Ever since I read Eric Ries’s new book called Incorruptible, I’ve been obsessed with why good companies go bad.
You know the drill:
- A beloved tool gets bought by a firm that’s known for de-prioritizing product improvements while jacking up the price for remaining users
- A fixture in the S&P100 (that you personally own a lot of stock in) chases short-term margin and ends up destroying their brand reputation (and some of your retirement funds)
- A long-standing company ends up getting bought by private equity, loaded up with debt, and going bankrupt.
Some of these decisions (like Nike’s) are by design, championed by leadership.
Some of these decisions were foisted on the companies due to hostile takeovers or pressure from activist shareholders.
Others were made because the board’s legal and fiduciary obligations changed once the company was put up for sale. Under the Delaware legal standard known as Revlon, when certain sales or changes of control are underway, directors must focus on securing the best value reasonably available for shareholders—even if another buyer might be a better long-term steward of the company.
But ultimately, as Ries argues, without layers of strong governance, companies fall into the pull of financial gravity.
As Ries defines it, financial gravity is “the psychological pressure that shapes behavior and, eventually, values based on the desire to succeed at future transactions. ”
He describes this as an involuntary transmission of values: “Financial systems, by their nature, transmit values, not just money.”
Ries traces this dynamic through companies with strong founder ethos—including Whole Foods, FedMart, and Toys R Us—to show how the original values of an institution can become increasingly difficult to protect as financial pressures accumulate.
The pressure for money, the pressure to appease Wall Street, the pressure to follow corporate “best practices” can all slowly erode the ethos that made a company special in the first place.
Ok, so what does this have to do with us, who run solo businesses not impacted by a board or the stock market?
We feel a different pressure. Scale Gravity.
Instead of feeling the pull of the stock market and analyst expectations, we feel the pressure and pull of the online entrepreneurship game to grow bigger.
More followers.
More revenue.
Larger launches.
Larger programs.
More famous guests.
Bigger stages.
Bigger logos.
Because all of these are visible proxies of status and success.
The systems that confer money, access, attention, and prestige teach us what a successful business is “supposed” to look like. Eventually, we start optimizing for those measures—even when they conflict with the business we actually wanted to build.
And we feel this pressure even if we’re not sure we like what it’s doing to us or our businesses.
Take social media. You know that posting a more inflammatory reel or going more beginner or broader with your content will get more clicks and views. So you do.
Or email. You know that emailing every day will make more sales, even though you cringe at every email you send.
You feel the tension to signal premium with your prices… even though you know what the pocketbook of your client looks like and what most of them legitimately can (or should) afford.
You feel pressured to expand your programs, add co-coaches, and fuel them with ads to hit those sweet revenue numbers that will get attention… even when the structure starts making it harder to deliver the results the smaller program was designed to produce.
Because that’s the game. We feel the implicit (and often explicit) call to optimize for views, engineer for revenue, and design for scale.
And scale often begets more scale.
Your book can’t hit the NYT best seller list without thousands of buyers from tens of thousands of fans. And you can get more or or charge more for those speaking engagements when you hit the NYT list.
You aren’t invited to the $1M revenue rooms without hitting the $1M revenue mark. I’d love to be a member of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) or go to a Baby Bathwater event, but you have to run a $1M business first.
It’s incredibly hard to resist Scale Gravity.
I feel the pressure all of the time.
When I see people with tens (or hundreds) of thousands of LinkedIn followers, I wonder: should this be me?
When I see authors like Dorie Clark trying to get 100,000 IG followers to better promote her next book, I feel a not-small twinge of envy.
When I hear about thousand-person memberships that grew within their first year, I wonder what I’m doing wrong.
At my price points and with the business I’m choosing to build, I’m unlikely to have a $1M launch or even a $1M revenue year, even though I really desire to be in some of the conversations and networks those numbers unlock.
But defying gravity, at least for now, is the right move in my business.
I desire to be well-known, but in small niches.
I desire the breakout, not the keynote.
I deeply value knowing every person in my Membership and what they’re working on.
When it comes to pricing, I’m not asking, “What’s the most I can possibly charge?” I’m asking, “What’s the reasonable range for this offer, for these buyers, given the economics of their businesses?” And then I tend to anchor toward the lower end.
But values aren’t enough.
If values aren’t enough to protect companies from financial gravity, they’re probably not enough to protect us from Scale Gravity either.
It’s easy for me to say I value intimacy. It’s easy to say I don’t want to build the biggest possible Membership. It’s easy to say I’m building a right-sized business. But then I could keep on selling as the call to earn more, to serve more, or simply to hit a revenue threshold (a six-figure community!) comes within reach.
I don’t want to just state my values, but actively build the structures that reinforce and protect those values.
So as of this month, the Deeper Foundations Membership will be capped at 250 members.
The Membership has grown rapidly since the last launch, going from 130 members in June to close to 250 as of today, almost doubling in size in just 3 months.
It’s a vibrant community in the best way for me: lots of people showing up live on calls to work together, so much support and connection in the chat/DMs/comments, with a comparatively low post volume in the forum.
That growth has fundamentally changed me and my business model in the best ways.
And I’m sure I could keep growing it for a long time. It’s at a wonderfully accessible price point of $50/month, with the most amazing humans on the internet. At its current price and size, it doesn’t even fully support my revenue needs by itself yet.
But… I don’t want to keep growing it.
It’s important to me to protect the intimacy. To make sure every member feels seen and welcome, and to preserve and strengthen the culture now that we’re a new size.
So as of September 30, the Membership will be capped at 250 members. Even though we only have a few spots remaining, I’m keeping the doors open until EOD Wednesday so people who don’t check their email on the weekends are able to join before we cap the membership.
Each month, we’ll open up the doors for 5 days to anyone on the Membership waitlist, and spots will be limited based on the number of people who have exited.
This isn’t a false urgency play: it’s a way to make sure everyone has an amazing experience as a Member.
If you’ve wanted to join the Membership, or just heard about it through the Solo Consultant Summit or Business Growth, Simplified, the doors will be open through this Wednesday, September 30.
- Learn: The Five Foundations Curriculum, Monthly expert trainings and the Library
- Do: Weekly Sacred Sales Hour (now in EU timezone!) and Planning, as well as monthly Tending and Metrics calls.
- Apply: Quick reference guides, trackers, and an ever-expanding interactive Tools Hub
- Connect: Seasonal challenges, Q&A calls, an amazing forum, and monthly connection calls
- Plus a 1:1 strategy/welcome call with me
250 members is enough to build the business I want to build. And sometimes, deciding what’s enough is the best way to defy gravity.