Staying Small Doesn't Mean Thinking Small
How to Achieve More Without Getting Bigger
Most marketing advice for small businesses sounds the same. Post regularly on social media. Go networking. Send a few emails and maybe write a blog post if you have time.
It’s all perfectly sensible top-of-funnel stuff. All completely safe. And, if you’re honest, probably not very successful either.
I believe most micro-businesses stay small because they only ever attempt marketing that they can handle themselves. The projects that would generate them serious leads – the exhibitions, the paid ad campaigns or strategic partnerships – never even make it on the list, because they’re too big, too complicated, too risky and too expensive.
But what if there’s another way? What if you could punch above your weight and do those big projects without permanently expanding your team?
You can – by using surge capacity: bringing in temporary expertise and extra hands for a specific, high-impact project.
The trap of doing only what you can manage
There’s a lot to be said for staying small. Paul Jarvis makes a brilliant case for it in Company of One – a book I return to often. The freedom, the focus, the ability to design work around your life rather than the other way round – these are all compelling reasons not to chase growth for growth’s sake.
But even if you’re committed to staying deliberately small, you still need revenue growth just to stay competitive. Inflation eats into your margins. Competitors get more efficient. New technology changes what customers expect. What worked last year might not work as well next year. Standing still isn’t really an option – it’s just a slow decline.
And yet, most micro-businesses accept this mindset without realising it. They look at their week, tot up the hours they can spare, assess the skills they have and pick marketing activities that fit neatly inside those constraints.
A few Instagram posts here. Some LinkedIn comments there. Perhaps a bit of networking if they can get out of the office. But nothing that requires too much time, or expertise they don’t have – and certainly nothing that costs serious money.
This feels like being a responsible business owner. You’re being lean and careful with your time and cash – all those bootstrapping virtues everyone bangs on about.
But what’s really happening is that you’re reverse-engineering your ambition to match your capacity. You’re not asking “what marketing would genuinely move my business forward?” You’re asking, “what can I squeeze in around everything else?”
And the answer to that second question is almost always: not enough.
A client who decided to think bigger
Take a client I worked with recently – a three-person specialist design company, doing great work and getting leads through client referrals, SEO and some social media. They were certainly not struggling, but not really growing either. They had a steady but somewhat unpredictable pipeline of enquiries.
Their usual marketing efforts were well established, but I pitched them some new alternatives – bigger marketing projects like exhibiting at industry trade shows. Their first reaction was predictable. “We couldn’t do that. We don’t have the capacity. We don’t know how. And how much will it cost?”
They were right to be sceptical, of course. They definitely didn’t have the capacity to do it on their own.
But that’s not a good reason not to do it.
What becomes possible with surge capacity
This is where the idea of surge capacity comes in – temporary marketing expertise and execution power for a specific, high-impact project. This isn’t just hiring a freelancer, and it isn’t hiring a permanent marketing team or expanding the business either. It sits at the sweet spot in between. Borrowing the brain and hands you need for a concentrated push, then stepping back to normal operations.
Here’s what my surge capacity provided:
Devising a strategy that targeted different customers at different points of their customer journey
Running email campaigns to publicise the exhibition to their existing list and inviting them to attend.
Designing and running a competition to build their mailing list at the show, which included automated onboarding sequences.
Writing new articles and landing pages for their website.
Managing their social media before and during the event.
Designing printed brochures, branded tote bags, banners and a branded podium for the stand.
Designing and producing a 25-minute showreel that ran on loop throughout the show.
Advising on calendar integration so visitors could book consultations directly on the stand.
Working with the organisers beforehand to negotiate the best possible stand location.
Liaising with the show organisers for all admin in the run-up to the show.
Could three people running a busy studio do all that on top of their workload? Of course not. They’d have burned out before they got past the brochure design.
But with some outside help – from someone who’d done this before, who knew what worked, who could handle the strategy and the execution – it suddenly became achievable. Not easy, but possible.
What were the results? Twenty confirmed consultation bookings over the three days of the show. That was the equivalent of three to four months’ worth of qualified leads for their business. The kind of pipeline that gives them breathing room, confidence and momentum, as well as helping them through their usually quiet winter period.
In addition to this, we added 55 new subscribers to their mailing list and obtained a video testimonial from existing clients who visited them at the show.
None of that would have happened if they’d stuck to what felt manageable. If they’d kept posting hopefully on Instagram and waiting for referrals and website enquiries to arrive.
The shift happened when they chose to attempt something that could genuinely move things forward and committed to resourcing it properly.
Why ‘being careful’ might be your biggest risk
The usual objection micro business owners have at this point is, “I can’t afford to spend money on something that might not work.”
Which sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? Prudent, even. After all, there are no guarantees in marketing.
But if you follow that logic, you’re choosing to stay roughly the same size forever, because you won’t risk attempting anything bigger than what you can fumble through yourself.
That’s not being careful. That’s just a different kind of risk – you’re betting on stagnation instead of growth. And weirdly, most people don’t see it as a risk at all. They see it as playing it safe.
Strategic risk – the kind backed by expertise, planning and proper execution – isn’t the same as being reckless. It’s calculated. This exhibition wasn’t a gamble. It was a well-resourced project with clear objectives and help from someone who knew how to deliver them.
The total cost was around £6k, including stand hire, logistics, hotels, print and marketing.
This company’s sales conversion rate is 66%. That means they can reasonably expect around £65k in business from their newly acquired leads. That’s an 11x return – in addition to the longer-term gains: brand awareness, new contacts and proof the approach works.
What if they’d said, “It’s too expensive, too scary, let’s keep doing what we’re doing”?
They’d still be where they were. Comfortable, but stuck.
Instead, they booked a bigger stand at next year’s show while this year’s was still running.
Common objections
Maybe you’ve been burned before by marketing that didn’t work – but was that because marketing doesn’t work, or because you were trying to DIY something that needed proper expertise?
Maybe you don’t even know what good marketing projects look like for your business, which is fair if you’ve only ever done the basics. Or maybe you’re just worried about being ripped off, looking stupid, or committing to something you can’t afford.
These are all legitimate concerns, but the thing about surge capacity is that it’s not a long-term deal like hiring a marketing agency on a retainer contract. Most micro-businesses genuinely can’t afford that, and honestly, they probably don’t need it.
This is different. It’s securing temporary expertise for a specific project. You’re not building a marketing department – you’re resourcing a campaign that could make a huge difference.
You bring someone in, execute something ambitious, you get results and they step back. The rest of the time, you tick along as normal. You stay small – but you stop letting that smallness limit what’s possible.
How to start thinking bigger (without overcommitting)
If you’re not ready for something on the scale of an exhibition, start smaller. Surge capacity can look like:
Hiring a copywriter for a short content push
Bringing in a designer for a rebrand or campaign launch
Partnering with a PR consultant for a product announcement
Getting help with a paid ads test or a customer research project
The point isn’t size, but impact. What project could make a measurable difference if it were properly resourced?
Instead of asking “What marketing can I manage on my own?”, ask: “What would actually move my business forward – and how do I make it happen?”
Be strategic. Focus on projects that could genuinely create momentum, not every idea that sounds appealing. And if you’re ruling something out purely because “I couldn’t do that myself,” you’re thinking too small. The question isn’t whether you can do it – it’s whether it’s worth doing. If it is, finding the right support becomes the next step, not the reason to give up.
What’s possible when you think bigger
Three people (and me) plus one well-planned project = twenty consultations.
The idea of attending an exhibition made them nervous. It felt like a stretch. But it gave them a quarter’s worth of leads and proof that ambition pays off when backed by the right support.
Staying small doesn’t have to mean thinking small. The real advantage of a micro-business is agility – you can move fast, bring in help when it counts, and make a big impact without getting big.
What would that look like for your business?
Nice post Keith, as always.