Grow Your Online Business OR Develop Your Online Business. Which?

Over the weekend I was reading The Ecology of Commerce, a book by Paul Hawken.

In it he referenced the difference between the ideas of “grow” and “develop,” a very powerful and incisive distinction. And I was delighted because the distinction directly and beautifully bears on the internal elements—the internality—of Soft Sell, heart-based, soul-based marketing.

To grow means to increase in size and amount by gradual external addition.

To develop means to bring out the capabilities or possibilities of something or someone.

One is a quantitative increase in value by adding from the outside and the other is a qualitative appreciation of value through evolving from within.

Following Hawken, the distinction is that when your business grows it gets bigger whereas when it develops it gets better.

This is a whole new way to look at your soft sell business. So let’s do that.

The answer to the title question is, of course, Both.

Your business cannot be successful based wholly on externals (grow) nor can you be successful based wholly on internals (develop). To operate in an either/or modality would be like amputating one limb for the sake of the other, which works only when one limb is diseased or has been damaged beyond repair.

Just take yourself.

You grow by incorporating that which is around you—knowledge, colleagues, techniques—and you develop by assimilating them into who you are and how you live and work.Or, for example, physical growth follows biological laws that must be obeyed whereas personal development is akin to principles that you evolve over time which form the foundation of your being in the world.

From what we’ve experienced in our time on the Internet, many of the marketers – I would even say most – are focused exclusively on growth (which is true of business in general). One of the major mantras we’ve heard from those whose determination is exclusively money is—don’t invent, improve.

Their logic is apt in that, if your objective is the stockpiling of financial wealth, should you invent something, a product or an approach, you would have to educate the buying public as to what you have and how it benefits them. If money is your sole goal, then that takes far too long to be worth the time and effort.

If you simply improve something that’s already in the marketplace, there’s no need for the education, because the marketplace is already familiar with whatever you’re marketing. All you have to do is make consumers aware of the improvements you’ve made, so neither you nor your buying public are starting from scratch.

So growth in this example means the continuous increase of cash in your store.

The soft sell marketers we’ve met on the Internet, almost to the person, are focused largely on development. Their products and services are a personal expression of who they are and what they’ve had to invent to solve some issue they encountered in their lives.

Judith and I, for example, offer a product we call Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous http://overcomingthefearofbeingfabulous.com (OFoBF) a very effective program for getting out of your own way so you can achieve what you claim you want.

OFoBF is not a work of theory. Nor is it based on the work of some success guru. It’s what we had to do to dissolve the barriers we carried in our unconscious that ruled no matter what kind of talent, opportunities, or ambition we felt. In short, we were stuck in our own unconscious.

Are there other like programs in the marketplace. In general, yes. But nothing we could draw from that workd, although we tried. So we had to invent our own.

Our approach is very different, based as it is, in depth work vis a vis the unconscious. So we have had to, and continue to have to, educate the first-time visitor to our OFoBF site as to what exactly we have and how they will benefit.

So development in this example means uncovering and expressing our own capabilities—a very personal process that is ongoing.

Our growth stems from the outreach (marketing) we do and the results (sales) we achieve, and the testimonials we receive praising the value of Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous .

Our development is expressed in how what we take in from the outside (the externals) and how it moves us to deeper and deeper levels of our own understanding of what Overcoming the Fear of Being Fabulous is (the internals) and the insights we experience that allow us, in fact compel us, to make the changes, adjustments, and tweaks that are called for (invent and improve).

So, how do you view your business? Are you growth oriented, development oriented, or both?

Both we hope.

Because It’s All in the Connection,

Judith & Jim