Growing businesses usually don’t stall because of a lack of effort. More often, they stall because certain conversations aren’t happening. The ones that feel awkward, or that nobody has time for, or that the owner has been quietly avoiding.
There are lots of conversations a business needs, but three come up again and again.
1. The money conversation
This is the one most business owners put off longest. It includes:
- With yourself: what does the business actually earn, by client and by offer? Where’s the profit? Where’s the cash going?
- With clients: pricing, scope, payment terms, raising rates, what happens when work goes beyond the agreement.
- With your professionals: your bookkeeper and accountant, about taxes, cash flow, and whether the business can afford the growth you’re planning.
Growth without clarity on money is how businesses end up busier and broker at the same time. Why Women Entrepreneurs Must Talk About Money goes into this.
2. The capacity conversation
This is the honest conversation about what you and your business can actually handle:
- How many clients can you serve well, with your current setup?
- What are you doing that someone else should be doing?
- What breaks if you take on 30% more work?
- What would need to change first: processes, people, tools, pricing?
Skipping this conversation is how growth turns into burnout. Having it early is how growth turns into a bigger business. See Hire, Wait or Fix?
3. The outside-perspective conversation
The first two conversations are hard to have alone, because you’re too close to the business. The third conversation is with people outside it, peers who’ll look at your situation and say what they see.
This is where blind spots get caught. The pricing that’s too low. The client that’s costing more than it pays. The offer that’s confusing people. The growth plan that skips a step. You can’t see these from inside, no matter how smart you are.
Why these get avoided
- They can be uncomfortable.
- Nobody’s forcing you to have them.
- Client work always feels more urgent.
- There’s no obvious person to have them with.
Make them regular
The fix is to schedule them. A monthly look at your numbers. A quarterly capacity check. A standing conversation with peers. Once they’re routine, they stop being scary.
For the third one, WEN Round Tables are a good place to start: small, honest conversations with women running real businesses, on Zoom. Related reading: What Good Business Conversations Actually Look Like.
