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.

I steadily grew my company, Roof Maxx, from a fledgling business offering restorations for asphalt shingle residential rooftops into an eight-figure home service brand with dealers across North America. But we’ve always had one constant rule: We never chase revenue in ways that compromise the value we deliver.

Here’s why.

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 I bet that if you take a moment to think, you can come up with at least a handful of examples just off the top of your head where you’ve watched this happen in just 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 once offered a more convenient alternative to taxis have become unpredictable and unreliable for many users, thanks to the introduction of dynamic pricing that takes advantage of genuine need. Inventors of once-revolutionary consumer technology are now repaying users by forcing them to replace their expensive devices via planned obsolescence and aggressively fighting right-to-repair laws.

But let me guess: These companies you’re thinking of are all household names, right? It’s true that this strategy has been used over and over again by some of the biggest brands in the world. In fact, the ones I’m thinking of are so big that I won’t name them here, because I prefer not to get sued.

So am I proving myself wrong here? Doesn’t this suggest that selling out your customers to make a quick buck is actually a viable growth strategy?

In a word: No. These companies are the exceptions that prove the rule. Most of us can’t get away with that kind of behavior because we depend on customers who are loyal, not users who are addicted.

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 company, 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 a moment ago check at least one of those boxes? All of them, probably. But what about yours?

If you run a startup, you already don’t have a monopoly. And since most industries based around products people can’t stop using are ruthlessly dominated by big players, you probably don’t meet qualifications B or C either.

That means earning loyalty is essential to your success as a business. Businesses that sell physical products or perform on-site services are especially incentivized to do this because the value of what we do can be seen and felt. We stop being valuable the moment what we sell stops working as advertised.

The roof rejuvenation spray treatment Roof Maxx offers 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, so we make it official with a five-year warranty and conduct rigorous testing at regular intervals.

Our goal is for e