When you start a business, it doesn't take long before you begin to obsess over growth. Get more clients. Make more money. Hire more employees. Expand your services. Open another location. Reach the next revenue milestone.

Growth is so closely associated with business success that we rarely stop to ask an important question:

Do I actually want a bigger business?

Because growth is one way to measure success. But it isn't the only one. For many entrepreneurs, freedom may be a much better goal.

Bigger Isn't Automatically Better

There is nothing wrong with wanting to build a large company. Maybe you dream about having dozens of employees, expanding into new markets, or building something you can eventually sell for millions.

If that's the business you want, growth matters. But sometimes we pursue growth simply because we've been taught that's what successful entrepreneurs do.

A business with $2 million in revenue isn't necessarily better than one with $500,000 in revenue. The larger business could have significantly higher expenses, more employees to manage, greater risk, and a stressed-out owner working 60 hours a week.

Meanwhile, the smaller business might provide its owner with a great income, a flexible schedule, meaningful work, and plenty of time outside the office.

Which owner is more successful?

That depends entirely on what they wanted their business to give them.

Remember Why You Wanted a Business in the First Place

Think back to what originally made entrepreneurship appealing to you.For many people, it wasn't the idea of managing a huge organization. It was freedom.

The freedom to control your schedule, decide who you work with, attend your kid's school events, or simply have more control over how you spend your days.

But often, when the business starts to succeed, entrepreneurs forget to protect protecting that freedom the craved, and instead begin to sacrifice it in the name of growth.

Eventually, we end up building another job for ourselves—except this time, we're the boss who never lets us clock out.

Define What Freedom Means to You

Freedom doesn't look the same for everyone.

Maybe you want to spend summers traveling with your family. Maybe you want enough financial security that you never have to accept a client who treats you badly. Maybe you want to build a team capable of running the business without you.Or maybe you genuinely love working and want the freedom to spend your time building something ambitious.

That's the beauty of entrepreneurship. You get to decide.But you have to make that decision intentionally. Otherwise, it's very easy to adopt someone else's definition of success.

Sometimes Growth Costs You Freedom

Growth usually comes with tradeoffs.More clients requires more employees, which requires mroe management and more overhead. Bigger businesses can be very complex. That doesn't make growth bad. It simply means growth has a cost.

Before you chase the next milestone, ask yourself what achieving it will require. If doubling your revenue requires doubling your workload, is that a trade you're willing to make? If adding ten employees means spending most of your time managing people instead of doing the work you love, does that still sound like success? If expanding into another market means giving up the flexibility you built the business to create, is bigger actually better?

Sometimes the answer will be yes, but sometimes the smartest business decision you can make is deciding that you already have enough.

Build the Business That Supports the Life You Want

Your business is not the end goal. The purpose of your business is to help you build a life. It's just one of the tools that can help you create financial security, flexibility, purpose and more.

So before setting your next big revenue goal, take a moment to imagine what happens after you reach it.

• What will your days look like?

• How much will you work?

• What responsibilities will you have?

• How much money will actually make its way into your personal life?

• Will you have more freedom—or less?

Success doesn't have to mean more. Sometimes, success means realizing you finally have enough.