00:20:09: - and you can earn money with that,

00:20:11: - then that's a great position in my opinion.

00:20:14: - And risking this for greed, for growing

00:20:17: - or for this growth perspective

00:20:19: - that you might see the internet or read in books

00:20:22: - is something you can do,

00:20:25: - but if you don't wanna do it, then just don't do it,

00:20:27: - do your thing and see how it works.

00:20:30: - And I think that's a great summary, right?

00:20:34: - Do what works for you,

00:20:36: - don't feel pressured to do something

00:20:38: - you think you should do.

00:20:41: - And hopefully we could make it clear

00:20:43: - why we made certain decisions

00:20:45: - and how we decided to limit our growth essentially.

00:20:50: - Always as I said, this is our current state,

00:20:52: - maybe in five years we talk differently,

00:20:55: - but things can change,

00:20:56: - especially in business and our world nowadays,

00:20:58: - also in the tech world as we see,

00:21:01: - but this is our take on that.

00:21:03: - Yeah, so as always,

00:21:05: - hopefully we see and hear you back

00:21:07: - or you see us in the next episode.

00:21:09: - And as always,

00:21:10: - definitely also let us know what you think about that.

00:21:12: - Bye.

00:21:13: - Bye.