Reflections: Remember The Fisherman | Andre' Janusz

The Entrepreneur’s Studio
Andre' Janusz: Remember The Fisherman 

Why protecting the relationships that made your business meaningful matters more than chasing endless growth. 

Topics Covered: 

1. Why intentional smallness can be a competitive advantage 
2. The Parable of the Fisherman and what it reveals about growth and purpose 
3. How every step toward scale introduces friction — or connection 

At what point does growing your business begin to cost you the very things that made you want to build it in the first place? That’s the question at the heart of this reflections episode with Andre Janusz, founder of Logan House Coffee Roasters, a founder who made a deliberate choice to stay small and is clearer than ever about why. 

Andre shares a story he keeps written in his Moleskine as a daily reminder: the Parable of the Fisherman. An investment banker encounters a Mexican fisherman with a modest catch and immediately sees inefficiency. He lays out a grand plan, more boats, a bigger operation, an IPO, only for the fisherman to ask the obvious question: “And then what?” The answer, of course, is the life the fisherman already has. 

For Andre, the answer lives in relationships with guests, with teammates, with the community Logan House serves. Scale, by its nature, puts people, bots, or processes between you and those connections. Every new wholesale account, every new location, introduces what Andre calls friction. The question he asks before every next step isn’t “can we grow?” but “can we grow without losing what made this worth doing?” 

That tension is one every small business owner knows intimately. Chris Allen frames it well: to stay small isn’t to stay stagnant, it’s to stay highly connected to your why. And for founders building something meaningful, knowing what you’re unwilling to trade away may be the most important strategic decision you ever make. 

1. Why intentional growth requires knowing what you’re not willing to scale 
2. How relationships — not revenue — define what makes a business worth building 
3. Why friction between you and your customer is a sign something important is being lost 
4.   

“There’s no point in making a profit if you’re not also making a difference.” 

— Andre Janusz 

If this episode made you stop and think about your own growth decisions, share it with a fellow founder who’s navigating the same questions. Subscribe to The Entrepreneur’s Studio for weekly conversations with entrepreneurs building businesses on their own terms. 

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Transcript

Chris Allen 0:02

At what point does growing your business begin to cost you the very things that made you want to do it in the first place? Welcome to the Entrepreneur Studio Podcast. I'm Chris Allen, and in today's Reflections episode, Andre Janice recounts the classic parable of the businessman and the fisherman, and how it shapes the way that he thinks about growth, scale, and success. As founder of Logan House Coffee Roasters, Andre shares why protecting relationships with customers, teammates, and the community matters more than chasing endless expansion and how every step towards scale can either strengthen or erode what made your business meaningful in the first place. So if you're building something on your own and trying to balance growth with purpose, Andre Janice offers a perspective that will challenge you to consider what's actually worth scaling. Truth. And uh really great book, Small Giants. Uh that that that was uh one of the ones that really just broke down a couple of really great stories of companies in choosing to stay small, but stay highly successful. So you told a really great story that framed a lot of your choices. So I I'd love for you, it seems like you came prepared.

Speaker 1:27

I'd love for you to tell the story. I I just wrote it down so that I uh um could tell it better than I did when I when we when we spoke last. Um you know, I inside of my my Moleskin, um, in here I have written um Remember the Fisherman. And so this is my my daily reminder to uh remember the the parable of the fisherman. This is uh like a um uh a pretty old story, but one that I try and keep in the in the in the back of my mind um as we're looking forward. And the the parable of the fishermen is uh I I think you know the story, but it's you know, an investment banker is uh taking a vacation in a small Mexican fishing village, and he one morning meets uh meets a fisherman um down at the at the dock, and he's got a pretty impressive catch, but he's it's kind of small. Um and he said, you know, uh why don't you uh why don't you stay out longer? And um he said, Oh, I've I've got enough for my family, and this way I can, you know, I can have lunch with my wife, I can play with my kids, and I can have a nap, and then I can uh you know drink wine and play guitar with my with my friends um in in town this evening. I said, Well, this is you know wildly inefficient. I'll help you. I'll help you really grow your business so you can get more boats and you can really expand the business and eventually take the business public and make millions and millions of dollars, and then uh and then the fisherman says, Oh wow, uh and and then what? I said, Well then you can retire. And and the fisherman says, Okay, and and then what happens? Well, then you can move to a small Mexican fishing village and you can fish a little, you can sleep late, you can have lunch with your wife, play with your kids, and play guitar and and drink wine in the in the city with your friends. So yeah, I try and keep the the parable of the fisherman in in mind about you know, as as we're growing in the things that we're doing, um I don't want to ru the the relationships that we develop with our with our with our guests and the relationships we develop with our with our with our teammates. I don't want to lose the the strength of those relationships as we grow. I want to make that's something that is I feel like is incredibly important for us to to maintain. So I try and keep that in in mind that you know there is a there is there's a bandwidth limit. And so as we're looking at the next step, at the you know, where we can go next and you know, the next project over here or out in this this location or a different wholesale customer, a different market or whatever, are will we be able to maintain those relationships in a way that feels you know authentic and meaningful for us, but also feels like and is you know serving them because is why we're in it, right? Yeah. And I think that's going back to the the Stanifesto for a second. There's no point in not make it making a profit if you're not also making a difference. And so that's the difference that we're you know, we're trying to make is having those relationships with people.

Chris Allen 4:20

Well, something that is interesting about that fisherman story is you know, the investment banker is thinking in scale. And something that I think is really interesting about small business and one of the reasons I love entrepreneurship and small business owners to the degree that I do is because you have to really think about what you're doing, why you're doing it, what's made you great. And every decision to scale puts either a person, a bot or a process in between those relationships. Totally. And so uh the more that you do that, the more distance that you get. And I I think that that's one of the things that I I love about the small giants sort of thinking is it's a choice to stay small, to stay highly connected to what you're doing, right? Uh and highly connected to what made you great rather than the scale and all of the separation that comes from that. Now, there's a whole lot of brilliance that can come out of something at scale, being able to maintain what made you great out of scale. But I I really do think it it takes a uh a high degree of understanding of what your why is and what you're actually doing and what actually has made you great to make a choice to say, no, we're gonna stay this size, doing these things, and anything that gets in the way uh is is actually detracting from our purpose.

Speaker 5:40

Yeah. I think of it as friction. Yeah, like that is that is just friction between us and the customer. And that's, you know, that's not that's not what we're shooting for, right? Um so I I couldn't have said that better.

Chris Allen 5:53

As I reflected on this segment with Andre Janice, here's a question that came to my mind. Am I building a business that brings me closer to what matters most or one that's slowly pulling me away from it? Because the reality is growth is compelling, scale is exciting. But as Andre reminded me, every step forward introduces a choice to deepen relationships or to create distance. So as you think about your next move, ask yourself what's worth preserving even as you grow? Thanks for listening to the Entrepreneur Studio. We'll be back next week with another full interview episode.