The case for staying small on purpose
Growth is the default goal, and for a while it looks like the only one. Then you watch a good host chase it past the point where anyone on the team still recognises a customer’s name, and the thing that made it good quietly leaves.
Small is not a consolation prize. It is a choice with real advantages, if you make it on purpose rather than by accident. You can know your customers, move fast, and answer to no one but them.
This is the argument for picking a scale and staying there, and what it takes to hold the line when everyone tells you to raise and grow.