Growth is often framed as something we should always be moving towards — bigger, more visible, more successful — but I’ve been thinking about what happens when we start to question that.

In this episode, I’m exploring what growth looks like when we define it on our own terms, rather than defaulting to the idea that bigger is always better.

From success and comparison, to staying small by choice, this is a gentle reflection on building a business that actually fits the life you want to live.

If you’ve ever questioned whether “more” is always the answer, I hope this episode gives you space to think about growth a little differently.

Welcome to Seasons in Business, a podcast for creative business owners who want to build something thoughtful and sustainable, at a pace that actually feels good. I'm your host, designer and printmaker Sarah Phelps, and if, like me, you're craving a slower, more spacious way to grow, with a little gentle encouragement along the way, you're in the right place. So turn off your notifications, grab a cup of tea or coffee, and get cosy.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back.
Today I'm coming back to one of the very first ideas I actually scribbled down when I started planning this podcast. It always felt like a big topic and one I wanted to tackle when things were up and running, and I was a bit more comfortable talking through it out loud.
So here we are talking about growth.
And I don't mean growth in the seasonal sense that I've talked about in other episodes. I mean, growth in the more traditional business sense, the default expectation, the thing we're encouraged to seek. For years, I didn't question it, even though the idea of bigger, better, busier never quite rang true for me. I just assumed that's what we were all aiming for. But lately, I found myself thinking about it a lot more, and wondering: what if the kind of growth we're being encouraged towards isn't actually the kind of growth we want.
But first, before we even think about growth and what it means, we need to take a slight detour and talk about something else: success.
Because I think one of the reasons growth can feel confusing is that we often try to work out how to grow before we've really decided what we're growing towards. And the truth is, success looks different for everyone. For some people, it might be a three-day week or a six-figure income. For others, it might be taking time off over the school holidays, or making enough money to follow a creative passion. No one of these is any more valid than the others, and we can grow our businesses towards all of them, but not without knowing which one we're actually aiming for. Without that, it's so easy to fall into the “bigger is better” trap, and move forward without a clear sense of where we're actually going.
So maybe the question isn't do I want a bigger business? Maybe it's what kind of life am I trying to build? And how can my business support that?
Because once we answer that, we can start to define what growth actually means for us. And when we know what growth looks like, it's much easier to recognise when we've reached a point where we can say, this is enough. Part of the challenge is that growth is measured in very different ways, depending on who you ask. For some people, it's revenue, for some it's clients. For others, its visibility, reach or scale. And sometimes what we're actually talking about is something much less tangible, like freedom, flexibility, creativity, or simply having enough.
When I think about the way I work, and the kind of business I'm building, growth doesn't really point towards more in the traditional sense. It points towards something quieter and slower, more focused on the quality and creativity of my work rather than the volume.
When it comes to defining growth for ourselves, it can be tempting to look sideways at what everyone else is doing. We tell ourselves we're looking for inspiration or reassurance, but often we end up measuring ourselves against their progress instead. The problem with that is that we're not all building the same thing.
We might see our competitors expanding and launching new products and going in new directions, and it becomes easy to wonder, should I be doing that too? Am I staying too small? We can find ourselves wishing for more enquiries, more sales and more opportunities without asking ourselves if all of those things arrive tomorrow, would I actually want the business that came with them?
The goal isn't to build someone else's version of success, it's to build our own. So as the saying goes, run your own race. Let your business grow at its own pace and in a way that actually works for you.
And with all of this talk of growth, it's easy to get swept along and start believing it's something you should want. But every now and then, I think it's worth stopping and asking, what if my business is already doing what it was built to do? Because growth doesn't always have to mean getting bigger. And being smaller doesn't mean being stuck.
Being and staying small can be a very intentional choice, one that allows you to run your business with more clarity. Stay aligned with the kind of work you actually want to do, and build something that feels sustainable in the longer term.
For me, staying small has meant staying close to my craft. It means that almost 15 years into running my business, I still get to design, to print and to be hands on with the process. It means I know my clients, and their projects are something I'm personally part of. And it means I can shape my work around my life and not the other way around. I print on an antique press, powered by foot, with paper fed through by hand, one sheet at a time. So speed and capacity are limited by the mechanics of a very manual process. And I love that slowness. Yes, I could buy a press that runs more automatically, I could scale production, but I don't want to.
And if you do decide that smaller suits you and your business better, that's great, because staying small doesn't have to feel like a limitation. It can be a strength. For starters, it can create more space for quality because there's often more time to focus on the work itself when you're not constantly chasing volume. Time to refine your craft, to pay attention to the details, to create something thoughtful, rather than simply producing more.
There's also a flexibility that comes with staying small that offers the freedom to shape your work around your life, rather than constantly reshaping your life around your work. To adjust your hours, choose the projects you take on, and create a schedule that genuinely works for you. And I think it's that kind of flexibility that allows things to feel more sustainable in the longer term, with more room for rest, creativity, and the realities of being human.
That's not to say larger businesses can't be sustainable too, of course they can. But growth often brings new responsibilities. Managing a team, higher overheads, financial commitments, and the pressure that comes with being responsible for more than just yourself. For some people, that's an exciting challenge. For others, it isn't the life they're trying to build.
And then there's connection. Because smaller allows for something that bigger businesses can't fully replicate. No matter how polished their branding is or how carefully their website copy is written. Real relationships, the kind where people feel seen, heard, and genuinely part of the process. As we're often told, people don't buy from businesses, they buy from people. They choose to work with someone they trust, someone whose work they connect with, and someone whose values align with their own. And perhaps that matters even more now in a world of big business automation and AI. There's something incredibly valuable about work that still feels human.
So yes, staying small can be a strength. But where we have to be careful is recognising whether we're actually choosing to stay small or doing it because we're afraid to grow. Because those are two very different things.
What I'm talking about here is something more intentional. It's about looking at the options and saying, actually, the version of success I want doesn't need a team of ten people, or a huge audience, or a business that takes over my life. It's not about avoiding growth altogether. It's about being clear on what you're growing towards and choosing that deliberately.
As I come to the end of this episode, I suppose I keep coming back to this.
Maybe success isn't about building the biggest thing you can, but building something that fits and something that supports your life, leaves room for change, and creates space for everything you're balancing alongside your work.
And maybe growth isn't always about becoming bigger. Maybe it can also look like becoming more intentional, more creative, or more aligned with the life you actually want to build.
There isn't a right or wrong way to do this. Some people want to grow bigger, and that can be a really great thing when it's a conscious choice. But there's also space to choose something different, to stay small on purpose, and to define growth in your own way.
So I'll leave you with this question: what does growth actually mean to you? Not what it's supposed to look like, not what you see around you, but what feels true for the kind of life and business that you want.
I'd really love to hear your thoughts, especially around how you define success and growth in your own work, and what that looks like for you. What does enough feel like at this stage?
You can drop me an email at podcast@sarahandmaude.com, or come and say hello over on Instagram @seasonsinbusiness. I would love to hear from you.
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Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

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