Maybe those companies don't have net growth, but they still need some sort of growth. Regardless of what industry you're in, every business will face inevitable losses—customers will decide to leave, inflation will occur, equipment will need to be repaired/replaced, etc. Those losses need to be offset by growth.

While net positive growth isn't necessary, it is a major motivator for launching your own business. If you don't have net growth, then you're exchanging both your efforts in working at the business as well as in the day-to-day running of the business in exchange for a relatively fixed income. I'm not sure that the risk involved combined with the income to hours-worked ratio is much more beneficial than just working as an employee with much lower risk and no responsibility to run/manage the business.

I wouldn't consider "replacing" a lost client or a broken tool as growing. A company with good finances should already have planned for that. Either way I highly doubt that's the "cancer" the article is talking about.

Right, the article is talking about a different sort of growth, but I'm responding to your assertion that there are companies that are neither growing nor dying. I agree that some companies may be sustainable while having net zero growth, as you stated. I disagree that these companies do absolutely nothing to attempt to grow their businesses and don't even think about growth. At minimum, these net zero growth companies must at least grow enough to offset their losses at a sustainable pace. That means these companies do have to participate in traditional growth activities.

Specifically, I'm responding to:

> I'm kind of scared that people can't even imagine this is a possibility to be honest...

From the outside looking in, a net zero growth company appears to be living happily as you stated, but I don't think this reflects reality on closer inspection. All net zero growth businesses exist in a dynamic equilibrium in which they're constantly facing losses and constantly finding ways to grow to (at minimum) offset those losses. And these are just considerations for your own business. What about the competition? If your competitor is willing to build a net positive growth company, what are your odds of survival in the long-term?

That’s not what people mean by growth of a company. That’s maintaining a balanced, viable system.

"Growth" is used as a term for a particular property of every biological system https://basicbiology.net/biology-101/mrs-gren. Perhaps it would help if people in this discussion defined their terms.

What if the owner is perfectly happy with his position. Why would you increase your work load and working hours to "grow" if you're living a good life already ? fomo ? lack of other meaning in your life ?

If your business supports your lifestyle what's lazy about just ... enjoying it ? Isn't that the very purpose of "work" ?

Or maybe happy with earning enough for himself and 10 others. If that worked for 30 years, that owner achieved more than most. And might do so for the foreseeable future.

What an ignorant comment! Life is not only business struggle. Growing a company as a founder means you need to sacrifice some part of your personal life for the company, either stress, free time or money. There are people happy with their lives that don't want more stress or to lose more free time... and for what? a bit bigger bank account? i'm sure the founder is doing just fine financially already

Founder was doing fine. We worked on Dell laptops from thrift store with Ubuntu. And we were paid from government’s welfare program few months too. So I suggest to look very well at employers numbers from the past 5-10 years.