What a Hatching Chick Taught Me About the Hardest Part of Growing a Business

There’s a point in almost every business where the doubt gets loud.

You’ve spent money. You’ve made changes. You’ve tried to do the right things. Maybe you hired help. Maybe you ran ads. Maybe you rebuilt your website, posted on social media, or finally started paying attention to your Google Business Profile.

And then… not much happened.

Not enough calls. Not enough leads. Not enough sales to make the effort feel worth it.

That’s the part people don’t talk about enough.

Not the exciting part. Not the launch. Not the “we’re growing fast” season. I’m talking about the stretch in the middle where you’re putting in real work and wondering if any of it is actually doing anything.

I know that feeling well.

In addition to running a marketing agency, I co-own a roofing business with my son at seven2roofing.com. We spend our own money on marketing there too. So when I talk to business owners who feel frustrated, skeptical, or burned out by marketing, I’m not speaking from a distance. I get it. I’ve sat in that same spot and asked the same questions.

Over the years, I’ve noticed something that keeps showing up.

A lot of businesses quit right before things were about to start working.

That may sound overly simple, but I’ve seen it enough times to know it’s true.

And strangely enough, one of the clearest lessons I’ve ever learned about that came from watching a chick hatch.

The Chick That Almost Didn’t Make It

A few years ago, when my kids were younger, we decided to hatch chickens.

We borrowed an incubator, got some fertilized eggs, and settled in for the full process. If you’ve never watched that happen, it’s pretty incredible. For days, nothing seems to change. Then eventually the eggs start moving a little. You can hear faint chirping from inside. And then finally, one tiny crack appears in the shell.

That first crack feels like the moment.

Like the breakthrough has arrived.

But here’s what surprised us: that first crack was not the finish line. It was barely the beginning.

It still took hours for the chick to fully get out.

Hours of pushing, twisting, resting, and trying again.

My kids kept asking if we could help. It’s a natural reaction. You see something struggling and your instinct is to step in. You want to speed it up. You want to make it easier.

But the truth is, helping a chick out of the shell too early can kill it.

That struggle is not a problem. It’s part of how the chick gets strong enough to survive. The resistance helps develop what it needs to function outside the shell. Remove the struggle, and you remove the growth that comes with it.

That stuck with me.

Because growing a business works a lot like that.

Marketing Works the Same Way

Most marketing does not produce results on day one or even month one. There is a buildup phase. A period where you are building visibility, getting indexed, earning reviews, creating content, training the algorithms, and establishing the kind of digital footprint that makes Google, Meta, and even AI platforms trust you enough to start sending people your way.

That period feels like the shell. It is uncomfortable. It costs money. There is effort with no obvious return. And it is the exact point where most business owners pull back, right when the first crack is starting to form.

I have seen it happen too many times. A contractor runs Google Ads for 60 days, does not get the volume they expected, and cancels. A retail store launches a new website, waits three months for search traffic to grow, gets impatient, and stops investing. A service company starts posting consistently on social media, sees modest engagement, and decides it is not worth the time.

They carried the cost of the hard part without ever collecting the reward on the other side. The businesses that win locally are not always the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who stay consistent long enough for the work to compound. For the calls to start coming in not just from ads, but from reviews, organic search, referrals, repeat customers, and people who have seen them again and again and finally decide to reach out.

The Part Most Business Owners Underestimate (Growing a Business)

A lot of owners expect progress to show up fast.

That makes sense. Business costs are real. Payroll is real. Ad spend is real. Time is real. When you invest in marketing, you want movement. You want proof. You want something you can point to and say, “Good. This is working.”

But most healthy growth doesn’t happen like flipping a switch.

It happens like compounding.

It builds in layers.

You improve your website. You sharpen your message. You ask for reviews. You clean up your Google Business Profile. You post consistently. You make your offer clearer. You fix your follow-up. You run ads long enough to learn what actually converts. You start showing up in more places. People see your name more than once. They begin to recognize you. Then trust starts to form.

That’s usually how it happens.

Slow at first.

Then all at once.

The hard part is that the early stage rarely looks dramatic. It feels like effort without applause. Work without immediate payoff. That’s the shell.

And a lot of business owners back out during that phase.

Not because they’re lazy. Not because they don’t care. Usually it’s because they care a lot, and they’re tired of wasting money.

I hear versions of this story all the time:

“We tried Google Ads. Didn’t work.”

“We posted on Facebook for a while. Nothing came from it.”

“We redid the site and still didn’t get many leads.”

“We hired someone for SEO and couldn’t tell if anything was happening.”

Sometimes those frustrations are valid. Sometimes the strategy really was off. Sometimes the wrong things were being worked on in the wrong order.

But sometimes the truth is simpler and harder to accept:

They stopped too early.

Why the “Nothing Is Happening” Stage Matters So Much

There’s a dangerous moment in business where you’ve done enough to feel the cost, but not enough to collect the return.

That is where people panic.

You’ve paid for the website, but search traffic hasn’t had time to grow.

You’ve asked for some reviews, but not enough to change local visibility.

You’ve run ads, but not long enough to learn which messaging brings in the right leads.

You’ve posted content, but not consistently enough for people to remember you.

You’ve planted, but you haven’t stayed around long enough to harvest.

That in-between stage feels unproductive because the result isn’t obvious yet.

But often, that’s exactly when important things are happening under the surface.

Your message is getting sharper.

Your brand is getting more familiar.

Your systems are getting tighter.

Your audience is learning who you are.

The platforms are gathering signals.

You are building momentum, even if it doesn’t feel dramatic.

That doesn’t mean every campaign deserves endless patience. Bad strategy is still bad strategy. Weak offers still need to be fixed. Broken follow-up still needs attention. But it does mean you should be careful not to confuse “early” with “failing.”

Those are not the same thing.

The Businesses That Win Usually Aren’t the Flashiest

This is one of the most useful things I’ve learned from working with local businesses.

The businesses that win are not always the ones with the biggest budgets.

They’re usually the ones that stay in the game long enough for their work to stack up.

They keep showing up.

They keep refining.

They keep asking, “What needs to improve?” instead of immediately saying, “Marketing doesn’t work.”

That mindset makes a huge difference.

Because good marketing is not one isolated tactic. It’s not a logo. It’s not one ad. It’s not a website by itself. It’s not social media by itself. It’s not SEO by itself.

It’s a system.

And systems take time to build.

A contractor who keeps collecting reviews, improving photos, tightening service pages, and following up fast on leads will usually beat the contractor who runs a burst of ads, gets impatient, and disappears.

A local retailer who consistently updates their online presence, stays active in the community, and keeps their messaging clear will usually outperform the one who does one big push every six months and goes silent the rest of the year.

A service business that answers the phone well, asks for referrals, builds trust online, and stays visible will almost always have a stronger long-term result than a business that keeps starting and stopping.

Consistency is not flashy, but it wins a lot.

What to Do When You Feel Stuck in the Shell

This is where the conversation needs to get practical.

Patience matters, but patience without direction turns into drift. You should not stay stuck just because “marketing takes time.” You need the right work in the right order.

Here’s what I’d focus on if your business feels like it’s pushing hard without seeing enough return yet.

1. Start with the foundation

A lot of businesses want leads before they’ve built the base that supports lead generation.

That creates frustration fast.

Before you pour money into traffic, make sure the basics are solid:

Your offer is clear

Can a stranger quickly understand what you do, who you help, and why they should choose you?

Your website makes action easy

Can people call, book, request a quote, or contact you without hunting around?

Your Google Business Profile is complete

If you serve a local market, this matters more than a lot of owners realize. Basic visibility work often needs to happen before more aggressive lead generation pays off.

Your follow-up is tight

If leads come in, do you answer quickly? Do you have a process? Can you stay on top of them?

Businesses often think they have a marketing problem when they really have a clarity problem or a conversion problem.

Fix the foundation first.

2. Commit to consistency, not intensity

This is one of the biggest mindset shifts I’d recommend.

A lot of owners market in bursts.

They get motivated, do a bunch at once, then disappear when life gets busy or results aren’t immediate.

That pattern kills momentum.

A steady rhythm beats random sprints.

One useful post every week beats ten posts in three days followed by two months of silence.

A regular review strategy beats one awkward request every now and then.

A sustained ad campaign with measured improvements beats constantly turning things on and off.

Marketing behaves more like fitness than like a raffle ticket. You don’t get much from one intense day. The result comes from repeating the right things long enough to let them work.

3. Give strategies enough time to be judged fairly

This is where a lot of good efforts get cut off too early.

Not every tactic needs six months, but most meaningful business growth needs more time than people want to give it.

Thirty days is usually too short to judge almost anything besides obvious failure.

Sixty days may show early patterns.

Ninety days is often where some clarity starts.

Six months is where consistency begins to tell the truth.

That doesn’t mean you do nothing during that time. You watch, learn, adjust, and improve. But you don’t yank up the roots every two weeks to check if the plant is growing.

4. Stop measuring only the final sale

This one matters.

If the only sign of success you accept is immediate revenue, you’ll miss a lot of the progress that leads to revenue.

Pay attention to:

• Better lead quality

• More website engagement

• Increased branded searches

• More reviews

• More calls

• Better close rates

• More repeat visibility

• Faster follow-up

• Improved conversion points

These things are not the finish line, but they are signs that the machine is getting stronger.

The first crack in the shell matters, even if the chick is not fully out yet.

5. Know when to adjust, not abandon

There’s a difference between persistence and stubbornness.

If something is truly off, fix it.

Change the message. Improve the offer. Tighten the audience. Repair the website. Retrain the sales process. Shift the budget. Rework the follow-up.

But don’t vanish.

Too many businesses go from “we need to improve this” to “let’s stop everything.”

That gap is expensive.

It wipes out learning. It kills momentum. It resets trust. It puts you back at the beginning.

Adjust the vehicle if you need to. Don’t jump out while it’s moving.

The Emotional Side No One Mentions Enough

Here’s the part that matters more than most marketing conversations admit.

Business owners take this stuff personally.

Of course they do.

This isn’t some abstract experiment. This is your money, your name, your future, your family, your employees, your stress, and your hopes all wrapped into one.

So when marketing doesn’t immediately produce, it doesn’t just feel inconvenient. It feels discouraging.

It can make you second-guess yourself.

It can make you feel behind.

It can make you wonder whether everyone else knows something you don’t.

That’s why I think this lesson matters beyond marketing.

Sometimes the hardest part of growing a business is not the strategy. It’s staying steady long enough for the strategy to work.

It’s managing your own emotions while the process is still incomplete.

It’s resisting the urge to call something broken just because it’s still developing.

That takes discipline.

And honestly, it takes faith too.

You May Be Closer Than You Think

If you’re a business owner in that uncomfortable middle right now, here’s what I want you to know:

The struggle does not automatically mean you’re losing.

The silence does not automatically mean nothing is happening.

The early effort is not wasted just because the payoff hasn’t shown up yet.

Sometimes you’re a lot closer than you realize.

Sometimes the crack has already started.

Sometimes the next layer of consistency is what changes everything.

That doesn’t mean you should blindly keep spending without thinking. Be smart. Measure what matters. Fix what’s broken. Get help when needed.

But don’t quit just because growth is taking longer than you hoped.

That’s normal.

A lot of healthy businesses are built by owners who were willing to outlast the awkward phase.

Final Thought

When my kids watched that chick struggle to get out of the shell, they wanted to help because they cared.

But the hard part was not proof that something was wrong.

It was proof that something important was happening.

Business growth is often the same.

There’s a season where the work feels heavier than the reward. Where progress is real but hard to see. Where the temptation to back off gets strong.

Stay thoughtful, but stay with it.

Build the foundation. Keep showing up. Let the work compound.

A lot of business owners don’t fail because they chose the wrong path.

They fail because they walked away from the right one too soon.