Everybody wants a bigger business. Nobody wants to admit their current one is already kicking their ass.
There's something incredibly attractive about the idea of scaling a business.
More money.
More clients.
A fabulous team handling everything while you're somewhere sipping cocktails and pretending you don't check your email.
Sounds delicious.
Unfortunately, there's a rather inconvenient detail people tend to overlook.
Your business actually has to be capable of handling all that growth.
And if your current operation is being held together by caffeine, questionable scheduling decisions, and your refusal to delegate, we need to have a conversation.
Because doubling your revenue sounds wonderful.
Doubling your problems?
Absolutely fucking not.
Everybody Wants to Be the CEO Until It's Time to CEO
When I started building my business, I already had years of experience supporting executives.
I'd managed projects, coordinated operations, and watched companies make decisions that affected entire departments.
I understood the importance of having systems.
I understood delegation.
And I certainly understood that successful businesses needed structure.
You'd think that would make running my own business relatively straightforward.
Adorable.
Knowing how something works and actually implementing it in your own business are two entirely different experiences.
Especially when you're accustomed to being the person everybody depends on.
As an executive assistant, I'd spent years making sure things got done.
As a business owner, I had to learn that doing everything myself wasn't necessarily something to be proud of.
In fact, it was becoming a problem.
And the bigger my ambitions became, the more obvious that problem was going to get.
Your Business Is Giving DIY Disaster
Let's discuss systems.
Or, more specifically, the complete absence of them.
You know those little workarounds you develop when you're running a small business?
The client information saved in seventeen different places.
The tasks you keep in your head because writing them down apparently requires too much effort.
The invoices you swear you'll send on Friday.
And that one process nobody understands because you've never actually explained it to another human being.
Congratulations.
You've created a business that requires your constant supervision.
Now imagine doubling your client roster.
Or tripling it.
Every little inconvenience becomes a much bigger inconvenience.
And suddenly, you're spending more time managing the mess than delivering the services people hired you to provide.
That's the thing about growing a business.
More clients don't magically repair inefficient operations.
They give those inefficient operations more opportunities to embarrass you.
Before you start fantasizing about your next revenue milestone, you might want to figure out where you're storing your client passwords.
Preferably somewhere other than a sticky note.
The Micromanagement Olympics
Here's where things get personal.
Delegation.
A beautiful concept.
Absolutely wonderful in theory.
Slightly terrifying when you're the person who has to practice it.
When you're accustomed to handling everything yourself, bringing somebody else into your business can feel like handing over the keys to your favorite car.
Sure, they're perfectly capable of driving.
But are they going to adjust your mirrors?
Change the radio station?
Put their feet on the dashboard?
I HAVE QUESTIONS.
The problem is that you can't build a team if you're determined to remain personally responsible for every tiny detail.
You end up reviewing everything.
Correcting everything.
And occasionally convincing yourself that completing the assignment personally would be faster.
Which, congratulations, means you've hired someone to watch you work.
I've had to confront my own perfectionism while learning how to delegate.
And it taught me something important.
If I wanted other people to help grow my business, I needed to give them the instructions, resources, and authority to actually do their jobs.
That meant documenting processes.
Communicating expectations.
Providing feedback.
And accepting that someone else might accomplish the same objective differently.
The audacity.
But necessary.
Because a business owner who insists on approving absolutely everything eventually becomes the reason absolutely nothing gets finished.
Your Revenue Is Cute. What About Your Infrastructure?
Let's say business is booming.
Your marketing is working.
Clients are coming in.
You're making more money than you were six months ago.
Wonderful.
Now who's answering all those inquiries?
Who's onboarding your new clients?
Who's managing your existing accounts?
And who's making sure the quality of your work doesn't deteriorate because everybody's suddenly overwhelmed?
Because increased revenue comes with increased responsibilities.
And those responsibilities require actual infrastructure.
Depending on your business, that might mean improving your onboarding process, documenting how work gets completed, introducing automation, or bringing additional people onto your team.
It might also mean reconsidering how you position your services.
If you want to attract premium clients, your business needs to deliver an experience that supports your pricing.
That doesn't necessarily mean having an enormous team or purchasing every software subscription known to humanity.
It means understanding what your business needs to operate effectively at its current size and what will need to change as it grows.
Otherwise, you could end up with a business that looks incredibly successful from the outside.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, everybody's running around like somebody released a raccoon in the office.
Congratulations. You've Built Yourself Another Job.
Let's talk about something that makes entrepreneurs uncomfortable.
Trading time for money.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with selling your expertise or providing services directly.
But if your goal is to build a business that operates without your constant involvement, you need to understand how much of your revenue depends on your personal availability.
Because if every new client requires another twenty hours of your time, there's eventually going to be a problem.
Unless somebody's invented a way to manufacture additional Tuesdays.
In which case, please contact me immediately.
When I started expanding my business, delegating assignments to other virtual assistants allowed me to support more clients without personally completing every task.
Eventually, that experience became part of how I developed my agency.
But building that kind of operation required more than finding talented people.
It required deciding which responsibilities I needed to retain and which ones other people could handle.
It also meant accepting that my business couldn't grow indefinitely if I insisted on being involved in every assignment.
And that's an uncomfortable realization when you've built your professional reputation around being exceptionally good at getting things done.
Sometimes your greatest professional strength becomes something you have to manage differently as a business owner.
Rude, isn't it?
Maybe You Don't Actually Want to Scale
Here's a question worth asking.
Why do you want a bigger business?
Seriously.
Is it because you want to earn more money?
Work fewer hours?
Serve more clients?
Create employment opportunities?
Or because somebody on LinkedIn announced they were scaling to seven figures and now you're questioning every decision you've ever made?
Because those are very different motivations.
And they don't necessarily require the same business strategy.
You might discover that you don't want an agency with twenty employees.
Perhaps you'd prefer a small operation with a handful of excellent clients and enough income to support the lifestyle you enjoy.
Or maybe you genuinely want to build a much larger company.
Wonderful.
But that decision comes with different responsibilities.
More people to manage.
More complicated operations.
And potentially more time spent leading your business instead of doing the work that originally made you want to start it.
There's no requirement that every entrepreneur build an empire.
Sometimes having a profitable business that gives you control over your time is precisely what you wanted in the first place.
And if that's your definition of success, why are you trying to build somebody else's business?
The CEO and the Control Freak Had to Have a Meeting
I've learned that growing a business requires you to become comfortable doing things differently.
You have to examine your operations.
Evaluate your capacity.
And sometimes acknowledge that the person preventing your business from growing is the same person whose name appears on the invoices.
Hello.
It's me.
There's something humbling about recognizing that you have the professional experience to understand exactly what needs to happen, yet still struggle to implement those changes in your own business.
But recognizing those patterns has helped me approach business growth differently.
I don't need to personally complete every assignment to demonstrate my value.
I don't need to accept every opportunity.
And I certainly don't need to build an enormous operation simply because somebody else thinks bigger automatically means better.
What matters is whether the business I'm building can support the goals I've established for myself.
And whether I actually enjoy the life that comes with running it.
Because there's very little appeal in building your dream business only to discover that you've become its most overworked employee.
Sexy Is a Business That Can Survive Without You
Want to know what I find attractive these days?
A documented process.
A team that understands its responsibilities.
Clients who know exactly what to expect.
And a business owner who can take a vacation without secretly answering emails from the hotel bathroom.
Now THAT is sexy.
Revenue matters.
Growth matters.
But neither tells the entire story.
A business that generates impressive revenue while requiring your constant attention might be exactly what you want.
Or it might be the reason you're exhausted.
The important part is making that decision deliberately.
So before you announce that you're ready to scale, take a good look at what you've already built.
Can your operations accommodate more clients?
Are you prepared to delegate?
Do you have the resources to maintain the quality of your work?
And perhaps most importantly, do you actually want the responsibilities that come with the business you're imagining?
Because scaling sounds incredibly attractive.
Until you realize you've invited twenty more people into a house that doesn't have working plumbing.
Fix the damn plumbing first.
CURRENT MOOD
"Independent Women, Part I" by Destiny's Child
Because there's something particularly satisfying about building a business that supports your independence.
And I'm at a point where I appreciate the difference between owning a business and allowing that business to own every waking moment of my life.
Also, Destiny's Child makes practically any conversation about being a boss more entertaining.
PEAK OF THE WEEK
Recognizing how much my perspective on entrepreneurship has developed.
I've gone from being the person responsible for completing the work to learning how to build operations that allow other talented people to contribute.
And I'm still learning how to balance my ambitions with the kind of life I actually want.
Because apparently, being the boss means occasionally having to manage yourself.
Who authorized that?
#SexyUntilYouScale
XXX,
M💋
0 comments