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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.237: Leadership in a Micro Company and Challenging Conventional Wisdom on Business Growth, with Joel Miller, click here to listen now.

When we treat business growth purely as a race to increase headcount (or, as an old boss of mine used to say “bums on seats” 🤢) we often compromise the quality of our workplace relationships. This week, we look at why staying ‘small’ on purpose can build greater client trust and operational resilience.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve often noticed how certain concepts become deeply embedded in business culture, turning into accepted truths that leaders repeat without ever testing whether they actually work.

We hear constant noise about scaling up, hiring more staff and expanding operations, as if a growing headcount is the only valid benchmark of professional success. But when we stop evaluating business health purely by size, we open the door to a much more meaningful approach to leadership and operational independence. No to mention, I think, a healthier relationship with words like ‘success’ and ‘failure’.

When I sat down to chat with Joel Miller, co-owner of digital marketing agency The Sky Floor, this tension between conventional growth scripts and intentional design formed the backbone of our conversation. We also tested and refuted one or two of those conventional assumptions that have become part and parcel of entrepreneur culture over the last decade or so.

For seventeen years, Joel and his identical twin brother, Alan, have run their agency without hiring a single employee. Staying small isn't a temporary phase or a gap on their resumes; it's the entire point of their business model. Our discussion explored why expanding a team can introduce a false sense of security, how decoupling value from billable hours protects your sanity and why some of the most popular entrepreneurial slogans are actually terrible advice.

Joel’s somewhat contrarian perspectives provide a much needed reminder that real leadership doesn’t require a massive corporate hierarchy, it simply calls for a commitment to human relationships and professional integrity.

In mainstream business circles, growing your headcount is often viewed as the ultimate sign of competitive health. But as Joel pointed out during our conversation, a large organizational chart can easily become a liability for both the company and the client.

When a business expands rapidly, the owner is typically only visible during the initial sales pitch or when a major account threatens to collapse. Everything in between gets handled by layers of project managers and salespeople, turning communication into a fractured game of telephone tennis.

By opting not to hire employees, Joel and his brother maintain total accountability over their work. The person who builds the proposal is the same person who answers the phone, handles the project and takes responsibility for mistakes. This level of direct partnership eliminates the hidden instabilities that plague larger organizations. It’s a lesson echoed in my own past experiences, in a start-up that (in hindsight) probably scaled up too fast, in a process and system that lacked accountability, where the person drafting a proposal or closing a sale was rarely involved or ‘on the hook’ for whether the company could actually deliver it. And I’m sure this is a common theme across many such companies the world over, in search of growth or efficiency, the wrong corners get cut and the wrong bits of information fall through the gaps.

Many big firms rely on high-turnover internal teams or white-labeled contract workers who can walk away at any moment. Staying small on purpose allows a micro-business to sort out clients who appreciate direct access, replacing a false sense of corporate security with actual operational stability.

One of Joel's core frameworks centers on a unique approach to client relations: being firm now so you can afford to be flexible later. The strongest, most lucrative partnerships in his agency have lasted over a decade, but they all began with strict, uncompromising boundaries at the outset.

This can look like a bunch of different things, for example maybe it means drawing clear lines around the scope of a project, charging appropriately for modifications or refusing to entertain late-night texts that aren't genuine emergencies. It might sound rigid, but setting these upfront boundaries is exactly what allows a leader to be exceptionally generous over time too.

When you hold your line early on, you build what Joel calls relational capital. Your clients respect your boundaries because they know you aren't a doormat. Once that baseline of trust is solidified, you can choose to break your own rules intelligently, doing a bit of extra work without charging here or being more forgiving of a last-minute crisis there. It applies healthy, human relational standards to a professional context, making sure that flexibility is an intentional gift rather than an organizational expectation.

We also tackled the persistent absurdity of hourly billing. Relying on timesheets and tracking hours is common simply because it's easy for administrative & finance teams to measure. But measuring value by the minute mis-defines the actual impact of your work and keeps everyone locked in a counterproductive mindset.

Time is simply not money (or at least, not in this literal sense!). Joel used a brilliant watch analogy to expose this double standard: a Timex and a Rolex both perform the exact same basic function of telling time. Yet, a buyer doesn't walk into a boutique and demand to know the watchmaker's hourly rate before purchasing a Rolex, just like you don't try to calculate whether it took more literal hours to build a Rolls Royce compared to a budget alternative.

You pay for the craftsmanship, the status, the perceived value and the specific outcome or feeling. As independent operators, we have to learn how to communicate our value beyond the ticking clock. Decoupling time from price also allows for creative solutions like "go-away pricing" when dealing with high-maintenance prospects…(that’s the polite version, you can fill in the gaps yourself if you want the other version!). When a lead arrives covered in red flags, setting a premium price tag ensures that if they say yes, the financial return covers the operational headache. If they say no, they can exit gracefully without any underlying negativity or damaged professional networks that might result had you said no.

Few business idioms irritate me more than the constant entrepreneurial command to "fail early and fail often". it’s up there in the top 3 most annoying business cliches, right next to “don’t ask don’t get” and “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission”. I’ve seen all of these twisted into excuses or justifications for bad behaviour.

Fail fast, fail often has become a strange badge of honor in modern startup culture, but when you look at it closely, it's remarkably poor advice. As Joel explains it: if your child brings home a flawed math assignment, you don't look at them and say they simply haven't failed enough times to discover the right answer (especially in maths when there might be an infinite number of wrong answers). You sit down, review their approach, and guide them toward the proper method.

The obsession with rapid failure confuses the byproduct of a smart risk with the actual goal of an operation. While it's true that we should learn from setbacks and protect our teams from fearing mistakes, seeking out failure for its own sake is deeply distracting. If there are infinite incorrect paths and only one right answer, chasing failure will leave you running in circles forever. Joel proposed a far better alternative: seize your opportunities, learn from setbacks, and know exactly when it’s time to move on.

Experience is a wonderful teacher, but intellectual humility and studying the mistakes of others can keep you from making those blunders yourself.

Our conversation wrapped up with a reflection on what it actually means to lead. One of the greatest dangers to any business is a manager who feels compelled to be the smartest person in the room or, on the flip side, erroneously believes they already are.

This mindset stems from an outdated, autocratic model of leadership that values authority over actual capability. It might even have been a Nixon-ism?
‘Because I’m the leader and I said it, therefore it’s correct‘ …?

The belief or mindset that leading means having all the answers creates an immense amount of self-imposed pressure, opening the door for leaders to feel terrible about themselves while inevitably forcing wrong answers onto their teams just to maintain an illusion of control.

Real leadership isn't about issuing commands from the top of a pyramid. It's about relationships, collaboration, curiosity and the environmental conditions you intentionally create. True confidence doesn't look like having an immediate answer for every crisis; it looks like having the security to say "I don't know," and then asking an intelligent question. When we lead with a servant mindset, getting in the ‘trenches’ and prioritising what’s right for our community over what’s merely profitable for our wallets, we build organizations that naturally yield a better bottom line.

As we closed the episode, Joel highlighted this servant philosophy by pointing to his ultimate leadership model: the circles of influence and recharging seen in historical servant leaders.

He also shared a powerful personal story from his school days about a friend who had the courage to go against a popular social norm, step out on a limb and facilitate a difficult reconciliation when a community was fracturing.

That story is a reminder that leadership isn't tied to a corporate title, employee count, paycheck, or a massive corner office. It's found in the quiet moments where we stand up for our core values, look out for the people in our ecosystem and choose integrity over easy conformity.

As you head into the rest of your week, look at where you can simplify your structures, hold your boundaries, support your people and focus on delivering genuine value.

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Really fun conversation this week and my thanks go to Joel for making it that way! If you’d like to hear the full episode then you can find it on your preferred podcasting platform or use the web-player at this link: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-237-leadership-in-a-micro-company-and-challenging-conventional-wisdom-on-business-growth-with-joel-miller

If you prefer video then you’ll find it on YouTube too: https://youtu.be/83oq0I1BtK0

Join me again next week when I’m learning about clothing, microplastics, fashion-tech and chatting projects & leadership with guest Lacey Cadieux-McLean.

I’ll talk to you then, and as always: THANK YOU for reading, for listening, for supporting Leading with Integrity. There’s no show or newsletter, no future of leadership without each and every one of you.

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here to help you turn away from the dark side of management!

If you’re a new manager or first-time leader in a tech, expertise or specialist driven workplace and you’re feeling lonely, stuck, overwhelmed, or simply ready for your next chapter in leadership, the Integrity Leaders Community offers conversations, courses, resources and support to help you grow one step at a time. If you have a healthy love of sci-fi and want to learn more about leadership, then this is the community for you! Solopreneurs also welcome. 😉