Why Growth at All Costs Is the Enemy of Lasting Success
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Key Takeaways
- Chasing growth at all costs leads to betraying customers. Some of the most well-known companies siphon value from their customers while gradually letting their original product degrade.
- Loyalty comes from offering long-term solutions. We stop being valuable the moment what we sell stops working as advertised.
- Sustainable growth requires you to maintain the quality of your product, but it also requires you to maintain goodwill with your existing customers.
The single most important thing a company can do, if you believe most self-styled business gurus, is grow. This seems self-evident at first. Conventional wisdom tells us a growing business is more profitable, less vulnerable to competition, and more sustainable in the long run.
But that isn’t always the case.
Responsible growth often achieves these goals, but pursuing growth at all costs usually works against them. And growing responsibly requires you to maintain the quality of what you offer so you can build long-term loyalty through consistent customer experience.
Chasing Growth at All Costs Leads to Betraying Customers
You may have recognized a pattern at some of the world’s most prominent companies in recent years, especially within the tech world: a business creates something with obvious value for a lot of people, locks in its customers, and then spends the rest of its existence finding new ways to siphon value from those customers while gradually letting their original product degrade.
Various people have used different names for this, like vampire capitalism, extractivism, and platform decay. And if you take a moment to think, you can probably come up with at least a handful of examples where you’ve witnessed this over the last few years alone.
Social media platforms that once made it easier to connect with family and friends have become anxiety-inducing feeds full of ads and misinformation. Ride-sharing services that initially offered more convenient alternatives to taxis have become unpredictable and unreliable for many users, in part due to dynamic pricing algorithms that capitalize on genuine need. Inventors of once-revolutionary consumer technology are now forcing users to replace expensive devices through planned obsolescence while aggressively opposing right-to-repair laws.
But the companies you’re thinking of are probably household names, right? These strategies have been employed repeatedly by some of the largest global brands. They are so prominent that naming them here might risk legal trouble.
So am I proving myself wrong? Doesn’t this suggest that selling out your customers to make a quick buck is a viable growth strategy?
In a word: no. These companies are exceptions that prove the rule. Most businesses cannot sustain such behavior because they depend on loyal customers—not users addicted to their platforms.
That means we have to keep offering people solutions that actually work.
Loyalty Comes from Offering Long-Term Solutions
Not every business needs loyal customers, but most do. The only real exceptions are: A) if you run a monopoly; B) if you have a product people can’t stop using regardless of how bad it gets or how much they might hate it; or C) both.
How many of the companies you imagined earlier check at least one of those boxes? Probably all of them. But what about your business?
If you run a startup, you likely don’t have a monopoly. And since industries dominated by products people can’t stop using are ruthlessly controlled by big players, you probably don’t meet qualifications B or C either.
That means earning loyalty is essential to your success. Businesses selling physical products or performing on-site services are especially incentivized to do this because the value of what they do can be seen and felt. We stop being valuable the moment what we sell stops working as advertised.
The roof rejuvenation spray treatment offered by Roof Maxx reliably restores the flexibility of aging and brittle asphalt shingles for five years per application. Suitable rooftops can be treated up to three times, potentially extending their usable lifespan by 15 years. But we’re only able to earn that repeat business by having a reliable product. That’s why we back it with a five-year warranty and conduct rigorous testing at regular intervals.
Our goal is for every homeowner who tries our restoration solution to keep using it as long as it benefits their roof and to recommend it to others. We don’t grow by cutting corners; we grow by delivering value that sparks genuine excitement. Because excitement is contagious.
Effective Maintenance Applies to More Than Just Product Quality
Of course, a business is more than just its flagship product. Maintaining customer experience is about more than what you sell. You also have to consider how you sell it.
Roof Maxx dealers are trained to conduct thorough assessments of each prospective customer’s roof before recommending our restoration solution. This ensures our product is only applied to rooftops that will benefit from it. Dealers also perform tune-ups on eligible roofs before spraying the shingles, fixing minor issues like nail pops. This addresses vulnerabilities that could otherwise lead to damage post-treatment and allows us to offer comprehensive restorations instead of just a spray-on product.
Sustainable growth requires maintaining not only the quality of your product but also goodwill with your existing customers. That means reducing friction with your brand at every opportunity instead of stress-testing customer relationships to see how much value you can extract before they leave.
Growth matters, yes. But you have to maintain what you grow if you want it to thrive.
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