ReferralsUS.com

One of my favorite movies is “Tommy Boy.” Is it juvenile? Yes. It’s also hilarious and highly quotable. But there’s a line from near the start of the movie that has always stuck with me “If you’re not growing; you’re dieing.”

Growth is a painful process, marked by failures and hard lessons learned. Did anyone ever really like sixth grade or being a freshman in high school? No, and if anyone tells you otherwise: They’re liars.

In business growth is harder to define. Companies can become large without actually growing, and the inverse is entirely true also. Many large businesses haven’t grown, they’ve merely swelled, or become bloated.

Growth in business, is marked by innovation, risk, dream chasing, game-changing and any other buzzword that can be tossed around. Google has grown, Apple has grown, the small banks that capitalized on the financial crisis have grown, Hyundai has grown. GM has swelled, Goldman Sachs swelled, Enron swelled.

Companies that swell eventually burst.

Companies that grow, change the face of business. Google revolutionized what was a boring industry (search engines). Apple ushered in the age of MP3 players. Hyundai is the little car company that keeps winning big awards. Twitter, Facebook, blogging, Flickr, Tumblr, Squidoo, Digg, Reddit, and more have all changed how the world works and interacts for the better.

Can Chase Bank say the same? Maybe at the beginning of their life.

At some point, the focus transitioned from growing the business, to growing the profits. And that’s when the swelling started.

The question you have to ask yourself, are you growing your business or merely swelling it?