Episode 96: Problems Scale

Welcome to Scale to Seven®! Your behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to scale your business to seven figures. I'm your host Kathryn Binkley, business and leadership coach for online entrepreneurs. Here's what I know, building a business that will generate millions requires the mindset, strategy, and action of a future seven-figure CEO, starting now. Ready to Scale to Seven®? Let's go! 

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is episode number 96. And I want to talk to you about something that a lot of people don't really talk about when it comes to scaling. Most of the time, when people talk about scaling, they're referring to increasing their revenue, and that's all they focus on. But when your revenue scales, that's not the only thing that scales. Workload increases, your team grows, expenses rise, meeting time increases, your tech stack builds. And I could go on and on. All of that said, there's one thing that some of the things I just mentioned, will lead to, and sometimes just happen all on its own. And that is problems. Problems scale, too. So if there are little things in your business, that are problems now, it's going to get bigger. And as your workload grows, your team grows, your expenses rise, your meeting time increases, your tech stack gets more complex. That's going to create problems too. Have you noticed that as your business grows, the small challenges multiply, the backburner issues demand your attention, and barely noticeable gaps become all that you can see. Maybe you thought it was supposed to get easier, maybe you thought that you'd have more free time as your business scales. But instead, you're working harder and longer than ever before. You're addressing all of these problems, and just trying to keep up, you're dealing with the urgent things instead of the important things. And so learning how to tackle problems is part of what you need to learn as you scale. This is part of the process. This is part of the philosophy that I teach inside of The Scalability Factor™. 

And there are two pieces of advice that I give my clients when they have problems or challenges in their business. Okay. The first is, when there is a problem, fix it twice, fix it now, and then fix it for good. In other words, solve the short term issue, take care of whatever needs to be taken care of. But then also figure out a system to prevent the problem from happening again, or at least document how to handle it when it does. So again, when there's a problem, you're always going to fix it twice. This will prevent you from having to solve the same issue over and over and over again. Because either you prevent it. Or you can hand off the process that you've documented to someone else to handle it when it happens. 

The second piece of advice is to create solutions with the future in mind. Solutions built for today, don't last long when you're scaling. I really want you to hear that solutions built for today don't last long when you are scaling. Instead, you need to get clear on where you'll be in a few years and then set yourself up. Set yourself up now for where you will be in the future. I'm going to give you a few examples that are real examples from clients coming to me asking about recommendations or just talking to me about things that they're working on as they scale their business. And sometimes I just stop them and really dive in because I can see that they are focusing on now instead of the future. So here are a few of those examples. The first one, don't choose software to support the number of clients that you have right now. Choose software that's going to accommodate your growth for years to come. Another example here: don't Choose marketing strategies that require time that you have now, but won't have in six months. You want to make sure that when you're selling, you don't choose a strategy that as you book in clients, you won't have time to implement anymore. If you get so busy with clients, your time is limited. With your marketing, don't choose a strategy that requires time. And that's really on both sides. But we'll use marketing as an example there. Another example, don't create an offer that doesn't match your long term vision just because it will bring in some quick cash.

Don't try to solve your cash problem now with something that doesn't match your long term vision because then you're going to end up replacing it, starting over going through many of the same steps again, for a different offer. Just start now the way that you intend to continue long term, I could go on and on with lots of different examples. But again, the big picture here is to implement solutions for where you want to be, not where you are. Now, you want to think about where you're going to be in six months, a year, two years, three years, five years, and implement solutions now that can scale. So remember, problems are inevitable, you can't necessarily prevent them all. But you can avoid scaling problems as you scale your business by fixing every problem twice and creating solutions with the future in mind. I want you to keep this in mind, as problems come up this week, this month, this year, you come back to these two strategies over and over again. They will save you so much time and so much stress long term. I promise.

Hey, if you like what you're learning on the podcast, you have to check out The Scalability Factor™. It's my coaching program where I teach you how to create and sell a scalable offer so you can earn more while working less. Just head over to kathrynbinkley.com/scalability and I'll see you inside.