This is the Key to Scaling Your Business
Maybe you have reached the point in your business where you are ready to take it to the next level. Or maybe you aren’t quite there yet, but you have crazy big dreams to scale your business soon. But in a bid to do it the right way, you’ve done so much research that you’re now in a state of information overload and are paralyzed to do anything to get closer to your goal for fear of doing the wrong thing. Sound familiar?
Playing it safe and sticking with the same old business model might feel like you are just pressing pause, thinking you’ll just get to it later, but did you know there’s actually a huge cost to standing still? In fact, you’re not even standing still. When we’re in a state of inaction, we’re actually deteriorating -- in our careers, our relationships, our health, even in our state of mind. Harsh, but true.
This post is dedicated to the power of taking action. Having the courage to put yourself out there and really go all in is the only way to successfully scale a business in a sustainable way.
It’s terrifying, I get that. The good news is: I’m sharing some tried-and-true advice on how to take action the right way (because there is a wrong way!) in order to scale your business and create the life you have been envisioning.
WE ARE EITHER GETTING STRONGER OR WE’RE WITHERING AWAY
This is the wakeup call. It’s the reminder that at the core of who we are as humans, we are doing one of two things: we’re either growing or we’re dying. We’re improving or declining. We’re getting stronger or we’re withering away.
This is really what most days look and feel like as an entrepreneur (at least in our house)!
CHECK OUT EPISODE #038 FOR THE VISUALIZATION EXERCISE!
My husband and I have been scaling our businesses lately, and I think sometimes from the outside it looks like the people or companies that are growing have it all figured out and they’re in their stride. It’s easy to look on with envy as they hit new milestones and achieve the accomplishments.
Growing Pains are Normal When Scaling a Business
Remember when you were a kid and you would lay in bed at night, kept awake by the aching in your joints as your body was actually growing and expanding? I do! I remember sleeping with ice packs on my knees hoping they’d go numb enough for me to fall asleep. I was the tall kid at school. I remember my basketball teammates saying how cool it was that I had grown so much in one year but they had no idea what my body had to go through to get there! The aches and pains, the awkwardness that comes with being in a new body that grew three inches in one year, the uncertainty of quite literally being at new heights…
It’s the same thing in business and in life.
You might see us expanding and growing from the outside, but what you don’t see is Michael and me up at 11pm racking our brains over budgets and goal sheets. You don’t see me in tears because of another failure I thought for sure would be a win. You don’t see the gray hairs I’m regularly dyeing or the battle of hitting new heights that we’re not yet qualified for.
But I’ll tell you this - all the growth and all the good we have experienced through all of these pains is coming from movement. It’s coming from action. Even if the action leads to a failure, it is ultimately getting us to the next step.
TAKING ACTION STEPS MEANS THERE IS GROWTH & MOVEMENT
We were sitting down talking through numbers and getting ready to make our next hire within the company. Scaling a business often means bringing more hands on deck. This is something we take very seriously because we know that when we bring someone onto our team they’re essentially joining our family. But even more important than that, we’re possibly supporting their’s.
My husband was extra stressed this time around, feeling the pressure of making sure that we could fully support this person in the ways we want to, and he felt this heaviness and the burden of being afraid of letting them down. In that moment I felt this unbelievable calm wash over me and I remembered that in all of this, we’re being guided.
Hiring this person is an action step we need to take even though we can’t fully predict the outcome. Their decision to accept our offer is an action step they need to take even though they can’t fully predict the outcome. The best case scenario, and certainly what we’re aiming for, is a match made in Heaven and we’re all happy. Worst case scenario: it’s not the right fit and ultimately we have to part ways.
Either way, this action step has to happen. It’s ultimately guiding both parties towards growth and movement.
On the flip side of that, we could choose not to hire out of fear of letting them down or anticipating the negatives that might never happen. We would stay right where we are, but decaying because we aren’t doing what we need to do to move forward.
Or that hire could choose to stay in their safer job because of what may or may not happen, but then they are still in a career they don’t like, not working towards any positive change towards the life they’re dreaming about.
Hell yes, there are risks.
TAKE THE LEAP
At some point we have to measure the risks of standing still. The cost of not doing business.
I’d rather risk my pennies and save my regrets.
So what can you do if you’re in that place of what you may think is sitting still, but in reality means you’re deteriorating?
It’s easy to say, “Just take an action step! Just do it. Take the leap.”
But there are ways you can identify what you should be doing.
Choose a category of your life…
Maybe you’re running a successful business, but your marriage isn’t as strong as you hoped it would be. Then focus on your marriage! Come up with the things you really want in your marriage that aren’t present now.
Maybe your health has taken a back seat, and you want to make it a top priority again before really up-leveling your business. Take some time to tap into the vision of what you really want for your physical and mental health, and make a game plan to get there. Find help if it feels overwhelming!
You can identify what needs your attention by doing an audit. I like to do this quarterly. This is the life assessment I use for my clients to help them with this process. You’re going to rate the different buckets or areas of your life that mean a lot to you: parenthood, finances, relationships, health, business, etc.
Then look at the ones where you scored low. You’re likely not giving them the attention they need so they’re pretty stalled out.
Then take it one step further and prioritize these buckets. Look at the three lowest categories and rank them by importance to you (this next part is important) based on the 3 year vision for your life.
For example, just because you ranked your friendships a two (low) doesn’t mean that you need to dive into investing all of your time into building and maintaining different friendships. Maybe that’s not a top priority for you right now. Maybe it’s a two because you’ve chosen to get your business off the ground or pour life into your marriage or take your health seriously. If you have chosen to rank something low because you are prioritizing another area, that’s okay!
It’s not that you’re always going to neglect your friendships, but maybe they don’t get to be a top priority in this season of life. This should be based on your value system in addition to your goals and vision for your life.
There are certain categories that I, personally, never want to fall below a five or six. Those are my marriage, my relationships with my children and my health. But there are other categories that I know can be out of balance depending on my season, vision and goals.
You have to decide that part.
YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO FAIL
There also has to be a surrender of perfection and fear of failure.
This is the tough part. It’s what I’ve struggled with the most over the years of launching businesses and scaling business and pitching myself along the way.
I want to have it all figured out before I start. That’s still my natural inclination after years of knowing that it doesn’t work that way.
My podcast didn’t come to life for years because I kept convincing myself that I had to grow my audience first or develop more content or have all my episodes planned. Then one day I decided I had waited long enough. It was time to act. I was going to show up to a mic from a closet and just hit record. If I hadn’t been willing to fail, my podcast would still just be an idea in my head.
If you want great things to be born (the DREAM) you have to show up for it.
You have to be willing to suck at it. You have to be willing to fail at it.
In the early days of starting my branding strategy business, I was hustling to take on one-on-one clients. It wasn’t pretty. But truthfully, I wasn’t actually running a business -- I had the website and the social media content and the outlines for what I would teach and the proposals drawn up but I wasn’t sending them to anyone! I was paralyzed by the fear of people telling me no or that I’m not the right person for them or that I’m some kind of fraud.
So with shaking hands, I still remember hitting send on my first proposal to a client that felt so far out of my league. I was terrified. And guess what? First off, I didn’t die. But you know what happened when I finally sent it…
I got a no.
And I’m still here to tell the tale! My business has grown and scaled exponentially since that day. That attempt was the action step I needed to have the courage to do it over and over and over again until I fine-tuned my process and it stuck.
I learned how I could do it better. I learned the art of the follow-up. I learned that it wasn’t going to be easy. And guess what the best part was?
I fell madly in love with the challenge. I loved that I didn’t know if after working my butt off it would end in a yes or a no. I started to love those nights of staying up late knowing that I was working towards my dream. I loved chasing it and cultivating it through my own dirty hands.
It was the same way I lost close to 60 pounds. It’s the same way I’ve rebounded from parenting failures. It’s the same way I’ll continue to scale my podcast and my business.
I’ll just stay in a space of massive action, because I know that even if the action step is the wrong one, I’m not dying. I’m not deteriorating.
I’m showing up for my life.
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