Growth Is Subtraction: What Greg Crabtree Gave Up to Grow

Nov 15, 2013

5 min read

Updated: Oct 29

Most owners plan growth by adding. More people, more products, more targets. Greg Crabtree, a CPA, author and speaker who helps entrepreneurs understand the economics of their business, wrote the opposite on his napkin. Growth is not an addition thing but a subtraction thing. What do you need to remove or give up to grow? For Greg it was three things: clutter, comfort and control. The idea came from motivational speaker Dr. Kevin Elko, and it landed after a hard realization. At 56, Greg saw that he had been using humility as a cover for being timid and playing small. Giving those three things up was only half of it. He also needed a reason strong enough to get up every day, what Elko calls your 68.

Inspired by Paper Napkin Wisdom Episode 15 with Greg Crabtree.

When humility is really playing it safe

Greg had always struggled with visioning exercises that ask you to think big. To him, that felt like saying a lot about yourself. So he emailed Kevin Elko and asked how to balance thinking big with staying humble.

Elko's first answer hit him between the eyes. Are you playing for yourself, or are you playing for the kingdom? Greg is a person of faith, and the question touched a nerve. He realized he had been playing it safe and calling it humility.

Living in regret is not his way. Greg knows he has plenty of good days ahead, and what matters is what he does with the next hour, the next year. A chicken farmer from Alabama, he says, never expected to meet entrepreneurs all around the world through the Entrepreneurs' Organization. That opportunity pushed him to think bigger about helping owners run profitable businesses, and about what that wealth is for.

What do you need to give up to grow?

Elko added two things to ordinary goal setting. The first was to ask what you have to give up to get there. For Greg, the answer was three things.

Clutter. Entrepreneurs chase every shiny object. Greg has to work hard at removing clutter and changing his focus.
Comfort. There was a time when standing up to talk to 100 people would have scared him to death. Now he can talk for hours. Comfort is different for everyone, and growth means finding your own edge and getting past it.
Control. The bottleneck in his consulting practice was how fast they could teach new consultants their methods. He has had to let go, hire people, and accept the risk that they may not represent the work the way he would. If someone does not work out, you move them along and keep going.

He sees the same thing in his clients. His favorite result is turning someone into a 14 year overnight success. They struggled for years, then learned to see their numbers simply and clearly, and their potential was released. They had to choose to do it.

Why you need a 68: the power of the why

Elko's second addition was emotional energy. You can have big goals and remove everything in the way, and still not want to get up in the morning.

Elko tells a story about the 1998 Olympics. The Czech Republic hockey team was not expected to do much. Before they played the Russians, one of their stars told the team he wore number 68 to honor his grandfather, who died after the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. He dedicated the game to his grandfather and their countrymen. They beat the Russians, then beat Canada, and won gold.

Elko later told that story to the LSU football team before a championship game against Georgia, a team LSU had beaten by just four points the first time they played. Coach Nick Saban handed each player a white football and asked who they were playing for. Each player wrote down a name, and the footballs were mailed to those people before the game. LSU beat Georgia by four touchdowns.

Greg has three 68s. His mother, who grew up in the Depression, was the first of nine children to go to college and worked two or three jobs so he could go to school. Playing for the kingdom, not for himself. And playing for the misfits, the entrepreneurs who have put payroll on a credit card. As a Canadian and a hockey fan, I remember that Czech game well, from the losing side.

How to hit the execute button

When I asked what changed once he started thinking bigger, Greg said nothing changed except that he pressed the execute button. Everyone has ideas. The execute button is where you commit.

His firm had talked about turning its methods into software for three years. They knew services, not software, and he had seen plenty of software projects become an expensive trash heap. So they took a reasonable step. A developer ran a pilot, gave them a price, and then they hit execute. They also pulled the team together and set a plan to double the size of the business in five years. Everyone looked at it and agreed it was doable.

His favorite EO phrase sums it up. Change what you say or change what you do. If you are going to say it, do it. And if you are not going to do it, stop talking about it until you are ready.

Why going far means bringing others with you

Greg quotes a line he heard recently. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others. When you make every decision yourself you can move quickly, but you will not go far.

A team also carries you on the days you lack emotional energy. Some days you give 100% of what you have and it is still less than you could be. Teammates pick you up and keep the process going. For that to work, everybody has to see the vision, agree to remove what gets in the way and have their own why, even if it is different from yours. That is the control you give up.

He is also blunt about hours as a badge of honor. When someone tells him they worked 2,800 hours this year, he is not impressed. What impresses him is impact, not quantity.

How to apply growth by subtraction this week

Greg's lesson for me is that the numbers, the plans and the goals are only the road. You still need the reason to drive it.

Write down one thing you want to grow this year. Then ask Greg's question: what do I need to give up to get there?
Name your clutter. Pick one shiny object you will stop chasing for the next month.
Find your comfort line. What is one thing you avoid because it scares you, and what small step would take you past it?
Name one decision you still control that someone on your team could own. Hand it over this week.
Find your 68. Write down who you are really doing this for, and put it where you will see it on the days you lack energy.
Look for one idea you have been talking about for too long. Either take a reasonable first step and hit execute, or stop talking about it.