Latest / Ambitious Podcast / EP. 59: The TRUTH About Scaling Too Fast (And Why It Might Break Your Business) | THE AMBITIOUS PODCAST

Transcript

EP. 59: The TRUTH About Scaling Too Fast (And Why It Might Break Your Business) | THE AMBITIOUS PODCAST · Ambitious Podcast

• 0:07
  Hello and welcome back to Ambitious.
• 0:10
  I am so excited for today's topic because this is something
• 0:13
  that I don't really see a lot of people talk about online and
• 0:17
  frankly because it's the non sexy side of business.
• 0:19
  But it's something that I want you to know and that I want you
• 0:22
  to be educated on so that you don't make this mistake as
• 0:26
  someone who myself is a business scaling consultant.
• 0:30
  So I literally coach businesses all day every day on scaling,
• 0:33
  whether that is, you know, multiple 6 figures going to 77,
• 0:36
  going to multiple seven. I am helping people who have
• 0:39
  anywhere between a $500,000 business up to a 5 million
• 0:42
  dollar, $6 million a year business.
• 0:45
  And what I will tell you is there actually is such a thing
• 0:49
  as trying to scale too fast. And it is not a matter in
• 0:54
  today's episode that I'm not telling you to not try to grow
• 0:57
  your business massively. I am not saying that you should
• 1:00
  not be trying to pursue scaling. I am saying there's a right way
• 1:04
  to do it and there's a wrong way to do it.
• 1:05
  And today in today's episode, I'm going to be breaking down
• 1:08
  the wrong way to scale because scaling too fast actually can be
• 1:13
  some of the reason that your business may go under.
• 1:16
  And I will tell you this because I have seen it happen first hand
• 1:19
  in front of me because CE OS or entrepreneurs that I'm working
• 1:22
  with are just in this aggressive pursuit of grow, grow, grow,
• 1:26
  scale, scale, scale, only to then really compromise the
• 1:29
  things that we're going to allow the business to scale in the
• 1:31
  first place. So I today I'm going to be
• 1:34
  breaking down really like understanding what is scaling
• 1:37
  too fast and like really giving you a snapshot of what does it
• 1:41
  actually look like for an average business to grow?
• 1:43
  What growth rate do most businesses have?
• 1:46
  What's considered normal? I'm also going to break down
• 1:48
  some of the mindsets that you may have if you are somebody
• 1:51
  who's trying to scale too fast. Some of the things you might say
• 1:54
  to yourself, some of the decisions you might be making
• 1:56
  that are a very key indicator that you're someone trying to
• 1:58
  scale too quickly. And also I'm going to break down
• 2:02
  the impact that scaling too quickly has.
• 2:04
  So we're going to talk about, you know, what impact does this
• 2:07
  have on your business, not only in the short term but in the
• 2:09
  long term and what are the actions you're taking today?
• 2:13
  That to me will be really indicators in your business,
• 2:17
  behaviors in your business, actions in your business that
• 2:20
  are a sign you are trying to scale too fast and it could be
• 2:23
  the reason your business goes under.
• 2:25
  So listen, I am somebody that you will see, I've talked even
• 2:28
  in our case study episodes on ambitious and I've talked about
• 2:31
  clients who've gone from you know a $200,000 business to a
• 2:35
  $2,000,000 business. Today's not about the fact you
• 2:38
  can't grow fast, it's about doing it the right way.
• 2:41
  And So what we're going to do is when a really on the inverse of
• 2:44
  that breakdown how to do it the wrong way.
• 2:46
  So what are things you don't want to do if you are somebody
• 2:50
  who is looking to double or to triple, for example, the size of
• 2:53
  your business? So First things first, there
• 2:56
  really are typical growth rates of a business, right?
• 3:00
  So there are like actual growth rates of what's considered
• 3:03
  traditional in scaling a company or scaling a business.
• 3:06
  And though the online space or the online marketing world of
• 3:11
  anything, whether you're consuming on TikTok, on
• 3:13
  Instagram, on Facebook, it does not matter.
• 3:16
  You probably get pumped ads that fall into your feed as well
• 3:19
  saying like how I went from like 0 to this and how I tripled my
• 3:23
  income in six months and you're like, OK, I guess that's what
• 3:26
  I'm supposed to go for it. That's the thing I'm supposed to
• 3:28
  be trying to achieve. Well, I want to breakdown what
• 3:32
  actual typical numbers are and what this looks like.
• 3:35
  OK. So what is considered slow
• 3:38
  growth of a business is slow growth of a business is
• 3:42
  increasing your business's growth by 5 to 10% in revenue
• 3:47
  per year. So what this means is let's just
• 3:49
  say year one in your business you're doing 6 figures, so
• 3:52
  you're doing $100,000 a year. That would mean that if you had
• 3:55
  slow growth in three years, you'd be making $133,000 a year.
• 3:59
  OK, That's considered a slower growing business.
• 4:03
  Step 2 or you know, level 2 is what's considered a healthy
• 4:07
  growth of a business, which is typically going to be around 10
• 4:10
  to 25% of growth of your revenue year over year.
• 4:14
  That looks like year 1, again, making six figures.
• 4:18
  And then in year 3 you'd be making around 195, call it
• 4:21
  $200,000 or so in year 3, OK. So high growth, IE fast growth
• 4:29
  is considered when somebody is growing their business at 25% to
• 4:34
  50% per year. So what does that look like year
• 4:37
  one? Again, it would mean you're
• 4:38
  making six figures, but then in year 3, you're making 337,
• 4:43
  $1000, so 100,000 to 337,000. So you'll see there's a big
• 4:48
  jump, right? So if we all start making
• 4:49
  100,000, slow growth means we grew in three years to 133,
• 4:54
  medium growth means we grew in three years to 195, and fast
• 4:58
  growth means we grew in three years to 300,350 thousand or so.
• 5:04
  So when we see marketing online of like scale fast, double your
• 5:08
  business, triple your business, right?
• 5:10
  What I want to note here is that's not even in any of these
• 5:13
  categories, OK? So if you're doubling or you
• 5:16
  have the pursuit of doubling your business year over year,
• 5:19
  that's not even considered in the element of high growth.
• 5:22
  That's considered a 100% growth rate year over year, OK?
• 5:27
  So remember the high growth rate for most businesses is growing
• 5:31
  25 to 50% year over year. But what many online marketers,
• 5:36
  business coaches, all of these, you know, people will basically
• 5:39
  have, you know, is that you are, you have the possibility or the
• 5:42
  potential to double your business every year.
• 5:44
  Well, that's 100% growth year over year.
• 5:49
  So what does that look like? That's the difference between in
• 5:52
  year 1 doing $100,000 like all of our examples we've done so
• 5:56
  far. But in year 3, this would be the
• 5:58
  highest, which would be making $800,000 a year, three years
• 6:02
  later. OK, so that's 100% growth rate.
• 6:05
  That means you're doubling your business's revenue year over
• 6:07
  year. So we want to ask ourselves what
• 6:12
  is normal, right? Like what is standard?
• 6:14
  And before I share these stats with you, one thing I want to
• 6:17
  notice. I am all for people pushing for
• 6:20
  massive growth. I'm all for people going for big
• 6:23
  heads. The name of this podcast,
• 6:25
  ambitious Goals, OK? I am not going to be someone who
• 6:28
  says think small. There's no way that you can go
• 6:30
  for that. The reason I want to share this
• 6:32
  was because I think it's important for us to get some
• 6:34
  aspect of reality, which is that while you have the ability to
• 6:39
  massively expand your business, is that typical of all
• 6:43
  businesses that you buy from today and that you're consuming
• 6:47
  from today? No.
• 6:49
  And so when we started to get into the stats, there was stats
• 6:51
  from 2015 to 2017 which showed that approximately 8% of all
• 6:58
  reported businesses that reported their sales are
• 7:01
  exceeding sales growth year over year of 20%.
• 7:04
  So what does that mean? That means that less than 8% of
• 7:07
  businesses are in that high growth category, OK.
• 7:11
  So it really suggests that if we're thinking about, you know,
• 7:15
  someone doubling their business year over year, that is not
• 7:18
  typical, that is not common. It is less than 10% common when
• 7:23
  it comes to actual small businesses and their growth
• 7:26
  rate. And so it's important for us to
• 7:29
  tap into because often times we get bombarded with so much
• 7:32
  marketing of like, well, that seems like it's possible.
• 7:34
  That seems like it's possible. We want to remember that there's
• 7:38
  also people who are only marketing the growth of the 100%
• 7:42
  double their business year over year and that there are also
• 7:45
  massive accomplishments and massive progress in businesses
• 7:49
  that are growing in the medium or the 20 to 50% growth rate,
• 7:54
  right, not doubling year over year.
• 7:56
  So it's important for us to root into so we can normalize what is
• 8:00
  scaling too fast and also what is the belief that we have about
• 8:05
  how fast we quote UN quote should be scaling.
• 8:07
  And what this tells us is that maybe we do have a skewed
• 8:10
  perception of scaling. Maybe we do have, you know, a
• 8:13
  skewed belief around what is quote UN quote normal.
• 8:16
  And again, not to say you shouldn't go for it, but it's
• 8:18
  again, realizing that you're trying to go for something that
• 8:21
  is actually not in all the stats of small businesses considered
• 8:24
  normal or typical. So the question becomes if I'm
• 8:28
  somebody who potentially is that person who's like, well, you
• 8:31
  know, Kate, I, I've got really big goals and I just really want
• 8:33
  to double my business year over year.
• 8:34
  Like that's the goal. OK, well I'm going to share with
• 8:38
  you some mindsets and some beliefs and some frankly thought
• 8:42
  patterns that I identify in people who have a flawed belief
• 8:47
  system around scaling that often leads them down the line to
• 8:52
  actually have issues with their business rather than actually
• 8:56
  scaling it effectively. Because here's the thing,
• 8:59
  scaling in an effective way could, when done right, allow
• 9:04
  you to rapidly grow your business but not have fires the
• 9:06
  entire time. If you are someone who has some
• 9:09
  of these belief systems, though, what it means is that you have a
• 9:12
  thought pattern around scaling that could lead and most likely
• 9:16
  will lead to you actually having issues in your business, even if
• 9:18
  you get to the same point as the person next to you.
• 9:21
  So even if you're going for seven figures and she's going
• 9:23
  for seven figures, if you have some of these belief systems,
• 9:26
  she will build a successful structured business to seven
• 9:29
  figures and you will hit seven figures potentially in revenue,
• 9:33
  but you will do so with everything around you burning in
• 9:36
  the process. And so I'm going to share what
• 9:38
  some of those beliefs are and some of those mindsets are with
• 9:41
  you. So first is this belief that
• 9:45
  growth is like the ultimate sign of success.
• 9:48
  Bigger business is always better or more is always better?
• 9:51
  Like the faster, the more rapid that we expand and scale, the
• 9:55
  more successful we are as a company.
• 9:58
  That's often a big, big belief that I see within people who
• 10:01
  struggle when it comes to scaling.
• 10:05
  It really is chasing growth for the sake of growth.
• 10:08
  And often with this type of individual, they can't really
• 10:11
  explain to me why it is that they want to hit a certain
• 10:13
  number. They say let's, you know, they
• 10:16
  hit $100,000 a month. They were like, OK, well, great,
• 10:18
  I want 150, I want 200, I want 250.
• 10:21
  And it's constantly, nothing is ever good enough.
• 10:24
  They're never OK with their accomplishments.
• 10:26
  They never acknowledge their growth, and it's always more,
• 10:28
  more, more, more all the time. So a key belief of someone's
• 10:32
  scale trying to scale too fast is that they believe that growth
• 10:35
  is the only sign of their success.
• 10:38
  And if they're not growing in their business rapidly, that
• 10:41
  they're basically a failure. And so we really want to look at
• 10:46
  how this person is thinking and how does that impact the
• 10:49
  business? Well, they're not considering
• 10:51
  what's needed to sustain it, right?
• 10:54
  Like they're so focused on the number or more money or more
• 10:57
  sales, but they're not focused on when I'm, let's just say sign
• 11:00
  those clients. Am I delivering?
• 11:02
  Well when I promote that offer, is that a fair explanation of
• 11:06
  the transformation they're going to get?
• 11:07
  Even though I signed them, Did I communicate it in a fair
• 11:10
  expectation way when I promoted? They don't care about that.
• 11:14
  So they just think about, OK, well, great, go, go, go sell,
• 11:17
  sell, sell and whatever it means to get the cash in the door,
• 11:20
  that's what we do. It's so short sighted that often
• 11:23
  times it comes around to bite you in the butt in the end.
• 11:26
  There's also this belief that if we just get more customers,
• 11:30
  everything's going to figure itself out.
• 11:31
  So if I just make more sales, everything will figure itself
• 11:34
  out. And by having this belief, the
• 11:37
  perspective is that by just literally having sales, all
• 11:40
  business problems become solved. If we have profit margin issues,
• 11:44
  no worries, let's just make more sales.
• 11:46
  If we have let's just say systems issues or delivery
• 11:49
  issues, no worries, let's just make more sales.
• 11:51
  It's always with this belief, just make more money, make more
• 11:54
  money and the business will sort itself out.
• 11:56
  And what it means is with this perspective, you're ignoring the
• 12:01
  alarms that are going off in your business.
• 12:04
  You're not seeing that there's areas that, hey, regardless of
• 12:08
  whether we double the amount of money, we still have delivery
• 12:11
  issues and sometimes even to the fact that if we double our
• 12:15
  sales, we're doubling our delivery issues.
• 12:19
  So the flawed belief with this is the perspective that if we
• 12:22
  just have more money, all problems solve themselves.
• 12:25
  And I can tell you in helping so many businesses scale, rarely is
• 12:29
  just more money the solution to everything because money can
• 12:34
  only fix specific problems. And so if you are having, you
• 12:38
  know, bad delivery with clients and clients are dissatisfied and
• 12:42
  they're not getting results or they're not feeling supported or
• 12:45
  they feel lied to, your marketing said one thing and the
• 12:47
  delivery is another thing. You making $20,000 extra
• 12:51
  tomorrow is not going to help you to fix any of those
• 12:53
  problems. So this is something that as a
• 12:57
  belief, I want to invite you to disconnect from that you're #1
• 13:03
  your sales are directly correlated to your success as a
• 13:06
  business. It couldn't be less true.
• 13:08
  And also that you're generating of sales is going to be the
• 13:11
  reason that your business is able to be get to get out of the
• 13:16
  problems you're experiencing today, the problems you have
• 13:18
  today. There's a good amount that you
• 13:20
  might be experiencing in scaling right now that cannot be fixed
• 13:23
  by making more money. And so This is why it's really
• 13:26
  important that we unpack what is our mindset and perspective
• 13:30
  around what scaling means to us and what we perceive about it
• 13:33
  and what we believe it means for us and for our business.
• 13:37
  There's also this belief that we can figure out problems later.
• 13:42
  There is such a strong belief in people scaling too fast that
• 13:46
  they also move too quickly. And listen, you're probably
• 13:50
  going to be like, well, Kate, you always tell us to move
• 13:51
  quick, act quick. Yes, but you also want to
• 13:54
  remember that you can't just go, go, go and take action, action,
• 13:58
  action and leave a catastrophe behind you.
• 14:03
  It's not taking action regardless of quality.
• 14:05
  It's taking action with consideration of quality.
• 14:09
  OK, so when I hear someone say, well, like, I'll figure that out
• 14:13
  later. So let's just say, you know,
• 14:15
  they're having team issues. They might say, OK, well, you
• 14:19
  know, we're just going to generate more sales.
• 14:21
  If we grow, we'll figure that out along the way.
• 14:23
  That's not important right now. Like we're going to focus on
• 14:25
  generating more revenue. The team side will figure that
• 14:28
  out as we go, right? Like it's not important.
• 14:30
  And I will tell you, I see this especially with my VIP days.
• 14:34
  I do intensives with businesses where them and myself literally
• 14:37
  sit in a office together for hours at a time and we unpack
• 14:41
  their business. And I would go through and
• 14:43
  someone would say something like, you know, I lost, you
• 14:45
  know, three or four team members this year.
• 14:47
  But my goal is to really hit 3 million.
• 14:49
  And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you lost three team members this
• 14:53
  year. What was that because of?
• 14:55
  And they're like, yeah, well, like, it's all, it's all good.
• 14:57
  Like, we figured it out kind of thing.
• 14:58
  But the goal for me is really just like, I really want to hit
• 15:01
  3 million pay. News flash, if you hit
• 15:04
  3,000,000, you're going to burn through team members.
• 15:07
  That will be the people who are literally going to make that
• 15:09
  3,000,000 happen. So the issue is not hitting the
• 15:12
  three million. The issue is why are your team
• 15:14
  members leaving? So the thing that we see is
• 15:18
  people who are looking to scale too fast have alarms that are
• 15:22
  going off in their business that because they're not directed in
• 15:25
  their mind to or they don't see the correlation between that
• 15:28
  problem and them making more revenue, they don't deem them to
• 15:31
  be significant or important. So what ends up happening is we
• 15:36
  get really into this place of being reactive to problem
• 15:40
  solving or you get to this place of brushing all this under the
• 15:44
  rug. So again, back to that example,
• 15:46
  brushing under the rug that O, you know, the team members are
• 15:49
  going to figure themselves out. We'll start that out later.
• 15:52
  And what happens is those problems with your delivery with
• 15:55
  clients, the problems with your team, the problems with whatever
• 15:58
  it may be, even legal issues. I've had people who are making
• 16:02
  more and more and more money. And they say to me, OK, well,
• 16:05
  like, yeah, we are. We are in a lawsuit with so and
• 16:07
  so and we are in a legal issue here.
• 16:09
  And I'm like, whoa, the goal here when you come to me is not
• 16:14
  to double your revenue. If you, as you grow faster, are
• 16:17
  having more and more legal issues, let's take a step back
• 16:21
  and say what other alarms are going off other than the
• 16:25
  revenue? Because the thing that people
• 16:27
  don't often correlate when it comes to scaling is that if you
• 16:31
  solve those problems, you don't have the legal issues, you
• 16:34
  really solidify your team and make them feel supported and you
• 16:36
  fix any issues or disconnects there.
• 16:38
  If you dial in your delivery and you make sure that your clients
• 16:41
  are like so wildly satisfied with your program or your offer
• 16:45
  service, that will correlate to you making more money, even
• 16:50
  though none of those have to do with marketing and sales.
• 16:54
  So it really comes down to looking at, are there alarms
• 16:59
  that are happening in the business that you're ignoring
• 17:03
  because you're just focused on? I want to move that number.
• 17:05
  And I don't care if we're having issues with clients and I don't
• 17:08
  care if we're having legal issues.
• 17:09
  And I don't care if our systems are a mess.
• 17:11
  And I don't care about the clients that are not happy with
• 17:14
  results and we're having to get on calls to, you know, put out
• 17:17
  these fires. I just want to make more money.
• 17:20
  It's a sign you're trying to scale too fast and you're
• 17:23
  basically leaving collateral damage behind you in the pursuit
• 17:27
  of changing that number. The other perspective that is
• 17:31
  very common is something that I hear all the time, which is I
• 17:34
  just want to literally be everywhere.
• 17:36
  I want to do everything and I want to be everywhere.
• 17:39
  And I will say in the earlier stages of my business and like
• 17:42
  Kelsey, who's on our team has been with me since like the get
• 17:45
  go and been like my ride or die partner in this process of
• 17:50
  growing our business. I remember she saw me in this
• 17:52
  stage and I was like, I want to do blogs, I want to do YouTube,
• 17:55
  I want to do e-mail, I want to do all of those things.
• 17:57
  And this was like, granted, like year 2 in business like this was
• 18:00
  I had no, no right to be touching any of this.
• 18:06
  But my belief system was if I'm literally more places and if I'm
• 18:09
  doing everything and I'm everywhere, then obviously I'm
• 18:12
  going to be successful. And I learned very quickly she
• 18:17
  saw it coming a mile away. And she was like, Kate, this is
• 18:19
  a lot. But I was like, no, I want to do
• 18:21
  it. And I was really stubborn.
• 18:22
  And so when I started to execute it very quickly, duh, it ended
• 18:26
  up being something that didn't work out.
• 18:28
  And I spread myself too thin and I overextended myself, my time,
• 18:33
  my focus, I wasn't consistent. And so because of that, I really
• 18:37
  all of the effort, the energy, the time, the investment that I
• 18:41
  put into that really meant that we were right back at Ground
• 18:44
  Zero because it really diluted the quality of anything that I
• 18:48
  was doing because my attention was too many places.
• 18:50
  I was trying to do a YouTube video, then make it into a
• 18:52
  newsletter, then put it on a blog.
• 18:54
  And at this point, we were a team or like a, you know, duo of
• 18:58
  2. So we, I had no right doing any
• 19:02
  of that. But it was because my
• 19:03
  perspective, my belief system was if I'm doing all the things,
• 19:08
  that's going to be the reason that I grow in scale.
• 19:10
  But what most entrepreneurs don't recognize, and my hard
• 19:14
  lesson was, yes, you can be everywhere.
• 19:17
  Yes, you can do everything. But if you're trying to be on
• 19:19
  every platform and you're trying to have every offer and, and
• 19:23
  price point available, and if you're trying to do everything,
• 19:26
  you're really doing nothing because you're diluting so much
• 19:31
  of your attention, resources, and consistency that you're
• 19:34
  doing everything subpar. And frankly, you're doing
• 19:37
  nothing well because you're Sprite too thin.
• 19:39
  So when we're trying to scale too fast, there can be this
• 19:42
  belief that if we just do more, we can achieve more, we can
• 19:46
  generate more. And it couldn't be farther from
• 19:49
  the truth. If anything, most of the time
• 19:50
  when we're scaling businesses, we're looking to refine and pull
• 19:53
  back and maybe even do less in the pursuit of growing more.
• 19:58
  And so it's really this constant.
• 20:00
  I will say with scaling it's, you know, adding and
• 20:02
  subtracting, adding and subtracting and seeing, OK,
• 20:04
  well, where do we need to add because it's required.
• 20:07
  So say for example, this podcast, this is an add to our
• 20:10
  business that we didn't have before, but then becomes, is
• 20:13
  there a way that we can refine? So for our podcast, even when we
• 20:17
  generated this and added this to the business.
• 20:20
  Originally it had a lot of bloat around it.
• 20:22
  It had a lot a very long process that it took.
• 20:25
  It felt a little clunky and then we went and we refined, we
• 20:28
  dialed in the systems, we dialed in everybody's role.
• 20:31
  And now it's a well oiled machine.
• 20:33
  But if we hadn't have done that, it would have just been
• 20:36
  something that took a lot of time, energy and resources from
• 20:40
  everybody and it would just have been an ad at that point.
• 20:43
  So we have to be really careful that when we're growing and
• 20:46
  we're trying to scale, fight that urge to do everything and
• 20:50
  be everywhere and feel like you can't wait.
• 20:54
  It can't be done in stages. That has to all happen right
• 20:56
  now. I can't tell you how many sales
• 21:00
  calls I've been on with people who say, yeah, the goal is like,
• 21:02
  I really want to do a podcast. And then I want to be on
• 21:04
  YouTube. And then I want to, you know, do
• 21:07
  a event this year. And then I also, I'm going to
• 21:08
  launch a mastermind, but I do also want a course.
• 21:10
  And I'm like, OK, Ding, Ding, Ding.
• 21:12
  This person needs help with scaling because it tells me that
• 21:16
  they're trying to do way too much way too soon, way too fast.
• 21:20
  And because of that, they're frankly not going to move the
• 21:21
  needle at all. So there's also something you'll
• 21:25
  probably very much recognize, maybe even in yourself, which
• 21:28
  again, this is just an invitation for reflection, is
• 21:31
  this belief that if I spend more time or more money on marketing,
• 21:34
  that is what we need to grow. And so you look at marketing as
• 21:39
  the main lever for the businesses growth.
• 21:42
  So this is things like, you know, not looking at retention
• 21:46
  of clients, it's not looking at your reputation, it's not
• 21:49
  looking at building brand, it's not looking at anything other
• 21:52
  than more content, more marketing, more places.
• 21:57
  And I will say, I've seen businesses that I have come into
• 22:02
  my, my, you know, virtual office, if you will, and they
• 22:07
  don't want to talk about anything other than marketing.
• 22:09
  And they genuinely to their core, believe that marketing is
• 22:13
  the sole reason that they are not successful or not growing.
• 22:16
  And it's always hard for people to understand this, but
• 22:20
  marketing is rarely the reason that you're not growing.
• 22:22
  Do you need to have a presence? Of course.
• 22:25
  Do you need to be, you know, intentional and strategic with
• 22:27
  your marketing? Yes.
• 22:29
  But if you have fires happening inside your house and your house
• 22:34
  is on fire, do you really think you should be curating the front
• 22:37
  lawn? No.
• 22:39
  Why are we fixing the marketing of the forward facing of the
• 22:42
  business when the inside of your house is on fire?
• 22:45
  Make it make sense. It doesn't make sense to be
• 22:48
  mowing the lawn when the house is on fire.
• 22:50
  And so that's how I feel about people who are prioritizing
• 22:52
  marketing versus team systems retention, the things inside the
• 22:56
  business that if you focused on those, would help the business
• 22:59
  to grow. The other belief is the fact
• 23:02
  that you may feel that because you have a good product, scaling
• 23:07
  is going to be easy. Like we've got a great product,
• 23:10
  we've got a great delivery, we've got great results.
• 23:12
  That's going to help the business to grow.
• 23:15
  And listen, there's two sides. You can have a really bad
• 23:18
  product and really good marketing and what's gonna
• 23:21
  happen? You're gonna get people in, but
• 23:23
  they're not gonna stay cuz the product is crappy.
• 23:25
  If you have a good product or service and it's really, really
• 23:28
  good, that's great and it's gonna help people to stay in
• 23:31
  your world. It's gonna help people to refer
• 23:33
  their friends. But guess what?
• 23:35
  You having a good product alone, but not having good marketing is
• 23:39
  also an issue because it means you have a great service or a
• 23:42
  great product, but nobody knows about it because you don't focus
• 23:44
  on marketing. So the sweet spot is really to
• 23:47
  have both. It's to have a really good
• 23:49
  delivery. And that's where we always focus
• 23:51
  first and foremost, to have a really good delivery and have a
• 23:53
  really good product. And then to also make sure that
• 23:56
  that product is being seen or that service is being seen by
• 24:00
  marketing that's going out to your audience.
• 24:02
  So you really for success need both.
• 24:04
  Having a good product alone is not enough to scale a business
• 24:09
  because that assumes in thinking that or having that perspective
• 24:14
  that everyone knows your product exists.
• 24:16
  And I'm going to give you an example.
• 24:17
  I give to my clients when someone says like, but I have
• 24:20
  really good delivery. I have a really good product,
• 24:22
  yes. But that's the same thing as
• 24:24
  saying I have a really good coffee shop, but the coffee shop
• 24:27
  is hidden around the corner in some back alley.
• 24:30
  It's very popular with the people who know about it.
• 24:33
  Great. I love that for you.
• 24:35
  But also it means that even though you've got great coffee,
• 24:37
  you may not have people finding your hidden alley if you don't
• 24:41
  have good marketing. So the thing that we want to
• 24:45
  look at is having both. And so this belief of, well,
• 24:48
  because I have a good offer, my business is going to be fine.
• 24:53
  I can scale. No, you still need other
• 24:56
  elements of your business outside of just having a good
• 24:59
  service or just having a good product in order to grow.
• 25:03
  This next belief is going to be for all of you who fall into
• 25:06
  comparison and listen, In the earlier stages of my business, I
• 25:09
  don't really feel like I experienced this now.
• 25:11
  But in the earlier stages of my business, this was definitely
• 25:13
  something that I navigated, which was really looking at what
• 25:18
  your competitors are doing and believing that because your
• 25:21
  competitors are doing, that's guiding your strategy and what
• 25:24
  you feel you should be doing. So if your competitors have a
• 25:28
  course, you feel like you should have a course.
• 25:30
  If your competitors have a mastermind, you feel like you
• 25:32
  should have a mastermind. If you are competitors have a
• 25:35
  service that's a one day intensive service, you're like,
• 25:38
  should I have that? And what it does is it basically
• 25:41
  looks to use your competitors as the baseline for creating your
• 25:46
  success and creating the pathway for your growth.
• 25:49
  And it's one of the fastest ways to not scale because you don't,
• 25:52
  number one, know the intention of why they created it #2 you
• 25:57
  don't actually understand how that fits into your business
• 25:59
  model and what this means for you in the short term and long
• 26:02
  term. And most importantly, it's based
• 26:05
  off someone else's vision. Like this is not really rooted
• 26:08
  in what's going to help you grow.
• 26:10
  And so the basis of scaling that way means that you end up in a
• 26:13
  copy paste game. I'm sure as I'm saying this, you
• 26:16
  can think of some people that you know that you feel like I
• 26:18
  know exactly who they're mentored by because they create
• 26:20
  a duplicate of that person's business.
• 26:23
  It's such a disservice to the way you could grow your
• 26:26
  business. And that's because you're not
• 26:28
  building it off your vision, you're building it off someone
• 26:30
  else's. The other one that's also a
• 26:32
  tough one for people is that people believing or having the
• 26:35
  mindset and scaling that because you're growing fast, your
• 26:39
  clients will understand. So like, you know, my clients
• 26:42
  just need to understand that. Like I have so many clients.
• 26:44
  I can't tell you how often I hear about this on calls and
• 26:48
  people say we, I have a lot of clients.
• 26:50
  Like, they need to understand that I have like 40 clients.
• 26:53
  They don't need to understand anything.
• 26:57
  They are a single client who is not focusing on anyone else in
• 27:02
  your business other than themselves as your client.
• 27:05
  So when you say, well, these clients need to understand
• 27:07
  they're part of a roster of 70 or 80, guess what?
• 27:09
  Newsflash, they don't care. They're not meant in this
• 27:13
  service to be someone who's considering all the rest of your
• 27:17
  business. That's not part of when someone
• 27:19
  invests with you, what's supposed to be in their
• 27:21
  consideration. Think about if you invest with
• 27:23
  me and I'm like, OK, I got to go, go, go.
• 27:27
  I have all these things, all these things happening and I
• 27:29
  say, well, you need to understand, you know, I have X
• 27:31
  amount of clients. Well, why is that your burden to
• 27:35
  carry? Why is that something that you
• 27:37
  should have to care about, right?
• 27:39
  So in believing that, like in the belief systems we have, it's
• 27:42
  scaling too fast. What we're doing is we're making
• 27:45
  our growing pains someone else's problem.
• 27:49
  We're believing that because we have so many clients and we're,
• 27:52
  you know, stretched thin and we're feeling like we are really
• 27:56
  like torn in a million different pieces when it comes to
• 27:58
  resources of time, money, whatever.
• 28:00
  Your clients should understand, Your clients shouldn't
• 28:02
  understand because it's not their responsibility to
• 28:04
  understand. That's not part of their
• 28:07
  ownership. That's not a burden they're
• 28:09
  supposed to carry as your client.
• 28:12
  And the thing I will also say that is, you know, really
• 28:17
  important for people to recognize is that when we scale,
• 28:20
  then we'll do blank, whatever that may be.
• 28:23
  When we scale, then we'll hire a team.
• 28:26
  When we scale, then we'll get our books in order.
• 28:28
  When we scale, then we'll worry about our brand.
• 28:32
  And it's this constant, like kind of almost like in life,
• 28:35
  right? Like this destination happiness.
• 28:36
  Like when I buy a house, then I'll be here.
• 28:39
  When I get married, then I'll feel here.
• 28:41
  And the thing that is a easy way to constantly check in on
• 28:46
  yourself is to do so while you're in the process of
• 28:48
  scaling. So like it's not a matter of
• 28:50
  when we get here, then we do blank.
• 28:52
  It's saying in this moment, let's triage what's happening in
• 28:54
  the business. And let's ask ourselves, is
• 28:57
  there an opportunity for where we need to refine or to change
• 28:59
  something here so that we don't break the business and make more
• 29:03
  problems than there needs to be? So here's the thing, when we
• 29:07
  have these beliefs, right, we go through all these different
• 29:10
  mindsets or perspectives that you might feel ring true to you
• 29:13
  or maybe you were on the client side of that.
• 29:15
  And someone said, well, you know, I have 40 clients and you
• 29:17
  saw that. Maybe you know somebody who's
• 29:19
  trying to scale too fast because you see these traits in them.
• 29:22
  These all have an impact on the business like this belief
• 29:26
  system. And this perspective is how you
• 29:29
  then take that belief and that perspective and that becomes
• 29:32
  your behavior, which ultimately is what creates results or lack
• 29:37
  of results within your business. Some of those lack of results
• 29:41
  meaning negative cash flow, not having enough money to pay the
• 29:44
  bills, declining profit margins, not literally having, even
• 29:47
  though you're making tons of money, no profit or no extra
• 29:50
  money at the end of the day or of the month to show for it.
• 29:54
  You have lots of high, you know, kind of like churn rates in your
• 29:58
  business. You've got people coming in one
• 29:59
  door and leaving out the back door like nobody is staying.
• 30:03
  There's no retention with customers.
• 30:04
  They're not wanting to stay in your world because the service
• 30:07
  is not dialed in. You've probably got employees
• 30:10
  and even team members or contractors who are not excited
• 30:14
  by the work or you feel like you're bringing people in and
• 30:16
  they're quitting or leaving and you're trying to understand
• 30:19
  like, how do I get people to stay and how do I sustain this?
• 30:22
  You're working non-stop because of this, right?
• 30:25
  So again, you know, grow, grow, grow.
• 30:27
  No growth is ever enough. Well, guess what?
• 30:30
  That leads to you working at 6:00 in the morning and 12:00 at
• 30:32
  night because of that because you're constantly like there's
• 30:35
  just got to be more. You often times because you're
• 30:39
  trying to do too much as well may have a lot of interest in
• 30:43
  your offers because you're marketing aggressively, you're
• 30:45
  trying to sell aggressively. But in doing so, what you're
• 30:48
  also doing is you're probably having decline of conversion
• 30:52
  rate. You've got lots of interest, but
• 30:53
  nobody's moving over the finish line because there's too much
• 30:56
  going on. And there's also most likely a
• 30:59
  lot of massive increase of operating expenses or frankly,
• 31:03
  investing in the business. And the thing I want to say with
• 31:07
  that is like some, some people and many frankly have this
• 31:11
  belief when they're scaling that money solves all problems.
• 31:14
  So what's 1 of the behaviors with that?
• 31:16
  We spend, spend, spend. Because if I just spend money
• 31:18
  that will solve my problem of whatever I'm experiencing right
• 31:21
  now. What that leads to is you have
• 31:23
  tons of money going out, but you're not always keeping track
• 31:26
  of it because you're just like, OK, solve problem money, solve
• 31:29
  problem money. Don't know that, hire someone.
• 31:31
  Don't know that. Hire someone to do it and before
• 31:35
  you know it, you've got so much money going out and you're
• 31:37
  spending so much money that even though you're like, I want to
• 31:39
  make 2 million or 3,000,000, as you make more, you're also
• 31:43
  spending more. So at the end of the day, when
• 31:45
  we get down to the bottom line, you're really not making any
• 31:47
  more money. Sometimes you're actually
• 31:49
  putting yourself more in the hole.
• 31:51
  You're going more in the negative just in the pursuit of
• 31:53
  grow, grow, grow. So what we know is that there's
• 31:59
  belief systems and mindsets that create this problem.
• 32:03
  There's signs in your business that are going to show you
• 32:06
  behaviors that you're doing right now that are indicators
• 32:10
  you are someone who's scaling too fast.
• 32:12
  OK, OK, so I want to take a quick little brief interruption
• 32:15
  from today's episode to let you know about something really
• 32:18
  exciting. And I want to 1st preface, there
• 32:20
  is nothing here that I have to sell you.
• 32:21
  This is about something that is entirely free that I think would
• 32:24
  be a massive support for you if you are someone who's loving all
• 32:28
  things Ambitious podcast. So we have created an absolutely
• 32:32
  incredible community that is called the Ambitious Network.
• 32:35
  This is really a place where coaching and masterminds meet
• 32:38
  high level networking of other women who were just like you.
• 32:41
  So a little bit of what you can anticipate, this is a place for
• 32:44
  you to grow, to connect, and ultimately to get the support
• 32:46
  that you need to elevate your business.
• 32:48
  And so some of the things you can anticipate inside #1 live
• 32:51
  Hot Seat Coaching. This is literally live coaching
• 32:54
  in the way that I would do inside of our masterminds and
• 32:56
  our different offers only inside of this community, entirely
• 32:59
  free. You'll also get the opportunity
• 33:01
  to get access to exclusive giveaways that are not available
• 33:03
  anywhere else. So these are things like
• 33:06
  giveaways of different books and resources that I'm obsessed with
• 33:09
  that have really helped me in my journey of business, but also
• 33:12
  things on a larger scale, like some of which have been six
• 33:15
  months of private coaching type of giveaways.
• 33:18
  So all of this to be said, massive, massive amount of
• 33:21
  resources being given inside and also trainings and resources,
• 33:24
  tools of frameworks and downloads and worksheets and
• 33:28
  master classes that are going to be things that will really help
• 33:30
  to take you and your business to the next level.
• 33:33
  Now, it's also not just about me.
• 33:34
  I have an incredible network and a community of other
• 33:37
  entrepreneurs who also want to give back to you if you've loved
• 33:40
  their interviews and their discussions on the Ambitious
• 33:42
  podcast. So we have guests that are also
• 33:45
  providing resources in the community that will only be
• 33:47
  available inside the ambitious network.
• 33:49
  But there's also the networking aspect.
• 33:51
  And this is a place for you to not Only Connect with other
• 33:54
  women about what's going on in your business, what's currently
• 33:56
  working or not working in today's current market.
• 33:59
  It's a place to share wins, but it's also a place to connect
• 34:01
  with me and get my feedback and support for you and your
• 34:05
  business. Now all of that to be said, this
• 34:07
  is a, as I said, mastermind meets networking.
• 34:11
  And I really have created this as a community that I want to be
• 34:14
  something you've never gotten anywhere else.
• 34:16
  It's not this low ticket membership that you feel like
• 34:18
  you're paying for. You know, this graveyard of
• 34:20
  resources that the person has they don't know what to do with.
• 34:23
  And it's also not that Facebook group that you're inside of that
• 34:26
  you feel like you get tons of notifications, but you don't
• 34:28
  really want anything that's inside of it.
• 34:29
  It all feels surface level. We want to give you the ability
• 34:33
  to have mastermind meets high level networking all in one
• 34:36
  place. And the ambitious network is
• 34:37
  where you're going to find that. So how you can get inside?
• 34:40
  If you want to go to the show notes beneath, you can click a
• 34:43
  link to join, join us inside the Ambitious network.
• 34:45
  And if you also want to connect with me on Instagram, I'm also
• 34:48
  happy to chat with you about it. So if you DM me the word
• 34:50
  ambitious, we'll be sure to chat a little bit more about the
• 34:52
  network for you and give you the link to get inside.
• 34:55
  So all of that to be said, I don't want to take any more time
• 34:58
  away from today's episode with. So without further ado, let's
• 35:00
  get back into the show. So these are mistakes that I'm
• 35:03
  going to outline per department of your business.
• 35:06
  So we're going to go over marketing, we're going to go
• 35:07
  over sales, we're going to go over offers and delivery.
• 35:10
  I'm literally going to go through department by department
• 35:12
  of your business. And I want you, as I note these
• 35:14
  to reflect to yourself. Do any of these feel like they
• 35:17
  ring true for me? Because these are behaviors that
• 35:21
  I see in businesses that have grown and scaled and basically
• 35:25
  scaled themselves out of business or have gone to such a
• 35:29
  peak of revenue. Someone wants to do $3,000,000 a
• 35:32
  year and again, that's great. But if we want to hit $3,000,000
• 35:36
  a year, we want to also make sure that we're not hitting that
• 35:40
  and then having so many issues in the business, we got to go
• 35:42
  back to 1,000,000 a year because everything broke.
• 35:45
  OK. So again, this is this is a
• 35:47
  matter of scaling sustainable and doing so in a way that is
• 35:52
  stable. That doesn't mean that when we
• 35:54
  hit a mark, we have to break it all down again because it's all
• 35:56
  broken by the time we get there. OK, So department number 1 is
• 36:01
  going to be marketing. OK.
• 36:02
  So I want you to think about these in context to marketing.
• 36:05
  Are you somebody who's overloading your content or your
• 36:08
  social media and you are constantly posting, but you have
• 36:11
  no engagement? Again, this is a sign that you
• 36:15
  are doing all of the things, but there's a lot of emphasis on
• 36:18
  quantity and not necessarily on quality.
• 36:21
  So it's again, moving really quickly.
• 36:23
  Go, go, go. More is always better, but we're
• 36:25
  not really correlating. Does the more of whatever we're
• 36:28
  doing actually generate more results?
• 36:31
  You're probably experiencing as, well, production burnout.
• 36:35
  So you might be in a place where you, like, start a blog, you
• 36:38
  start a podcast, you try to do all of the things.
• 36:42
  And you were really initially excited about it, and you got
• 36:45
  really amped up. But maybe you recorded a podcast
• 36:47
  and you had like 10 episodes or you started doing newsletters
• 36:51
  and you sent out three of them. Before you knew it, you were
• 36:53
  already back into inconsistency. Are you being consistent with
• 36:58
  production? When I see somebody who is
• 37:00
  going, I want to do this, I want to do this, And before, you
• 37:03
  know, three months have passed, they're already back into
• 37:06
  inconsistency. It tells me they're trying to do
• 37:08
  too much with marketing. They're not actually doing so in
• 37:12
  a sustainable way. Because if you start, let's just
• 37:14
  say the example, the podcast, if you start a podcast and you
• 37:19
  record 10 episodes and then you quit, that is to me a sign that
• 37:23
  the podcast wasn't part of a long term scaling strategy for
• 37:26
  the business. It was this quick belief of if I
• 37:29
  start a podcast, I'm going to make sales.
• 37:31
  If I make sales, that will grow, boom, let's record today.
• 37:34
  It's this very like short dopamine spike in tension rather
• 37:39
  than actually looking at how the podcast long term could be a
• 37:43
  resource for you to grow and to scale the business.
• 37:47
  You also are potentially somebody who's focusing a lot on
• 37:50
  trends. You're keeping up with all the
• 37:52
  current trends. So you're trying to say what's
• 37:54
  the trend in marketing? I'm going to do that.
• 37:56
  If there's a trend in the style content we make, we're going to
• 37:58
  do that. If there's a trend in offers,
• 38:01
  we're going to do that, right? Like you're always someone who's
• 38:03
  chasing trends and the most obvious place we see this is in
• 38:06
  marketing. So you'll see people that as a
• 38:08
  brand and as a business, it feels like their marketing is
• 38:12
  always changing with what's changing online.
• 38:15
  There's no signature piece to what they create.
• 38:19
  They don't stay true to who they are.
• 38:21
  And they're constantly chasing the next thing that everybody's
• 38:24
  doing because they have the belief that if they just chase
• 38:27
  the trend and if they just follow what everyone else is
• 38:29
  doing, that will Ding, Ding, Ding, be the reason that they're
• 38:32
  successful. But what really ends up
• 38:34
  happening is you follow trend, trend, trend, trend, trend in
• 38:38
  marketing. And before you know it, nobody
• 38:40
  has any idea who you are or what they can really rely on you for
• 38:44
  or come back to you for. So you actually lose yourself by
• 38:48
  doing trends more than you helped to create a brand or an
• 38:52
  identity by doing trends. You also may be someone who's
• 38:56
  cutting corners a lot, even with things we see as right now with
• 39:00
  AI. And listen, I want to preface
• 39:02
  this. I love AII use AI every single
• 39:04
  day in our business. But when it comes to marketing,
• 39:07
  you may be doing so in a way that is so just like, get it
• 39:10
  out. I don't care what it looks like.
• 39:11
  I don't care if it's good. I don't care if there's quality
• 39:15
  and it's just post, post, post more, more, more.
• 39:18
  And you see it in the content. You see captions that are
• 39:22
  written by AI that are extremely obvious because you're just
• 39:26
  trying to do more. You see, for example, clips that
• 39:28
  you've edited using AI and you didn't care what it pulled.
• 39:32
  You didn't care to make it good quality.
• 39:33
  It was just more, more, more, post, post, post.
• 39:36
  And what ends up happening is you dilute the quality of your
• 39:39
  marketing. You dilute the quality of your
• 39:41
  brand in the belief that if I just use AI and cut corners some
• 39:45
  way, somehow I can get more stuff to go out.
• 39:48
  And if I get more stuff to go out, that's going to be the
• 39:50
  reason that I grow. And a massive one that we see as
• 39:54
  well is virality. This belief that if I just go
• 39:57
  viral, the whole pursuit of their marketing is just to go
• 40:01
  viral, go viral, go viral. And what it means is you're
• 40:04
  actually just chasing numbers. You're chasing vanity metrics
• 40:08
  instead of things that will actually help to grow the
• 40:09
  business. And I'll be the first person to
• 40:11
  tell you, you going viral. Is not going to be the basis of
• 40:15
  your business scaling. I know many entrepreneurs,
• 40:18
  including myself, who do not go viral every single week or month
• 40:22
  and have very successful scaling businesses.
• 40:25
  That's because we're not looking for the blip in dopamine that we
• 40:28
  need to be like. That's the thing that's going to
• 40:29
  make us grow. We're looking for consistent
• 40:32
  compounding growth week over week, month over month, quarter
• 40:36
  over quarter. That's the real way to grow a
• 40:39
  business, not viral. I want to go viral every Tuesday
• 40:42
  and Wednesday as my mission. It's not sustainable and it's
• 40:46
  also not really a strategy when it comes to growing your
• 40:50
  business. Also, seeing people who focus
• 40:53
  so, so much on social media and not at all on their e-mail list
• 40:58
  like you might have. I literally have seen people who
• 41:01
  have two hundred 300,000 followers on TikTok that I've
• 41:06
  worked with who've come to me and said, Kate, I need to find a
• 41:09
  way to get these people off socials.
• 41:10
  Like, OK, well, obviously you must have a big e-mail list.
• 41:12
  How many emails do you have? And they're like, I don't know,
• 41:16
  like 300. And I was like, OK, And then I
• 41:20
  have other businesses that I, I work with who have 30,000
• 41:23
  followers and they have a 10,000 person e-mail list. 1/3 of the
• 41:27
  people who consume them are on their e-mail list.
• 41:30
  So the person who thinks about e-mail is thinking about
• 41:32
  longevity. They're thinking about the fact
• 41:34
  that this is a sustainable, scalable thing that they own.
• 41:37
  And they realize that the resource of having an e-mail
• 41:40
  list, that's something that they prioritize because again,
• 41:43
  they're really focused on the long term and what can help them
• 41:48
  over time to grow the, the person who's just focused on
• 41:51
  social media is really focused on the following or the views.
• 41:55
  And again, the vanity metrics and not looking at is this going
• 41:58
  to impact my business in the next five to seven years?
• 42:01
  And am I setting myself up for success long term?
• 42:04
  So they only focus on social media and often times never
• 42:07
  build the e-mail list. And they also typically have
• 42:11
  this belief that they really try to have their marketing adhere
• 42:15
  to everybody. Well, like, what about this
• 42:16
  person? Do they resonate with my
• 42:18
  message? I want to make sure that person
• 42:20
  resonates with it. And also that person resonates
• 42:21
  with it before, you know, your message gets so heavily diluted
• 42:26
  because you're just trying to help everyone.
• 42:29
  And listen, I want to say like, these are not things by the way,
• 42:32
  that I'm saying I've never made mistakes of.
• 42:34
  I am someone even myself, who has made these mistakes in my
• 42:37
  business. I remember early on I wanted to
• 42:40
  help every stage of business. I wanted to help beginners, I
• 42:42
  wanted to help intermediate, I wanted to help scaling, I wanted
• 42:46
  to help every stage of person. Basically that if you had a
• 42:48
  business, I wanted to help you like that was with my motto.
• 42:52
  The problem with that being it's extremely difficult to market to
• 42:55
  all different levels of people who have all different levels of
• 42:58
  problems. And So what I recognized was
• 43:00
  like my success in scaling was not going to be about thinking
• 43:03
  of every single avatar person that I could help.
• 43:06
  If you had a business, I could help you, that's not really
• 43:09
  sustainable. It's not really scalable.
• 43:11
  So what I had to do is say, OK, well, who am I going to double
• 43:14
  down on? Because what we know is that
• 43:17
  singularity of focus is something that is essential for
• 43:21
  scaling businesses. And that can be being focused on
• 43:24
  the two channels of marketing you're on.
• 43:26
  It can be, you know, focused on the person you're helping.
• 43:29
  It can be the focus on the offer that's really working for you.
• 43:32
  The businesses that I help that grow rapidly and have maintained
• 43:37
  that scaling over time are people who really recognize that
• 43:41
  singularity of focus is significant as a tool in being
• 43:45
  able to scale. So when we think about marketing
• 43:48
  to everybody and trying to just help everyone, what that's doing
• 43:52
  is again, diluting focus, diluting resources, and frankly
• 43:56
  making it harder for you to market.
• 43:57
  So what I decided was like, listen, I love working with
• 44:00
  scaling entrepreneur. I love working with all
• 44:01
  entrepreneurs, but I loved working with scaling
• 44:03
  entrepreneurs. I found myself wanting to just
• 44:05
  talk about scaling topics all day.
• 44:07
  I was just like loving getting into those businesses.
• 44:10
  So what I decided was like, I'm going to lean into scaling
• 44:13
  businesses. That's going to be my thing is
• 44:16
  that to say that I couldn't help a beginner tomorrow.
• 44:18
  No, IA 1000% could dive in with a beginner tomorrow and help
• 44:22
  someone to create a business or to grow a business if they're
• 44:26
  just getting started. But what I recognized was by me
• 44:29
  trying to help everybody, I was really not making a true impact.
• 44:33
  I was going really wide, but I wasn't going deep.
• 44:35
  And it was because I was going wide that I was struggling to
• 44:39
  figure out how to sell all these different offers, all these
• 44:41
  different price points, all these frankly different people.
• 44:44
  Even though they're all entrepreneurs, it's such
• 44:46
  different experiences and how they operated in business.
• 44:50
  So because of that, it became extremely difficult to do what I
• 44:53
  need to do effectively and consistently.
• 44:56
  When I doubled down on scaling, my marketing became easier, my
• 44:59
  offers became easier. Everything in my entire business
• 45:03
  got streamlined overnight because what it meant was that I
• 45:06
  was able to really focus and have that singularity of focus
• 45:10
  to go deep. And it showed in our results and
• 45:13
  the ability for us to grow. So the next area we're going to
• 45:16
  look at is sales. OK, so in sales, what are the
• 45:19
  things that we might be doing or that we might have as actions or
• 45:23
  behaviors that are assigned? We're trying to scale too fast
• 45:26
  or an indicator we're scaling too fast.
• 45:28
  So trying to delegate your sales without necessarily being at a
• 45:33
  place where it warrants doing so or in the sense of your revenue
• 45:37
  might not be at a place of doing so, or you're at a place where
• 45:40
  you don't actually have a proven framework that it warrants you
• 45:43
  giving away your sales. Yet.
• 45:45
  I will tell you the belief that many scaling businesses have is
• 45:49
  that I just want to get this off my plate.
• 45:50
  I just want, I don't want to deal with XYZ anymore.
• 45:52
  I need to delegate. I need to delegate and listen,
• 45:54
  like I'm the first to say, delegation is a great thing.
• 45:57
  We don't want to. I'm not going to knock
• 45:59
  delegation like I, I delegate a lot of things.
• 46:02
  But getting it off your plate and removing yourself too fast
• 46:05
  can actually be a detriment to a business.
• 46:09
  It can actually keep you from scaling because what you do in
• 46:12
  that belief of, OK, I got to delegate this and give that away
• 46:14
  and give that away. What you actually end up doing
• 46:17
  is you give away things and you hand them off to people, but
• 46:21
  there's no quality control. There's often lack of training.
• 46:24
  There's things that you're trying to give off too quickly.
• 46:27
  And by doing so, you're basically letting someone who
• 46:31
  doesn't know the feeding schedule and doesn't know the
• 46:33
  nap time and all of that babysit your child.
• 46:36
  Like that's what's happening is you're handing off this, that
• 46:39
  and the other, but you're not taking adequate time to ask
• 46:42
  yourself, is this ready to be delegated?
• 46:46
  And the person I'm delegating this to, do they have what they
• 46:48
  need to maintain the level of success that I created with it.
• 46:53
  So I actually typically tell people sales is one of the last
• 46:56
  things that you should be delegating.
• 46:57
  You should start with typically day-to-day tasks, by the way,
• 47:01
  admin operations, anything that's kind of more back end
• 47:04
  related of systems and maintaining of the machine.
• 47:07
  Then I typically recommend delivery.
• 47:09
  So getting someone to help you with delivery, whether you know
• 47:12
  it's adding on another team member to serve clients, if it's
• 47:14
  adding on, say you're a consultant, someone to help you
• 47:17
  with making of resources, things like that.
• 47:19
  And then I go into marketing and getting someone to help you to
• 47:22
  maintain your marketing so that as you're growing the business,
• 47:25
  your marketing never slows down in the pursuit of growth.
• 47:28
  And then we would be looking at sales as the last piece.
• 47:31
  And the main reason being is sales of the lifeline of the
• 47:34
  business. So it's something because it's
• 47:37
  the lifeline of the business that we can't really afford to
• 47:40
  have a misstep with. If someone from admin answers an
• 47:43
  e-mail wrong or if someone from admin doesn't put something on
• 47:46
  your calendar, the impact to the scaling of the business from
• 47:50
  that action or mistake is a lot less of a domino than if you
• 47:53
  have someone, you say, hey, here's my sales calls or hey,
• 47:57
  you're going to do my DM lead generation for me.
• 48:00
  And before you know it, you've cannibalized the business
• 48:02
  because the lifeline of what was bringing in the money has now
• 48:05
  gone under. So when it comes to delegating
• 48:08
  sales, you can delegate sales and I help people to do it.
• 48:11
  And I've trained people's closers that do their sales.
• 48:14
  I'm a big advocate of delegating your sales, but it's just to say
• 48:19
  you have to do it right and it has to be the right time in your
• 48:21
  business of the stage of business that you're at to be
• 48:24
  able to do that. Also something that we see these
• 48:27
  people who are in this aspect in the selling process, whether in
• 48:32
  the DMS with someone, as I said, on a sales page or even on a
• 48:36
  sales call, you are literally promising the world to someone
• 48:40
  just to get them over the finish line.
• 48:43
  These massive, big, bold, frankly often times unethical
• 48:48
  promises that you're making in your sales while you are like,
• 48:51
  OK, like, yeah, I'm going to get you this result or that result.
• 48:54
  What you don't recognize is you're doing anything to get
• 48:57
  them over the finish line. But now you've moved from sales
• 48:59
  bucket to delivery bucket and you need to deliver on that
• 49:03
  promise. So while in scaling, we're like,
• 49:06
  OK, I just want to say whatever I got to say to get this person
• 49:09
  over the finish line, It's one of the most detrimental things
• 49:12
  you can do in your business because short term, is it going
• 49:15
  to get you cash in the door? 100%.
• 49:18
  I see people just all the time in marketing and in sales.
• 49:20
  They will, you know. Yeah, yeah, we can get you that
• 49:23
  result. Yeah.
• 49:23
  I help people double their business.
• 49:25
  Is this possible as a result? Sure.
• 49:27
  Yeah, we can do that like we do all the time.
• 49:30
  You're not thinking about what you're saying.
• 49:33
  And so when you're not thinking about what you're saying or if
• 49:36
  you're not conscious of the big promises you're making, the
• 49:39
  downside of that is you could be making a massive mistake in your
• 49:43
  business because you're promising the world.
• 49:46
  They get into the delivery. Great.
• 49:48
  Yeah, you've made the sale. Yippee.
• 49:50
  You've added $20,000 to your business.
• 49:52
  Great. But now when you don't deliver
• 49:55
  on that big, bold promise that wasn't really even a promise you
• 49:57
  should have been making in the 1st place, it's your fault.
• 50:01
  So yes, you collected the cash, but that cash is now connected
• 50:05
  to a client who's not happy with their results.
• 50:07
  So when I see people making these really big, bold promises,
• 50:11
  like as a service provider, yeah, we'll get done this
• 50:13
  timeline, Sure, no problem. When you and I both know it's
• 50:16
  probably not going to happen like that or as a business
• 50:18
  coach, people ask me, they say, you know, what's the, you know,
• 50:22
  the typical results that I'm going to see?
• 50:24
  Like, do you think it's reasonable that I could hit, you
• 50:26
  know, 7 figures in the next three calls?
• 50:29
  And I say to people, listen, could you hit seven figures in
• 50:31
  the next three calls? Have I had clients do it 100%?
• 50:35
  Do I know that you're going to do that?
• 50:37
  I couldn't tell you in any aspect, in any bone in my body
• 50:41
  whether that's going to happen for you because it would be
• 50:44
  unethical for me. Whether you want to sign on for
• 50:47
  5050 thousand or 100,000. I'm not going to tell you that
• 50:51
  by working with me you will hit seven figures just to get you to
• 50:54
  sign the contract. Because what it's doing is it's
• 50:57
  creating problems for tomorrow even though it didn't create a
• 51:00
  problem for today. And So what I see with people
• 51:03
  scaling too quickly is these big promises just to get the big
• 51:07
  paycheck. And it's a problem.
• 51:10
  You can tell how passionate I am about this.
• 51:11
  It's a problem because it it's something that then when the
• 51:14
  delivery issues happen and they're like, Kate, I'm so
• 51:16
  frustrated. These clients are expecting
• 51:18
  these crazy results and like they're expecting, you know, to
• 51:22
  hit massive milestones here and massive milestones here.
• 51:24
  I'm like, hey, Susan, look at your marketing.
• 51:29
  Look at the marketing that says you can achieve this.
• 51:32
  I achieve this in 90 days. I do this in one call in 24
• 51:36
  hours. They blew up their business.
• 51:38
  Now your promise, promise, promise, promise.
• 51:40
  Now you get them into your offer.
• 51:42
  And now, now you're upset that they're holding you to the
• 51:45
  promise in your marketing. How about instead of blaming
• 51:47
  your client, how about instead of the client is the reason that
• 51:51
  you're frustrated, you take ownership and say, maybe I in
• 51:55
  the pursuit of getting so much cash, cash, cash sale, sale
• 51:58
  sales, Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I need to check myself and
• 52:03
  stop marketing these big bold promises and realize that while
• 52:07
  it's making me money, it's making problems for tomorrow,
• 52:10
  regardless of the cash that it brought in.
• 52:12
  And it is guys, I, I, this is something I really want to make
• 52:16
  sure lands for you. It's one of the fastest ways to
• 52:19
  go out of business because I will tell you your reputation in
• 52:23
  business is one of the things that you just, you can't get
• 52:26
  back. Once someone has a belief system
• 52:28
  around you and who you are, what you stand for and what you do,
• 52:32
  it's very difficult to turn the Titanic in a different
• 52:36
  direction. So while I understand that if
• 52:40
  you say that thing on a sales call or if you make that promise
• 52:42
  in the DMS and you make those big bold claims, it can feel
• 52:46
  like, great, what's making me sales?
• 52:48
  And it might be, but guess what? It's creating problems elsewhere
• 52:51
  as well. And so it's just not worth
• 52:55
  risking your reputation over, even if it meant bringing in
• 52:58
  more revenue today. Something I also see is trying
• 53:02
  to prioritize tons of quantity over quality of conversations.
• 53:06
  So, you know, we've talked in previous episodes about many
• 53:09
  Chat, which is like an automated messaging platform.
• 53:11
  And I'm not against many chat. Many Chat has many purposes and
• 53:14
  many functions for a lot of scaling businesses.
• 53:17
  But what I think is important is for us to recognize that
• 53:20
  sometimes we try to automate relationships too much.
• 53:23
  And what ends up happening is we lose the essence of why it was
• 53:25
  working in the 1st place. So when someone for example,
• 53:28
  has, let's just say Adm flow or they're selling in the DMS and
• 53:32
  the DMS were really working, they were making great sales
• 53:35
  from it. Well, The thing is if you move
• 53:37
  that to many chat and it starts to die because you're trying to
• 53:40
  again be like, OK, remove myself, remove myself.
• 53:43
  You're removing yourself from sales as much as you can.
• 53:46
  But what sometimes happens is you remove the essence of why it
• 53:49
  worked in the 1st place. So if you're not careful, you'll
• 53:53
  actually remove why you were making money in the pursuit of
• 53:56
  trying to make more money. So we have to be careful to not
• 53:59
  automate too fast and also with again, speed.
• 54:04
  Something I'm also seeing is ignoring follow up.
• 54:07
  So people who will have a sales call with someone and they don't
• 54:10
  have enough time to send the follow up proposal and they're
• 54:13
  sending the follow up proposal, say like 2 weeks later or seven
• 54:17
  days later after the call because they're trying to pack
• 54:20
  the calls, get more calls, calls, calls, But they packed
• 54:22
  their calendar and they don't have adequate time to really
• 54:26
  follow through on the sale. They're just like quick win, get
• 54:28
  them in the calendar. So really what it means is that
• 54:32
  you're forgetting potentially to get back to people or you're
• 54:35
  taking so long to get back to people that it's literally
• 54:37
  undermining the potential quality of the sale because
• 54:42
  you're not giving yourself adequate time to process that
• 54:44
  sale. So the other one that I will
• 54:47
  say, Oh my goodness, that I see all the time is adjusting
• 54:52
  pricing. Like you are at a place where
• 54:54
  you're hearing people around you wanting something low ticket.
• 54:58
  So you make that low ticket or you have someone who says, well,
• 55:01
  I can't do anything other than this price point.
• 55:03
  And you're making custom payment plans, custom payments.
• 55:07
  You know, you had packages, but you're never adhering to the
• 55:10
  packages or you're never adhering to the program pricing
• 55:12
  that you set out when you created it, because every single
• 55:15
  situation is custom because all you're trying to do is collect
• 55:19
  cash. There's no integrity.
• 55:22
  There's no, there's no honoring of the structure of the business
• 55:25
  and being OK in a sales conversation with someone not
• 55:29
  investing with you because you don't have the payment plan that
• 55:32
  they're asking for. You refuse to allow it to be
• 55:36
  true that someone might not invest with you because you
• 55:38
  don't have the payment plan that they're looking for.
• 55:40
  And so you're constantly addressing your pricing.
• 55:42
  Someone says, well, you know, my budget was XYZ.
• 55:44
  Great, I'm going to change my price or while I really need,
• 55:47
  you know, a nine month payment plan, not an 8 month payment
• 55:49
  plan. Great.
• 55:49
  I'll whip that up for you. You're always in this aspect of
• 55:53
  adhering to the clients demands and less of honoring the
• 55:56
  structure or the integrity of your business.
• 55:58
  OK, So those are some of the sales things that might be
• 56:01
  behaviors that you're making right now that are a sign that
• 56:05
  you're trying to just push, push, push, go, go, go and scale
• 56:09
  way too fast. And it's really part of the
• 56:11
  thing that's actually potentially going to be the
• 56:13
  reason that your business goes under or stop scaling in the
• 56:16
  future. Now let's talk a little bit
• 56:18
  about product suite. Product suite and offerings are
• 56:22
  also something that have a lot of key behaviors within them.
• 56:25
  One is just offering way too many things.
• 56:30
  People who are trying to just make money for the sake of
• 56:32
  making money will literally create an offer for everyone in
• 56:35
  their mom. This person says they have this
• 56:36
  problem, boom offer. This person says they want to
• 56:39
  spend that much and that's their budget.
• 56:40
  Boom offer like they just hear anything that anyone says and
• 56:45
  then as soon as they hear that, that basically is the basis of
• 56:48
  how they create their offerings. And so because of that, you end
• 56:52
  up with 25 offerings because you are making things for basically
• 56:55
  anybody who needs 1. So you can adhere to the entire
• 56:58
  market and not have a single person left unserved.
• 57:02
  What it ends up doing though is it makes you really an expert in
• 57:04
  nothing and it doesn't create any signature offering or
• 57:07
  signature awareness around you and the impact that you can have
• 57:10
  on your specific ideal client, like you're not having any
• 57:14
  aspect of consistency. So because of this, we're also
• 57:19
  seeing that you're going to attract sometimes with that so
• 57:26
  many different types of clients and they're so inconsistent that
• 57:30
  you end up getting burnt out because you're trying to just
• 57:32
  again, serve everybody in all these different problems in all
• 57:35
  these different ways. And you really like overextend
• 57:37
  yourself and your resources. And the other thing with the
• 57:41
  constant offer changing and having all these offers as well
• 57:45
  is the fact that remember, you have to market all these offers
• 57:48
  and you have to sell them. So because you're constantly
• 57:52
  changing your offerings, your audience is also like, what the
• 57:54
  heck is going on? Because it feels like you're
• 57:58
  promoting something left, right and center.
• 58:00
  Every week you've got a new offer and you've got nothing
• 58:02
  signature to your brand or to your name that people recognize.
• 58:06
  So when trying to constantly reiterate the product suite and
• 58:10
  how do I serve everybody and I got to promote this and have
• 58:13
  this and this price point and this delivery, there's also
• 58:16
  sometimes this aspect of feeling like you're constantly changing
• 58:21
  the actual structure. So say you do have a signature
• 58:24
  offer, Let's just say you have a mastermind or you have a package
• 58:27
  or you have a service and you have this as something you want
• 58:31
  to have in your business long term.
• 58:33
  I change the structure of my programs Max twice a year.
• 58:39
  More often than not once a year I'm looking at revising the
• 58:42
  structure. I'm not like this month I'm
• 58:45
  doing this and this month I'm doing this and this quarter I'm
• 58:47
  changing this. I'm not constantly changing the
• 58:50
  integrity of the offer because what that tells me is that I'm
• 58:53
  just change, change, change. Like again, moving way too fast
• 58:58
  that I'm not sitting to think about why am I integrating this?
• 59:01
  What's the impact it's going to have and what are we looking to
• 59:03
  achieve by making this change? When people make constant quick
• 59:07
  changes to their offers, again, it's this big desire for the
• 59:11
  constant dopamine spike of, you know, should I have this many
• 59:14
  calls? Should I have this many
• 59:15
  meetings? Should I have this type of
• 59:17
  schedule? Should I have this
• 59:17
  communication? Maybe I need this module.
• 59:19
  I'm going to revamp this. You can't sit still and you're
• 59:22
  changing and you're losing yourself in in the development
• 59:26
  of the offer. Believing that if I just change
• 59:28
  those things, that's going to be the thing that helps to grow the
• 59:29
  business. And frankly, it's creating more
• 59:31
  complexity for yourself than anything with this.
• 59:33
  Also seeing people who have way too complex of payment plans.
• 59:37
  When I see someone I had, I had someone who came to me for a
• 59:40
  sales console and they had an offer that they had and they had
• 59:43
  a one month, a 2 month, a three month, a four month, a six month
• 59:46
  and a nine month payment plan. And I remember saying like, why?
• 59:51
  Like why do we have so many payment plans?
• 59:54
  And they were like, well, you know, people sometimes need
• 59:56
  smaller, they need longer and I'm like, great.
• 59:57
  But if they can't afford the offer?
• 1:00:00
  If you have a pay in full, a payment plan and an extended
• 1:00:03
  payment plan, that's all you need.
• 1:00:05
  If they can't afford a all in, broken up or really broken up,
• 1:00:10
  they might not be at a place where they should be investing
• 1:00:12
  in the offer. Like if we need to put such an
• 1:00:16
  extended array of payment plans out, you're making it more
• 1:00:20
  complicated for people to buy. You're making it more complex.
• 1:00:23
  They don't know what to choose, so they don't act at all.
• 1:00:25
  The goal of payment plans is to really make it super easy.
• 1:00:29
  And this is really my recommendation for almost any
• 1:00:32
  package based service. Have a pay in full option, have
• 1:00:35
  a payment plan option that is broken up in whatever feels
• 1:00:38
  good. And then have an extended
• 1:00:39
  payment plan, which is kind of a little bit outside of what would
• 1:00:41
  typically be the standard like monthly or something like that.
• 1:00:44
  That allows the person who's all in, they have the investment to
• 1:00:47
  pay it all upfront. If they want to save a little
• 1:00:49
  bit, you can do a normal payment plan or you can do a little
• 1:00:52
  extended if it's supportive for you to break it down in price
• 1:00:54
  point. And that's if you want to do
• 1:00:55
  that, you don't have to do that, but that's an option if you want
• 1:00:58
  to have that, to be supportive. Most offers don't need to have
• 1:01:03
  more than three structures of a payment plan.
• 1:01:05
  There should, let's just say even a six month offer, you
• 1:01:08
  could have a painful option, six months, which is a monthly
• 1:01:10
  payment or an 8 month, which is a slight extended.
• 1:01:12
  That's it. You don't need anything else.
• 1:01:15
  Making it too complex makes it too hard for people to say yes.
• 1:01:18
  Also something I see a lot is when people have offers and
• 1:01:22
  they're non-stop offering like limited time discount and
• 1:01:25
  limited time offer and limited time.
• 1:01:27
  This trying to create incentive around the offerings.
• 1:01:30
  But really what you're doing is you're taking away from the the
• 1:01:35
  quality of the offer. You're taking away from what
• 1:01:37
  makes it valuable or what makes it distinct.
• 1:01:41
  And so really with constant changing of structure in the
• 1:01:45
  offer of like the features of how it's made, we're constantly
• 1:01:47
  changing pricing. We have too much pricing, we're
• 1:01:50
  constantly putting it on discount and then limited time
• 1:01:52
  offer and value add. It is so much noise that is not
• 1:01:58
  necessary to grow and in the pursuit of this, it's the belief
• 1:02:02
  that if you do this, it's going to help you to make more sales.
• 1:02:04
  The reason you're changing the features is so you can market
• 1:02:06
  them. The reason you're limited time
• 1:02:08
  offer and you know one time bonus and all these things is
• 1:02:11
  because you need that to generate the sale.
• 1:02:13
  It's always just these tactics that we're doing with all the
• 1:02:17
  payment plans, even just to be able to get the sale.
• 1:02:21
  So you'll see a trend here in marketing, in sales and now in
• 1:02:25
  offers and product suite. We're seeing we are compromising
• 1:02:29
  the integrity of what works in business and what really does
• 1:02:32
  help a business scale just in the pursuit of collecting money.
• 1:02:35
  And it's one of the fastest ways to basically unravel your
• 1:02:39
  business. The other thing that I see as
• 1:02:41
  well is people who are trying to do a lot of one off services.
• 1:02:44
  So when you're trying to offer a lot of 1 offs, you're doing like
• 1:02:47
  a one off call, a one off service, A1 off week offer, a
• 1:02:51
  one off day offer and you have those always on promotion and
• 1:02:55
  you're always trying to come up with something quick cash, quick
• 1:02:57
  cash. What it means is, again, we're
• 1:02:59
  just after the pursuit of money. So I want to say I have nothing
• 1:03:02
  wrong with intensive offers. I have an intensive offer,
• 1:03:05
  Ioffer, as I said earlier, VIP days, which are like a day
• 1:03:08
  strategy session with myself. The thing that is important for
• 1:03:11
  us to recognize though is that that is an offer that has been
• 1:03:14
  around for a long time and is actually part of a structure of
• 1:03:18
  our entire product suite that leads into a very specific style
• 1:03:22
  of outcome. We do not though, pop those new
• 1:03:25
  versions of that up every single month or week.
• 1:03:28
  It's always there as an intensive if you want it, but
• 1:03:31
  I'm not leveraging those just as quick cash, quick cash.
• 1:03:34
  If anything, I will be really transparent with you.
• 1:03:37
  Those are considered extra bonus money or revenue for our
• 1:03:40
  business. I don't base any of our
• 1:03:42
  projections of our business and how we're going to grow off of
• 1:03:44
  those. And why is that?
• 1:03:46
  There's no monthly recurring revenue.
• 1:03:48
  They're just a cash influx. So while a cash influx for most
• 1:03:52
  people, they're like, well, the key, I would love a cash influx,
• 1:03:55
  yes, but having a little blip this month of say 5000 or a
• 1:03:59
  little blip this month of $15,000, that might feel good in
• 1:04:03
  the moment. But guess what?
• 1:04:04
  You're right back at 0 the next month.
• 1:04:06
  So the thing that I see is people who are like, I want the
• 1:04:09
  cash. I want the cash.
• 1:04:10
  They just bring in these little one time things, one time
• 1:04:13
  offers, one time intensives, one time programs, all in the
• 1:04:17
  pursuit of just making quick cash.
• 1:04:19
  But there's no longevity to it. So you end up in this constant
• 1:04:22
  cycle of make, make, make, create, create, create.
• 1:04:25
  And before you know it, you're just stuck in the weeds of
• 1:04:28
  production and tons of hours and making things and you're not
• 1:04:31
  moving the needle basically in any way.
• 1:04:33
  So with this, the other thing I will also say to kind of put a
• 1:04:38
  bow on offers is up sells and down sells.
• 1:04:40
  There's so many people that I see who are just so focused on
• 1:04:44
  selling in general that they're not thinking about the longevity
• 1:04:48
  of what can happen in their world.
• 1:04:49
  So an example of this, if someone works with me for six
• 1:04:51
  months, and this is anybody, so if you're listening to this as a
• 1:04:54
  client, you know this process, but anybody works with me for
• 1:04:58
  six months, they have the ability.
• 1:05:00
  After the six months, if we feel like it's a good partnership, we
• 1:05:03
  invite them to continue to work with us after that six months
• 1:05:06
  for another six months. That is what's considered an
• 1:05:09
  upsell or a continuation type of model, which is where you
• 1:05:13
  increase the retention of how long people work with you and
• 1:05:16
  you're looking at ways to take your existing clients and help
• 1:05:19
  them to continue to grow within your ecosystem.
• 1:05:22
  Now I want to preface this is not just having them invest to
• 1:05:24
  invest. This is because it's actually
• 1:05:26
  necessary or it's required or it's beneficial to them to do
• 1:05:30
  so. But the reason that I see a lot
• 1:05:32
  of people miss this is because they just, they don't look at
• 1:05:36
  how there's longevity. They don't look at how can one
• 1:05:39
  person instead of being in my world for six months, be in my
• 1:05:42
  world for 12 months. Here's something I want to share
• 1:05:44
  with you, which is why I talk about retention.
• 1:05:47
  I've had businesses that are so focused on one time offering
• 1:05:49
  quick thing here and quick thing there.
• 1:05:51
  Before you know it, what ends up happening is you've got people
• 1:05:54
  that are coming in for six months and they leave after that
• 1:05:57
  and you never see them again. I was saying to a client of
• 1:05:59
  mine, what if I could help you to double your business and I
• 1:06:02
  didn't increase the amount of marketing or sales you're doing
• 1:06:05
  right now. And she was like, Oh my God,
• 1:06:05
  that would be amazing. I'm like, great, we need to fix
• 1:06:08
  your offers because your offers have people coming in and they
• 1:06:12
  don't want to stay. Like they're not excited about
• 1:06:14
  the delivery, They're not excited about the community.
• 1:06:16
  They're not excited about being in your world.
• 1:06:18
  They don't want to stay in your world because of the experience.
• 1:06:23
  So what you're not recognizing is that you're having people
• 1:06:25
  come in for a program. Let's just say they're investing
• 1:06:27
  $10,000 right now. You need another client to come
• 1:06:31
  in that you don't know yet to also invest $10,000, where if
• 1:06:34
  you had a good offer and you had great results, that single
• 1:06:37
  person would invest again for $10,000.
• 1:06:40
  Now you've made the same amount of money and you needed less
• 1:06:42
  leads. This is why it's being
• 1:06:45
  intentional, but where we focus our energy and scaling because
• 1:06:48
  this idea that we just need more sales, more marketing, more
• 1:06:51
  leads is again, very rarely the case.
• 1:06:54
  So the last area that I'm going to dive into for you is team and
• 1:06:56
  operations. So like your team and the people
• 1:06:58
  that support you as well as the back end of your business, the
• 1:07:00
  systems, the processes. So one of the things that I will
• 1:07:04
  say is hiring too quickly and not taking intentional time to
• 1:07:07
  think about who you're hiring. Really easy example that I see
• 1:07:10
  for this is Co coaches. This is one of the main culprits
• 1:07:13
  that I think is a massive issue. And we also see as in agencies,
• 1:07:15
  people handing things off to a service provider that's not
• 1:07:18
  maybe at the same caliber of them or even in proximity to
• 1:07:22
  them. But a really easy example is Co
• 1:07:26
  coaches. And you may even be a victim to
• 1:07:27
  this. I know I am.
• 1:07:28
  But I was in a program and I got passed off to a Co coach once.
• 1:07:32
  And it literally was like this person didn't even know half the
• 1:07:35
  things that the original person who ran the offer knew.
• 1:07:38
  And so for me, I was very frustrated because obviously I
• 1:07:42
  was going to make this investment and then I got passed
• 1:07:44
  off to someone who clearly had not been trained and had not
• 1:07:48
  been really given like the framework or guidance.
• 1:07:50
  And then also with that had very inconsistent support and
• 1:07:53
  delivery. 1 coach would say one thing, the other coach would say
• 1:07:56
  another thing. And there was such such mixed
• 1:07:59
  messaging across the board that it really you're kind of left
• 1:08:03
  with like, OK, what is going on here?
• 1:08:05
  And what it came down to was the person tried to get themselves
• 1:08:08
  out of their business too fast. And I want to be honest with
• 1:08:11
  you, like I had a moment of this in my business because I one of
• 1:08:14
  our Co coaches was done with their time inside of one of our
• 1:08:17
  programs. And I had this moment where I
• 1:08:20
  thought, OK, I can hire a Co coach like immediately.
• 1:08:24
  But when I thought about that and I started to look at
• 1:08:26
  candidates and I started to look at all these different options,
• 1:08:27
  I realized to myself, I was like, this is not I'm not going
• 1:08:31
  to be able to bring someone in that I feel like overnight has
• 1:08:35
  the credentials that I'm willing to give this person to my
• 1:08:38
  clients. Like I didn't feel like I had
• 1:08:41
  what I needed to be able to hand this person off to my clients.
• 1:08:44
  So because that what did I do? I got in there myself and I
• 1:08:47
  said, great, no Co coach, I'm coaching you now because it was
• 1:08:50
  the way to maintain the integrity while I got my ducks
• 1:08:53
  in a row to figure out to make sure that I brought in the right
• 1:08:56
  person, not just a person. And so sometimes we see with
• 1:08:59
  team people are just trying to fill, you know, basically put
• 1:09:02
  people in butts and seats to make sure that there's somebody
• 1:09:05
  to fill the role. What's not a matter of finding
• 1:09:07
  somebody, it's a matter of finding the right person who's
• 1:09:11
  going to maintain the quality of your offer, your service and
• 1:09:14
  your results and support. And so really bringing someone
• 1:09:18
  too quick and just trying to fill a role to fill a role is a
• 1:09:21
  big problem. I see also with this, this
• 1:09:24
  belief of like sink or swim and just you'll figure it out, like
• 1:09:28
  just get into the role, just get into the position and you'll
• 1:09:31
  figure it out very much a lack of training, a lack of support,
• 1:09:34
  a lack of integration, really like a big missing the mark of
• 1:09:37
  helping the person to even have what they need to be successful.
• 1:09:41
  So because of that, there's also a lot of trying to scale also
• 1:09:46
  with moving too quick without having the right tools or having
• 1:09:48
  the right systems or having the right things in place for
• 1:09:51
  yourself or even to support your team.
• 1:09:54
  And what ends up happening is when we don't have the right
• 1:09:57
  systems, when we don't have the right things in place, we're
• 1:10:00
  spending hours and hours and hours on something that's not
• 1:10:03
  going to move the needle. So an example of this, I had a
• 1:10:06
  client who came to me and she was a marketing agency and she
• 1:10:08
  said to me, you know, I track my clients data and I was like,
• 1:10:12
  great, that's amazing, How do you do that?
• 1:10:14
  And she's like, well, we basically have a spreadsheet and
• 1:10:16
  we take their posts and we go through each of the posts, we
• 1:10:18
  manually input it. And I remember looking at her
• 1:10:21
  and I'm like, why are, why are you doing that?
• 1:10:24
  And she's like, well, we give the spreadsheet to the client.
• 1:10:27
  All their stats are in there. And I'm like, but that's
• 1:10:30
  literally all housed in a platform.
• 1:10:33
  And at the time the platform was called Metrocool.
• 1:10:35
  It's it's changed since because Instagram changed their
• 1:10:38
  analytics, but at the time it was called Metrocool.
• 1:10:40
  And I said to her, you can literally just get your clients
• 1:10:42
  to create an account on this platform for free.
• 1:10:45
  And it will tell you in live time all the updates of data.
• 1:10:48
  So it's not a static snapshot of data.
• 1:10:50
  It's telling you in live time how it's growing and expanding.
• 1:10:52
  And she's like, Oh my God, it didn't.
• 1:10:54
  So I don't have to input this data.
• 1:10:55
  It was taking someone 3 hours a week to do this.
• 1:10:58
  And I was like, no, so she just got back 12 hours a month on her
• 1:11:02
  business because she was taking away this thing that she was
• 1:11:06
  doing manually that was basically a by product of not
• 1:11:11
  having the right tools or the right tech that could support
• 1:11:13
  her. So by not having the right tools
• 1:11:15
  in tech, you're just so in the go, go, go.
• 1:11:17
  And the, and again, taking quick action, we're not really looking
• 1:11:20
  at efficiency. We're not really looking at
• 1:11:22
  productivity the way we need to be.
• 1:11:25
  Another thing we see with team is overlapping responsibilities.
• 1:11:27
  Nobody kind of knows who's supposed to be doing what
• 1:11:30
  because everything is so chaotic.
• 1:11:31
  Who does this action? Who's responsible for this?
• 1:11:34
  Who generates this outcome? No one really knows.
• 1:11:37
  And that's because, again, you brought in people very fast.
• 1:11:39
  Maybe there's a lack of training, and most importantly,
• 1:11:41
  there's probably a lack of systems and a lack of processes
• 1:11:44
  that are leading everything to feel very chaotic when it
• 1:11:47
  doesn't necessarily need to be. And with lack of systems, which
• 1:11:51
  is a big one we see with agencies, is things are falling
• 1:11:53
  through the cracks. Deadlines are being missed
• 1:11:56
  posts. Let's just say as an agency that
• 1:11:58
  you're supposed to put out or not going out, you're having
• 1:12:01
  support that you're supposed to be providing.
• 1:12:03
  That's not being provided in the way it's supposed to because you
• 1:12:06
  don't have the systems to support you in doing it the
• 1:12:08
  right way. And things are falling through
• 1:12:10
  the cracks, not because you're not trying to do them, not
• 1:12:13
  because you don't care, but because you literally are losing
• 1:12:16
  all this information in the sea of information.
• 1:12:19
  And you're trying to find one thing and sure, it got done and
• 1:12:22
  you just can't because you don't have the systems or processes to
• 1:12:24
  support it. And the other thing I would also
• 1:12:28
  say is ignoring the warning signs and ignoring the feedback
• 1:12:31
  of team. If your team is telling you and
• 1:12:34
  vocalizing things to you, like I feel like I don't know whose
• 1:12:37
  responsibility this is. I feel like I'm really tired and
• 1:12:40
  I'm like burnt out and I'm feeling very much at capacity.
• 1:12:43
  I feel like blank. If you're hearing any of these
• 1:12:46
  things and you're not actively taking action to mitigate those
• 1:12:51
  and to try to figure out how to overcome them, that overtime
• 1:12:54
  will fester in the business and it will build up.
• 1:12:57
  And it will build up to the point where your team members
• 1:12:59
  leave or they just do what's considered to be quiet quitting,
• 1:13:01
  which is they're in the business still and you're paying them,
• 1:13:04
  but they're really not invested in their roles.
• 1:13:07
  So when it comes to trying to think about scaling and we think
• 1:13:13
  back to again, how do we, we all want to scale.
• 1:13:16
  We all want to grow our businesses.
• 1:13:18
  And some of us might even want to be that small percentage that
• 1:13:20
  less than 10% who double our business year over year.
• 1:13:23
  You can do that. The basis of today in our
• 1:13:27
  discussion today was not to say that you cannot double your
• 1:13:30
  business. It's to say that there's a right
• 1:13:33
  way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it.
• 1:13:36
  And when you do it the wrong way and you fall to some of these
• 1:13:38
  belief systems and these mindsets we talked about.
• 1:13:41
  If you start to see those symptoms like the cash flow,
• 1:13:43
  working lots of hours, having issues with sales conversions,
• 1:13:47
  feeling like you have all these offers, not having very good
• 1:13:49
  profit margins, If you're seeing signs and flashing signals in
• 1:13:53
  your business, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 1:13:55
  This is feeling like it resonates with me.
• 1:13:57
  And also if you're seeing some of the things I talked about in
• 1:14:00
  each of the departments of your business and you're doing those
• 1:14:03
  things and you're seeing yourself executing those
• 1:14:05
  behaviors today. This is an opportunity for you
• 1:14:08
  to say I need to get a new way to scale.
• 1:14:11
  I need to get a new approach, a new perspective, a new framework
• 1:14:14
  from Rich to grow the business because what basically I do and
• 1:14:18
  what our business focuses on, which is why I wanted to talk
• 1:14:21
  about this. We try to help people scale the
• 1:14:24
  right way. And what I mean by that is we
• 1:14:26
  look at all these departments of their business and we help them
• 1:14:29
  to make sure that they're able to take action without doing the
• 1:14:32
  actions that are going to derail the business.
• 1:14:35
  And the thing which is why I wanted to talk about it is the
• 1:14:37
  very fine line, right? There's a difference between
• 1:14:40
  helping you to refine your product suite and to maybe even
• 1:14:43
  add an offer versus how do we know when we've added too many
• 1:14:46
  offers? There are moments like myself
• 1:14:48
  with this podcast, we're adding a podcast to your business does
• 1:14:51
  make sense. But there's a fine line between
• 1:14:53
  adding a podcast and adding too much that you've actually
• 1:14:55
  diluted all your energy and resources in your team and
• 1:14:58
  you're on the path to burning down a scaling business.
• 1:15:02
  So the thing that I will say if I if you want me to do crystal
• 1:15:05
  ball it for you and tell you why does this matter when you don't
• 1:15:10
  look to change some of these behaviors, these mindsets, these
• 1:15:14
  beliefs, these actions, what happens is you will still be
• 1:15:18
  able to scale your business. I want to be very clear.
• 1:15:21
  It's not that if you think these things, if you do these things
• 1:15:24
  that you can't generate more revenue.
• 1:15:26
  I would actually argue you can probably generate potentially
• 1:15:29
  the same amount of revenue as the person next to you.
• 1:15:31
  Here's the thing, you won't have a business for a very long time.
• 1:15:35
  So if you are the kind of entrepreneur and you answer this
• 1:15:38
  to yourself, if you're the kind of entrepreneur who just wants
• 1:15:40
  to do it for quick cash and you just want money in your pocket
• 1:15:43
  and you don't care on what disaster you leave behind you
• 1:15:46
  for your team, your clients, your marketing, your anyone in
• 1:15:50
  your ecosystem, then by all means do you.
• 1:15:54
  But what I focus on is helping entrepreneurs to scale ethically
• 1:15:59
  and to be able to do so in a sustainable, really systematic,
• 1:16:03
  stable way. So the goal being we help you to
• 1:16:07
  double your revenue. We help you to be able to
• 1:16:10
  increase your revenue in whatever number capacity feels
• 1:16:13
  good for you, whatever your goal is, and make sure when you get
• 1:16:15
  there, your team has never been happier.
• 1:16:18
  Your retention is top notch. Your sales process is ethical
• 1:16:22
  and not asking for all these big promises in order to get some
• 1:16:25
  more of the finish line. Your marketing is something that
• 1:16:28
  is sustainable for you that you can maintain every week and
• 1:16:30
  you're not burning out and not being consistent.
• 1:16:33
  The only difference between someone scaling well and someone
• 1:16:36
  scaling poorly is the experience that they have when they get to
• 1:16:39
  the number. And I wanted to talk about this
• 1:16:41
  because I have helped so many people to grow their businesses
• 1:16:45
  and I've seen people do it great and I've seen people do it
• 1:16:47
  really poorly. And it really comes down to
• 1:16:50
  there's someone on the left hand side who does a great and they
• 1:16:55
  are focused on all the things that will work long term and
• 1:16:58
  they really have the end goal in mind and they're not looking
• 1:17:01
  this quick dopamine hit. And there's the other person who
• 1:17:04
  just wants quick cash. And because all they're focused
• 1:17:07
  on is money, everything else is collateral damage.
• 1:17:10
  Everyone else suffers and fails and is impacted as a result of
• 1:17:14
  their belief system of their drive for more, more, more, more
• 1:17:17
  money, more for me, more cash. It's all just about this idea
• 1:17:22
  that more is better. And so the invitation today is
• 1:17:26
  to really ask yourself, how can I approach having the same goal?
• 1:17:30
  I'm not asking you to change your revenue goal.
• 1:17:31
  You can still have that big goal.
• 1:17:33
  I remember for me, I was making $0.00 and I want to make 7
• 1:17:35
  figures. Go for that goal.
• 1:17:37
  That's the whole idea of being ambitious and driven.
• 1:17:39
  Go for the big thing that you want, but the process is just as
• 1:17:44
  important as the point of achievement.
• 1:17:47
  So you getting to that number, if it meant that you basically
• 1:17:51
  had a massive line of damage behind you, is it really worth
• 1:17:54
  it? And so my goal with anyone I
• 1:17:57
  work with is that they have to be on board with not
• 1:17:59
  compromising team clients, ethics values in the pursuit of
• 1:18:03
  achieving the number. And the exciting part is that
• 1:18:06
  it's possible. You can like me, double your
• 1:18:10
  business, but you have to focus on the right things.
• 1:18:14
  You have to be able to look at, am I doing too much?
• 1:18:18
  You got to have that, that internal check in system.
• 1:18:20
  And if you don't have that system, you hire somebody to be
• 1:18:23
  that internal check in system, which is what I did.
• 1:18:25
  I've had mentors in my circle since the day I started my
• 1:18:28
  business that are my regulating system to say, hey, you're doing
• 1:18:32
  too much. And another way that I do this
• 1:18:34
  is my team shout out, Kelsey. She has literally been my
• 1:18:37
  internal regulating system, which is like, OK, we're really
• 1:18:40
  spread thin or this is a lot going on or you know, why don't
• 1:18:44
  we chunk this down? We'll do this as phase one.
• 1:18:45
  Phase two. I still like you at times need
• 1:18:49
  my own reminders of these principles.
• 1:18:52
  But what I will say is that over time, when you start to execute
• 1:18:56
  them, they become more second nature and it becomes the the
• 1:18:59
  root and the principles from which you build your business.
• 1:19:02
  So scaling is something that is possible for you and it is
• 1:19:08
  something that I see for you and it's something I'm excited for.
• 1:19:10
  For you. The question you have to ask
• 1:19:12
  yourself at the end of today is what kind of business do I want
• 1:19:15
  to have when I get there? What kind of business do I want
• 1:19:18
  to have? If I have $1,000,000 business,
• 1:19:20
  what will it look like? How will people feel?
• 1:19:23
  Will it be a great positive business or will I have tons of
• 1:19:25
  problems? But I have 7 figures coming in
• 1:19:27
  the bank. You can choose to have a very
• 1:19:31
  successful business and have everybody around you succeed at
• 1:19:34
  the same time. So all about to say, my friends,
• 1:19:36
  I hope today was helpful for you.
• 1:19:38
  I also would love if there is anything that kind of downloaded
• 1:19:40
  for you. Maybe you realized that you have
• 1:19:42
  been scaling too fast or you've been trying to scale too fast.
• 1:19:45
  Maybe you're like, you know what, Kate?
• 1:19:46
  I know somebody who had these traits, or I was coaching
• 1:19:50
  someone who had these traits, or I have a friend who has this.
• 1:19:53
  Send this to a friend if you feel like you have another
• 1:19:55
  business owner who's constantly talking about grow, grow, grow
• 1:19:58
  faster bigger. More aggressive in the goals.
• 1:20:01
  Send this to them. Let this be their check in and
• 1:20:04
  their reflection to see how they're growing and are they
• 1:20:08
  maybe trying to grow too fast. So thank you so much for
• 1:20:11
  spending time with me today and I would love to hear from you
• 1:20:13
  slide into the DMS. As always, I always love to
• 1:20:15
  connect with you guys and hear what your downloads were.
• 1:20:18
  And I will see you on next week's episode.
• 1:20:20
  And, as always, stay ambitious.