There is this lingering idea among businesses that growth is and should be limitless.

It’s as if the economy of scale has no ceiling, no curve, no saturation point, and all growth drives proportionate cost savings, operational efficiencies , and technological improvements.

This, of course, is not true, and as many companies are finding out, things like research and development timelines, talent shortages, data storage costs, sales and support demands, and software expenses all conspire to cap growth and expansion , beyond which a company can no longer claim savings from scale .

A company shouldn’t go after more customers until it can sufficiently satisfy and accommodate the ones it already has.

This makes logical sense , but most industries (tech in particular) have been thrown out of whack by IPOs , VC rounds, and a general ‘monkey see, monkey do’ attitude among CEOs .

But are those companies and leadership aware of just how mad our business world has become, what can they do to grow responsibly and in sync with demand?

Avoid sinking money into software

One myth among businesses at any level is that without a large enough customer -base or annual revenue or capital investment, a company cannot commit the funds or the time needed to build out sophisticated software solutions.

What ends up happening is businesses get pressured into sticky contracts with vendors promising short go-to- market times and infrastructure to scale and comprehensive tech support.

Many businesses find that these vendors fall short on delivering all that was promised.

For certain businesses , using the public cloud makes sense (but we’ll get into that in the next section). However, for many mid-sized and enterprise businesses , using low-code development tools to build out solutions in-house can save money without a huge time or talent investment.

Certain low-code platforms are user-friendly enough that you don’t need a dedicated software engineer on staff to create them.

What’s more, these solutions can be tailored to a company‘s particular industry vertical.

And when these tools are homespun, it’s easier for a company to deploy them across their entire software suite. It just takes commitment and foresight.

Grow your talent, don’t buy it

Another common misconception is that top talent is bought, and not developed .

It’s true that if a software company is looking for a decorated full-stack developer in today’s market , it’s going to cost, and that salary may exceed the value the position adds to a company , especially smaller businesses .

But if a company in any industry takes a long view of its goals and what it hopes to provide its customers , they will experience less churn and also be less likely to find themselves in desperate need of a particular position at a critical time.

Consider hiring young, perhaps inexperienced people that can grow with your company . If you take a chance on somebody, and grow their skills in-house and with patience, you may find that that person will stay with the company longer and provide more value than a new recruit, plucked from a competitor with competitor -level salary expectations.

Also, be realistic about what prior knowledge is actually necessary for a given job . In many cases , certain positions are better served by a young person without a four-year degree than a person with a PHD.

The public cloud can get pricey

One of the reasons businesses turn to infrastructure providers is that they can decrease time to market for their products and increase developer speed .

No doubt, there are tremendous benefits for certain companies in using IaaS, but the practice has become so common that many of these infrastructure providers are tipping the scales and benefiting more from these partnerships than those companies who rely on them to stay open and afloat.

It’s also not a set-it and forget-it system. Software companies are still responsible for technical upkeep. Operating systems need to be patched and updated, firewalls need to be audited, and the applications themselves need to be kept up to date. That work is passed onto the customers of IaaS vendors, and these companies often fall behind, in essence reversing much of the technical advantages availed to them by using the public cloud .

For small or new software companies , the public cloud can seem like the only option to scale . But this is not necessarily true, and often this thought-process comes out of the misconception that lightning-fast growth is the only way to compete in today’s market .

Over time, it’s the companies that have invested in their own technology stack, their own data centers , that have found real operational savings.

In fact, some companies that had previously relied on the public cloud , including Dropbox , are slowly moving onto their own servers and discovering huge financial and operational advantages.

Help customers help themselves

Any growing business understands that customer support needs to expand on pace with its user -base.

That being said, there are more ways to offer support than just hiring on or training support agents.

Events like customer meet-ups and free training can serve double duty in both meeting customer support demands as well as fostering community and increasing brand visibility.

Thorough documentation, available in multiple languages , will also alleviate the strain put on customer support agents.

As is true with the examples above, building out a comprehensive software support network takes time.

It works best for companies that favor slow growth and long-term success rather than immediate market penetration and unrealistic growth projections.

That task shouldn’t take more than an hour, most likely less than 30 minutes…

Boris is the wise ol’ CEO of TNW who writes a weekly column on everything about being an entrepreneur in tech — from managing stress to embracing awkwardness. You can get his musings straight to your inbox by signing up for his newsletter!

My Saturday plan, in theory: I’m going to attach these bookshelves to the wall, with 10 screws. Shouldn’t take more than an hour, most likely less than 30 minutes.

My plan, in action: I order the screws, but when they arrive, I find out they’re too big for the pre-drilled holes in the bookshelves. I have no other choice but to buy new screws. I then find out the thinner screws need a thinner drill bit too, and the exact drill bit I need I loaned out to a friend and forgot to ask for it back.

After my second trip to the hardware store, I’m ready for the actual drilling. Then I realize those old boxes I never unpacked after we moved here are right below where I need to drill holes, so I spend an hour opening them, going through stuff, then closing and moving them.

No matter, now it’s time to drill. I drill the first hole and find out the wall is actually a drywall. I keep on drilling and then come to a part where there’s a steel beam behind the drywall. It breaks my drill bit.

The broken drill bit is now firmly lodged in the wall, so no screw will fit in there. I decide to buy two new drill bits at the hardware store, just in case. I now have 8 holes in the wall. The first won’t hold on account of the drywall, and one other has the broken drill bit in it, blocking the hole. The other screws are able to go in as needed.

I hang up the plank, and it’s crooked. Turns out, I straightened it adjacent to a line in the wall that now turns out to be crooked itself. I’ll have to redo the whole thing. 7 hours have passed. I decide to cancel the entire project and make a new plan for next weekend to fix the shelves to another wall that looks more solid.

My guess is it shouldn’t take more than an hour, most likely less than 30 minutes.

Can’t get enough of Boris? Check out his older stories here , and sign up for TNW’s newsletters here .

Turning my startup’s office into an art gallery was a weirdly good business move

I came into the office completely drained after a difficult meeting. But when I looked up I stopped awestruck: someone had hung a painting on the wall. Suddenly the boring hallway had been turned into a room with personality and mood.

My business partner had decided to hang up an abstract painting by modern Ukrainian artist Anton Popernyak he owned. The painting undeniably brightened up the space, but its real value was the course it put us on — turning our office into an art gallery.

Putting on an art exhibition in your office might sound like an indulgent thing to do for a startup, but we discovered that it actually led to a lower turnover rate and increased offer acceptance among candidates we interviewed.

So here’s how we came up with this idea and what results we got from it. Hopefully, it inspires you to do the same!

Why we did it

My business partner is an experienced patron of the greatly underappreciated Ukrainian art scene. He’s always been keen on bringing art closer to people and wanted to help introduce the team to their local culture. I wasn’t as involved in art as he was, but I’ve always cared about making our workplace an inspiring creative space where people would want to come back, not be obliged to come in.

So when we saw our business would be expanding, we decided to combine our interests when designing a new office.

Credit: SupportYourApp

We invited ten muralists, graphic designers, and calligraphists and gave them carte blanche — a censorship-free opportunity to use our office walls as a canvas. Five months later, our 350-person office space had turned into a modern art gallery.

Now what did our team think? They loved it.

Of course, we had hoped for the project to be a morale boost for the team and maybe increase people’s interest in their local art scene. But in the end, what we got was so much more.

Credit: SupportYourApp

Decreased turnover rate

We work in the customer support industry which has one of the highest employee turnover rates of any field. While the average rate for companies in general is 15 percent, for customer service centers it can reach 30-45 percent .

This is a big problem for businesses as the cost to replace a person varies between $10,000 to $15,000 and can add up to a lot of money for big call centers.

But since we gave our office an art makeover, our turnover rate dropped by 16 percent . All of a sudden our fun art initiative had a real measurable impact on our bottom line.

Increased number of job applications

Credit: SupportYourApp As a customer support company, our recruiting process is continuous and requires a huge pool of specialists who speak foreign languages. Just last year, during the challenging 2020, we hired 658 people.

Most of our candidates come from job searching sites or are referred by current team members. But after we introduced art to the office, the word got out and the number of organic job applications increased 1.5 times.

When asked, people said that they’ve seen the photos of our office on the job sites, on their friends’ social media, or in the press, and it made them want to apply. To them, our company seemed interesting and innovative and stood out among other offers.

Judging by the incredibly positive results we’ve gotten, I believe that our investment into the space paid off with increased interest among potential candidates.

Increased offer acceptance rate

We have three-stages job interviews and in the case of a local hire, the last stage is an in-person conversation in the office. We noticed that an average acceptance rate is 50 percent higher among the candidates interviewed in our new ‘art office’ in comparison to the old one.

And it’s clear why from the feedback we’ve gotten from newcomers:  “The minute I saw this, I knew I wanted to work here.”

Credit: SupportYourApp To give you a bit of perspective on why this has been so successful, I think it’s good to note that 42 percent of our applicants are millennials.

Since 78 percent of them consider the quality of the workspace important when choosing an employer, it’s not surprising that a creative workplace attracts candidates’ attention.

However, they are not the only ones who care about it: 81 percent of all applicants would reject a job offer if they didn’t like the workplace. That’s why I consider resources put in the office a long-term investment into our recruiting efforts.

Increased brand awareness

Introducing an art project like this also drew the attention of local media and put us on a map of global office spaces . It helped us reach a new audience outside our traditional channels and cement a reputation as a responsible employer.

A lot of factors contributed to getting us there. Team members shared photos of the office on social media and brought their relatives to our corporate Family Days. I also found employees were also more willing to promote the company among their friends.

And because of all this interest, we introduced tours of the office for the public so more people could come to see the murals. All of this combined increased interest among potential candidates and, subsequently, clients .

Credit: SupportYourApp

Clients’ recognition

Since we’re in a competitive sector of the B2B industry, relationships and reputation are crucial for us.

Before signing a contract, clients sometimes go on a tour checking out different service providers. Before COVID-19, we hosted on average four client visits per month. Having a unique office makes a memorable impression and lets us stand out among the competitors.

The contact center industry is stereotypically perceived as a toxic work environment with gray open-space and no air conditioning. We bust that myth and make our clients see how their money is spent: on happy representatives which means happy customers.

Clients, who value commitment to the team’s wellness, appreciate our efforts and tend to choose us as a partner.

Credit: SupportYourApp

Of course, we can’t credit all the above-mentioned achievements solely to art in the office. You can’t just hang a painting on the wall and expect the turnover rate to go down — that’s not how it works. It has to be a part of and supported by other strategic efforts to improve the overall employee experience.

However, the massive introduction of art into our space definitely played a key role in how our team perceives its workplace and the company. Still, one of the less visible yet priceless benefits I love the most is when I overhear two people chatting in the kitchen… about which mural they liked more — the one by Manzhos or by Kondakov.