A cleaning company owner messaged me a while ago. The business was doing about thirty thousand dollars a month and, they felt, should have been doing sixty or seventy. They needed help and couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong. Maybe a virtual assistant. Maybe not.
I recognised the stage immediately, because I had been stuck in it myself and have watched many owners get stuck in it since. I have a name for it that is only slightly dramatic: the valley of despair.
What the valley is
Somewhere between thirty and fifty thousand dollars a month in revenue, a lot of service businesses stop growing. What makes it cruel is what comes just before. The early climb is fast. Every new customer shows up in the numbers, every fix to the website pays for itself, and the owner, doing almost everything personally, can feel the business respond.
Then it stops responding. You are now juggling every part of the business at once, marketing, sales, scheduling, hiring, quality and money, while still trying to grow it. Revenue is high enough to feel like a real company. Profit isn’t yet high enough to hire the full-time help that would let you run it like one.
Revenue high enough to feel like a real company. Profit not yet high enough to run it like one.
Why it is useful
Most people treat the valley as a failure. I think it is one of the most useful stages a business goes through, because it forces three things you would otherwise skip.
It forces you to consolidate. The fast climb leaves gains lying around untidily: customers you won but aren’t really looking after, processes that half work, people doing jobs nobody ever defined. The valley is where you gather them up.
It forces you to rework what no longer fits. Almost everything you built in the first year was built for a smaller business. The booking flow, the hiring process, the way you handle complaints: they worked at ten customers a week and creak at a hundred. The plateau is the business telling you which ones.
It forces new tactics. Whatever got you here was probably one or two channels pushed hard. Past a certain point, pushing harder returns less. The valley is where you learn a second and a third way to grow.
Know your numbers first
You can’t climb out of a valley you can’t see. Before changing anything, I ask owners at this stage whether they really know a handful of numbers: what share of customers are recurring, what share of enquiries become bookings, and what it costs to win a customer. At this size those numbers matter more than instinct, because from here on you will spend more of your time adjusting them and less of it doing the work.
Ninety days, one weakness
This is the method I have given to more owners than any other. Find the single weakest area of your business. Not the most interesting one; the weakest. Spend the next ninety days making only that better, until it is as smooth as it can be. Then find the next weakest area, and do it again.
It sounds too simple, and it is slower than trying to fix everything at once. But you move the needle properly each time, and you stop feeling guilty about not being excellent at everything simultaneously. Nobody is. Owners who try usually end up middling at all of it, and exhausted.
Grow like a craftsman
Some owners in the valley aren’t stuck so much as tired. One student told me they had spent two years forcing growth they had no real energy for, and it was ruining how they felt about the business. I told them what I believe: that growing more slowly can be the right choice. Everyone around you seems to be chasing a million in revenue and promising the world. Over a long career it is better to put each thing in its place, slowly. Build your business like a craftsman, not a fast-food joint, and you will enjoy it more and burn out less.
The opposite happens too. Another owner wrote to me, a little sheepishly, that their business was suddenly growing fast after a long stretch at an earlier stage, and that they almost felt guilty about it. I told them not to. They had stepped back, made real changes, and the growth was simply the result arriving late. After a long time stuck, speed can feel undeserved. It usually isn’t.
What the valley is for
Years ago another owner asked whether I planned to move our cleaners from contractors to employees. I said not really. It can make sense at later stages, but not if you run things remotely the way I did, because my primary goal was freedom, not a big business.
I think about that answer whenever someone is in the valley. The way out isn’t always up. Sometimes it is sideways: a smaller, calmer, better-run business that pays you well and needs you less. In my experience growth is what a well-run business does anyway. It makes a poor goal and an excellent consequence.
If you are in the valley now, you are in good company, and in a useful place. Pick the weakest thing. Give it ninety days.