November 15, 2023 • 27 mins
In today's episode, Tara shares her top 5 signs that your digital business may be ready to grow and scale (and what to do about it).
About Me:
My name is Tara Bryan. I help business owners break into the next level of success by packaging their expertise into an online business. It's my passion to help you find the fastest path to results to create a greater impact and income for you and your tribe.
This podcast is 100% focused on support, tips and example sharing, and building a community of online business owners who are passionate about building awesome learning experiences.
We do that by building engaging, motivating, gamified, and learner-centered online experiences. We come up with ideas and strategies to ensure that our learners can thrive and succeed using our packaged products.
To learn more:
Find us at https://www.taralbryan.com
Here are two ways we can help you grow and scale your online course-powered business:
1. Want to package or pivot your business online? Download our free Step-by-Step guide to get the exact steps you need to create an online business.
2. ALREADY HAVE AN ONLINE BUSINESS & READY TO INFINITELY SCALE?
Download our free 50 Ways to Engage Your Customers guide or Schedule a 15 minute call with Tara to talk about our offers that will help you master the game.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode of the course
(00:03):
building secrets podcast. I amthrilled you're here today, hey,
in this episode, I want to talkabout scaling your business and
the challenges that go alongwith that. So when I was first
trying to scale my agency backin the day, I knew I had to get
out of at least one corefunction of my business could no
(00:25):
longer be everywhere at once Iwas exhausted, I was trying to
figure out how to do all thethings, I knew that if I sort of
stopped pushing and gettingthings out there, that all the
balls were going to drop, right,I would just had that feeling.
But there weren't enough hoursin the day, I wasn't able to
(00:48):
grow and continue growing,because I was trying to handle
it. All right, like I was tryingto do all of the things. And so
at that point, I had twochoices, the first choice was to
decide, like, alright, well,let's just stay at the size that
we are right now. Right, we'redoing fine. I have a small team,
and we're able to, you know,help a number of clients. And
(01:13):
you know, like, that could betotally fine. Or, I needed to
choose that I wanted to create ascalable system, a scalable
agency that allowed us tocontinue to grow, we knew we had
people who wanted to work withus, we knew that we could grow
beyond where we were, at thattime. And, and so, you know,
(01:34):
that was the direction that Ichose to go, I chose growth. And
so because of that, I knew I hadto start doing things a little
bit different. So that wasn'tnecessarily easy, right? I you
know, not because of theincreased workload that we were
gonna have when we had morecustomers. But because I had let
go. And I don't know about you,if you've ever been in this
(01:54):
position, but when you're doingall of the things,
and you've built your companyfrom scratch, and you've, you
know, essentially had your handand every little part of the
business, it's really hard tolet go.
And when I had to let go, the,you know, the challenges of kind
(02:20):
of not like, not being the onewho was doing all the things
was, was really hard, right? SoI had to step into being a
leader, not necessarily the bestdoer, right, like I couldn't do
all of the things that I wasdoing with clients anymore.
I had to let go of the accoladesand the recognition that I was
getting from clients. And youknow, that they would be super
(02:43):
happy with what I provided whatour team provided. And I just, I
had to be able to let that goand find a different way to show
up and serve, I needed to find away for me to grow, right, so I
had to show up differently, Ihad to, you know, assume the
leadership role of the businessand not the sort of head doer of
(03:05):
the business. And, and so thatwas sort of the first transition
that I needed to make as I movedinto growth mode.
Now, I'll never forget, the veryfirst time that all of the work
that I had done to show updifferently in the business
actually happened. We weresitting, the team was having a
(03:27):
meeting, and we werebrainstorming around a new
client project. And I was I wasin the room. And I was, you
know, adding some information Iwas, you know, kind of
spitballing and brainstormingwith everyone. But my team had
it, I had the right people inthe right seats. They were they
(03:48):
had the plan, they had thestrategy, they had all of the
parts and pieces that theyneeded to do an amazing job with
this client. And they didn'tneed me anymore. They didn't
need me to lead. They didn'tneed me to,
you know, to give suggestionsand give my ideas. In fact, at
(04:10):
one point, I remember someonefrom my team going we've got
this Tara, like, you should godo something else. Because we
are you know, 100% confident inour ability to help this, this
client and I was like, oh, okay,well, you don't need me like,
all right, fine, right. And soat first I felt kind of lost and
unsure of how to spend my time Iwas like, Well, if I don't need
(04:32):
to be in the room, what do Ineed to be doing? Right? Like,
this was the dream that I hadever since I first started the
business. But I was I was notsure of what to do. So I don't
know maybe you have felt thatway as well when your team's
rocking it and you're like oh,okay, well guess what now I get
(04:53):
to focus on something different.And and the thing that I started
focusing on is they startedfixing things right they started
like
I'm
not necessarily redoing things,but I was fixing I was gonna
make things better. And I wasgoing to, you know, continue to
figure out how we can grow andbuild scalable systems and do
all of the things. And so if youknow what I'm talking about, you
(05:14):
kind of know, like when you'relost, you tend to like redo
things or fix things or makechanges that aren't necessary.
And, and so I went through thatprocess, and I was just a little
my identity had changed, right.And so I was a little unsure for
a little bit. But I finally sortof found my footings and
(05:35):
realized that it was time for meto step up as a leader in my
business.
And then that is when it finallybecame that freeing moment that
I could grow and scale thebusiness without having to be
the one person who was doing allof the things.
And, you know, I think aboutthis story, and I think about
how when I'm helping
(05:58):
our customers sort of transitionfrom how they're showing up with
their, their customers, right,whether it's they're doing one
on one services, or they'redoing sort of live coaching, or
live delivery of theirproprietary methodology, there
comes a day when you need tocreate sort of those scalable
(06:20):
delivery and fulfillment systemsthat help to drive your business
forward. And, and so that thatexperience has served me so
well, because a lot of the samekind of behaviors of what
happened when I had a team thatwas finally, sort of working.
(06:42):
Without me,
this is what starts to happenwhen people automate their,
their digital delivery,
is that the some of the samebehaviors happen, right? Like
they're trying to fix things, orthey, you know, create something
different, or they're feelingdisconnected with their clients.
So they jump in at weird times,and try and help and try and fix
(07:04):
or, because they don't have aclear path of where everyone is
and what they're doing.
There's, there's just like a lotof
sort of ad hoc things that arehappening. And it's all just
based on that need that feelingof sort of being unmoored, if
you will, when you start toautomate your various systems,
(07:29):
your various delivery process,and all of the things is, you
know, you have to trust theprocess, right, I had to, I had
to trust my team, that I hadgiven them the tools I had done
the training, and I had, putthem in a position so they could
win. And it's that same thing,you have to put yourself in a
(07:49):
position to trust the systemsthat you've set up to trust the
automation that you've set up totrust the customer journey that
you've created. And then you cancreate new sort of milestone
programs or courses or whateverit is that you want to create,
that helps your customer alongthe path, not so much recreating
(08:11):
your signature program, or yoursignature, kind of series of,
of, you know, programs thatyou've created, or whatever it
is that you've created in yourbusiness. And, and so what tends
to happen, if you aren'ttrusting the process is that you
are rebuilding things, you're,
(08:32):
you're again, jumping in, you'recreating sort of off tracks that
don't match the progression thatyour people are going to go
through. All of these aresymptoms that I see almost every
day when I'm working withvarious customers who've come to
us and they're like somethingisn't working with our programs.
(08:54):
We've created a trainingeducation company, something's
not working, our customersaren't converting. They're not
ascending. People aren't, aren'tparticipating. They're not like,
there's just something that'sgoing on. Or they come to me and
they're like, so listen, we knowthat we have our sales and
marketing dialed in. But we'reafraid that once we put more
(09:15):
people into our programs, it'sgoing to break because it's
pretty much put together withduct tape and paper cups right
now. So we know that we need abetter system.
So typically, all of these aresymptoms of that scaling
process. And it's totallynormal, right? Like, I had to go
through that. You know, Istarted a business from scratch,
(09:37):
it was all me. And then Istarted to build a team to help
me fulfill and then I had tobuild a team to fulfill without
me, right that's the progressionof building a business. And you
may also be in that thatprogression of building the
business is at some point itgrows beyond your cap can
(10:00):
Keep ability to be able to doall the things. So again, if
you're in that position, likejust know that your, you know,
what you're doing right now isnormal. And once you can get
yourself sort of out of the theswirl of that, right you kind of
sit in that uncertainty you sitin that, that place of being
(10:24):
unmoored, then you can keepgrowing, and you can keep
scaling. And your customersstay, your customers ascend, and
they're all in the right place.And, and so what I want to give
you are five signs that you maybe kind of in this place in your
business.
(10:45):
So the first one is that you'reoverwhelmed, right, you feel
like you need to be doing all ofthe things. And if you don't do
all the things, or you stop, andtake a break, then all the balls
are gonna fall and you're notgonna be able to pick things up,
right? Like, you're either gonnadisappoint your team, you're
gonna disappoint yourself,you're gonna disappoint your
(11:07):
customers. Like there'ssomething going on, that you're
just constantly on the hamsterwheel and you don't feel like
you can get off. That's usuallythe indication that you actually
need to stop, right? Like, ifyou feel like, you know what, I
know, I need to do this, but Ijust don't have time. That is a
sign that it's time to stop.And, and really dial in some of
(11:29):
the systems that you need inorder to keep growing, because
it may not be today, buteventually, like, the problems
aren't going away, right. Soeventually, you're going to have
to stop. So before it gets toofar out of hand,
it's good to stop, get the helpthat you need, and then be able
to move forward. Okay, that'ssign number one, Sign number two
(11:53):
is, you don't have a clearcustomer journey. So your
customers
are confused when they join yourprogram, and they start to get
results. So so there's not aclear customer journey, and
there's not a clear customerascension path. So when you have
customers who come in and theyget a result, do you have a
(12:16):
clear next step for them? Like,is there a different level that
they get to ascend to becausethey've completed your first,
your first program that youhave? So often, I have customers
who come in, and they're like,Well, you know, we've got, you
(12:37):
know, 5000 people on our list,or five dozen people in our free
community, but only a handful ofpeople who have, who have
bought, and like even less thatare taking our other offers, or
you revamp your offers and youyou, you know, take all of your
(12:57):
customers who have been with youlike your juicy people who like
follow you everywhere, they liketo pay you for everything, you
you dump them back into the mainprogram, because you're not sure
what to do with them. That's asign that your customer journey
in your customer acquisitionplan is a little wonky, right?
Like there's something happeningthere. And chances are because
(13:18):
you have that first time whereyou're super overwhelmed, you're
you're just like thinking aboutgetting your thing out there and
selling it versus, you know,what happens when somebody
becomes a customer because thegoal isn't to just churn new
customers all the time, right?It's so expensive to do that. In
fact, it's like five times moreexpensive than just keeping the
(13:40):
ones that you have. And so thesecond sign is like customers
aren't quite sure what to do.And if somebody has been in your
world for a really long time,and they've been you know,
getting great results. And andthey're like your person, and
you put them back into abeginner program, that that's a
miss, right? You you have theopportunity you're leaving money
(14:03):
on the table because you're youhave the opportunity to keep
ascending them to higher andhigher levels within within the
journey. Okay, so that's sametwo, same three. Yes, you've
created and recreated your coreprogram more than three times.
So if this is you, and youyou've created it,
(14:25):
and then you're like, this isn'texactly right. And so you re
recreate, you re recreate it,you read it, you recreate it
and and you're doing it notbecause customers are asking for
it right like not becausethey're confused, but because
you're feeling like you'redisconnected, right? You're not
involved in what they'relearning. So you just feel like
(14:47):
you want to keep
keep recreating it. This is justas a side note, this is for live
teaching and automated teaching.So if you're teaching your
cohort live
Like your teaching materials,not the coaching and
accountability, which teachingmaterials, if that is happening
(15:09):
more than three times. And Iwould say, once you have your
beta, and your actual, like corecurriculum locked in, like, you
may have to test it a bunch oftimes just to get the curriculum
set. But once you have thecurriculum locked in, if you're
constantly repeating theteaching elements,
as that could be,
(15:32):
you know, put in as assets, thatis also you're recruiting three,
three times right, in automatedif you are just constantly
redoing it,
without a specific reason forit, this is also a good
indication that you are kind ofin this place, you're just re
(15:53):
recruiting it because you feeldisconnected with the process
and with the customers. And thething to remember about this is
this is about your customers andthe journey that they're going
on, not about you,
you know, working through yourmaterial. And so this is also a
(16:14):
sign that we see a lot of isjust constant reiteration, or
iteration in
for only the purpose of beinginvolved in it.
There's lots and lots of otherthings you can be doing in your
business, other than recreatinga solid program that you already
(16:36):
have. And so if you're findingyourself doing that, you need to
connect with your customers inone way, shape, or form, not
through the the educationcomponents, but through coaching
or accountability or evenchecking in or maybe it's time
to do a live event. So you feelconnected to your community.
Because that's a need that youhave not so much a need that
(16:58):
your customers have, as asthey're going through, and, and
getting to the milestones thatyou've set out for them. Okay,
so the fourth one is your teamand systems aren't working for
you things are not working likea well oiled machine. So things
are breaking, or things are
just constantly,
(17:21):
just constantly not right,right. So you're making changes
in the systems and team likethey can't quite like they can't
quite keep up, right? Or you'remaking a change. And there's a
sort of a lack of communication.And that's super common, right?
So even if it's your automation,you make a change to an offer
(17:44):
and your automation isn't, isn'tupdated, right? And so like just
small things like that, thatmake a huge difference to your
customers, because they'relooking at it going well, what's
happening, right, like, there'sjust some basic errors that are
going on. And, and that's areally strong sign. A lot of
times we see this in
(18:07):
I don't know, maybe I'll call itsloppy work, right, like so, you
know, examples of this are likeemails that are going out there
don't make sense, or
being invited to join an offer,even if you've already bought it
right, like so, there's waysthat people should be taken off
once they buy an offer. So ifyou're constantly getting weird,
(18:32):
you know, your customers areconstantly getting kind of weird
messages, or over, over beingbeing over communicated in terms
of random things, that's areally good sign that you're
kind of in the middle of thistoo. And then sign number five
is your customers are stayingascending and signing up
naturally for everything thatyou have.
(18:56):
versus
you know, versus they're notstaying right. So when you have
this symptom, or this sign, it'slike, people want to stay people
want to be in your world, theyin fact, they would probably
just give you whatever money youasked for. But they're like,
there's too much friction forthem to do that. And so there's
(19:19):
a lot of confusion of like,well, do I buy this one or this
one? Or like, what's that? Orlike, why am I why do I go to
this system for this and thissystem for that? And like, what
am I supposed to becommunicating with the community
in Facebook or in circle or inschool? Like where am I supposed
(19:39):
to be? Right? So there's thissort of confusion as to
customers being able to justnaturally go through the
process, because it's dialed inbecause it's organized. And so
if if you're in that place whereyou're just sort of like
purposefully breaking things,this is another place
(20:00):
Where that starts to happen is,and this is, again, like a sign
that I get from a lot ofcustomers is they have like,
three or four different deliverysystems that their customers are
in. And so maybe one course isin Kajabi, and another one's in
WordPress and another one's inschool and another one's in
(20:21):
click funnels. And so customersare like, Well, where do I log
in to get XYZ, or when do I getaccess to ABC, right, they just
like are so confused, they don'tknow what to do. And so that's
when all of this stuff starts tomake a difference. And by by
(20:42):
focusing on the strategy byfocusing on kind of the bigger
picture, while you're leadingthis process, it allows you to
help your team stay,
sort of stay on the right path,instead of doing random
activities that happen whenyou're overwhelmed, or they're
(21:03):
overwhelmed, or there's noleadership, who's driving the
bus of the business, right. Andso anyway, so
sign signs that that that'shappening in your organization
are what I just described. So ifyou're feeling any of those,
one, I just want you to knowthat that's a normal part of
(21:25):
growth, it's a normal part ofyou creating something you will
have in your your hands andeverything in being able to do
all of the things.
And then moving to a moreleveraged and scalable model,
where you have to trust team,you have to trust your your
systems, and you have to trustyour automations to help you
(21:48):
leverage your time in a way thatallows you to provide that
customer with the bestexperience that they can get
in all of the things that youhave. And so the people who come
to us are usually you know, theyusually have one or sometimes
all of those particularchallenges. And, and that's when
(22:11):
it's important to sort of stopand re assess the strategy and
the leadership
sort of plan for how to moveforward. So hopefully this
serves you. This is one of thoseepisodes that's near and dear to
my heart, just because I justremember so clearly going
(22:31):
through this process, one havingto make the decision. And to
that day that I was standingoutside our conference room,
looking at my team rocking itwithout me and I just felt
awesome and completely unmooredall at the same time. And I
needed to step in and and solvethese complex challenges in
(22:56):
order to keep growing andscaling. And we did and and the
business was so much better forit. It was so much better for it
when I stepped out and and wasable to start leading the
process instead of doing theprocess.
Just as a total side note, Iwill tell you, one of the
biggest challenges that I hadaround this whole process was I
(23:19):
loved to tinker with. With thetime we were building custom
courses, I loved to tinker inthe in the tech I loved to
tinker in, you know how to solveproblems, right? I'm a
Maximizer, I'm a fixer. And so Ineeded to have some time where I
(23:41):
was doing that or I was goingout and finding kind of some
cool new ideas and techniquesthat I thought would be helpful
for the team and the clients.And so I reserved at first it
was one day a week. And then itbecame one day a month, I
reserved time on my calendar forme to just go in and tinker and
(24:03):
do the things that I felt like Iwas missing when I wasn't hands
on in the projects. And thatreally helped me stay connected.
And also stay out of fixingthings. And I seen air quotes,
fixing things for my team.Right? At one point I remember
(24:23):
one of my one of my projectmanagers is like tear out you
can't fix anything like youcannot come in right now and do
any of these things becauseyou're screwing it up. And I was
like, Oh my gosh, you're totallyright. And so by reserving that
time for myself that I could dokind of more of that strategic
tinkering. It helped me stayconnected and it didn't it
(24:46):
fulfill that need so I didn'tfeel like I had to go and like
fix and change things randomlythat we're going to kind of hose
up the business. So if that'syou and that's your biggest
challenge with going throughthis transition
I hear you, I see you put sometime on your calendar to just be
able to go and, and tinker andplay. And eventually, you know,
(25:10):
I will tell you that I was ableto uninstall all of our
elearning software off of mycomputer. And, and that was sort
of another day that was freeing,it's like, I don't actually have
to know this, this software, Idon't actually have to code I
don't have to do all of these,you know, technical things that
(25:30):
I was doing when I was sort ofgrowing the business by myself.
And
and once I was ready, I was ableto do that and it felt so
awesome to be able to lead theprocess have a really strong
foundational understanding ofall of the, the mechanics that
went into the business, but Ididn't have to be the one
(25:52):
pressing the buttons. And soagain, if that's you, I hear you
and I see you. And so, you know,be you know, dedicate your your
time to being able to spend, youknow, however much time that you
want to,
in in whatever mode it is thatyou think that you're going to
miss the most and, and justdon't just don't apply it
(26:16):
randomly to your programs oryour products. Alright, there
you go. Hopefully this servesyou if you want to talk about
this, you know, even just toshare your stories. My
information is in the shownotes. I would love to have a
conversation with you aboutwhere you are in your business,
whether or not you've gonethrough this, or this is
(26:38):
something that you need to gothrough, because we're here to
help. So have a great day.
Hey, everyone, welcome to today's episode of the course
(00:03):
building secrets podcast. I amthrilled you're here today, hey,
in this episode, I want to talkabout scaling your business and
the challenges that go alongwith that. So when I was first
trying to scale my agency backin the day, I knew I had to get
out of at least one corefunction of my business could no
(00:25):
longer be everywhere at once Iwas exhausted, I was trying to
figure out how to do all thethings, I knew that if I sort of
stopped pushing and gettingthings out there, that all the
balls were going to drop, right,I would just had that feeling.
But there weren't enough hoursin the day, I wasn't able to
(00:48):
grow and continue growing,because I was trying to handle
it. All right, like I was tryingto do all of the things. And so
at that point, I had twochoices, the first choice was to
decide, like, alright, well,let's just stay at the size that
we are right now. Right, we'redoing fine. I have a small team,
and we're able to, you know,help a number of clients. And
(01:13):
you know, like, that could betotally fine. Or, I needed to
choose that I wanted to create ascalable system, a scalable
agency that allowed us tocontinue to grow, we knew we had
people who wanted to work withus, we knew that we could grow
beyond where we were, at thattime. And, and so, you know,
(01:34):
that was the direction that Ichose to go, I chose growth. And
so because of that, I knew I hadto start doing things a little
bit different. So that wasn'tnecessarily easy, right? I you
know, not because of theincreased workload that we were
gonna have when we had morecustomers. But because I had let
go. And I don't know about you,if you've ever been in this
(01:54):
position, but when you're doingall of the things,
and you've built your companyfrom scratch, and you've, you
know, essentially had your handand every little part of the
business, it's really hard tolet go.
And when I had to let go, the,you know, the challenges of kind
(02:20):
of not like, not being the onewho was doing all the things
was, was really hard, right? SoI had to step into being a
leader, not necessarily the bestdoer, right, like I couldn't do
all of the things that I wasdoing with clients anymore.
I had to let go of the accoladesand the recognition that I was
getting from clients. And youknow, that they would be super
(02:43):
happy with what I provided whatour team provided. And I just, I
had to be able to let that goand find a different way to show
up and serve, I needed to find away for me to grow, right, so I
had to show up differently, Ihad to, you know, assume the
leadership role of the businessand not the sort of head doer of
(03:05):
the business. And, and so thatwas sort of the first transition
that I needed to make as I movedinto growth mode.
Now, I'll never forget, the veryfirst time that all of the work
that I had done to show updifferently in the business
actually happened. We weresitting, the team was having a
(03:27):
meeting, and we werebrainstorming around a new
client project. And I was I wasin the room. And I was, you
know, adding some information Iwas, you know, kind of
spitballing and brainstormingwith everyone. But my team had
it, I had the right people inthe right seats. They were they
(03:48):
had the plan, they had thestrategy, they had all of the
parts and pieces that theyneeded to do an amazing job with
this client. And they didn'tneed me anymore. They didn't
need me to lead. They didn'tneed me to,
you know, to give suggestionsand give my ideas. In fact, at
(04:10):
one point, I remember someonefrom my team going we've got
this Tara, like, you should godo something else. Because we
are you know, 100% confident inour ability to help this, this
client and I was like, oh, okay,well, you don't need me like,
all right, fine, right. And soat first I felt kind of lost and
unsure of how to spend my time Iwas like, Well, if I don't need
(04:32):
to be in the room, what do Ineed to be doing? Right? Like,
this was the dream that I hadever since I first started the
business. But I was I was notsure of what to do. So I don't
know maybe you have felt thatway as well when your team's
rocking it and you're like oh,okay, well guess what now I get
(04:53):
to focus on something different.And and the thing that I started
focusing on is they startedfixing things right they started
like
I'm
not necessarily redoing things,but I was fixing I was gonna
make things better. And I wasgoing to, you know, continue to
figure out how we can grow andbuild scalable systems and do
all of the things. And so if youknow what I'm talking about, you
(05:14):
kind of know, like when you'relost, you tend to like redo
things or fix things or makechanges that aren't necessary.
And, and so I went through thatprocess, and I was just a little
my identity had changed, right.And so I was a little unsure for
a little bit. But I finally sortof found my footings and
(05:35):
realized that it was time for meto step up as a leader in my
business.
And then that is when it finallybecame that freeing moment that
I could grow and scale thebusiness without having to be
the one person who was doing allof the things.
And, you know, I think aboutthis story, and I think about
how when I'm helping
(05:58):
our customers sort of transitionfrom how they're showing up with
their, their customers, right,whether it's they're doing one
on one services, or they'redoing sort of live coaching, or
live delivery of theirproprietary methodology, there
comes a day when you need tocreate sort of those scalable
(06:20):
delivery and fulfillment systemsthat help to drive your business
forward. And, and so that thatexperience has served me so
well, because a lot of the samekind of behaviors of what
happened when I had a team thatwas finally, sort of working.
(06:42):
Without me,
this is what starts to happenwhen people automate their,
their digital delivery,
is that the some of the samebehaviors happen, right? Like
they're trying to fix things, orthey, you know, create something
different, or they're feelingdisconnected with their clients.
So they jump in at weird times,and try and help and try and fix
(07:04):
or, because they don't have aclear path of where everyone is
and what they're doing.
There's, there's just like a lotof
sort of ad hoc things that arehappening. And it's all just
based on that need that feelingof sort of being unmoored, if
you will, when you start toautomate your various systems,
(07:29):
your various delivery process,and all of the things is, you
know, you have to trust theprocess, right, I had to, I had
to trust my team, that I hadgiven them the tools I had done
the training, and I had, putthem in a position so they could
win. And it's that same thing,you have to put yourself in a
(07:49):
position to trust the systemsthat you've set up to trust the
automation that you've set up totrust the customer journey that
you've created. And then you cancreate new sort of milestone
programs or courses or whateverit is that you want to create,
that helps your customer alongthe path, not so much recreating
(08:11):
your signature program, or yoursignature, kind of series of,
of, you know, programs thatyou've created, or whatever it
is that you've created in yourbusiness. And, and so what tends
to happen, if you aren'ttrusting the process is that you
are rebuilding things, you're,
(08:32):
you're again, jumping in, you'recreating sort of off tracks that
don't match the progression thatyour people are going to go
through. All of these aresymptoms that I see almost every
day when I'm working withvarious customers who've come to
us and they're like somethingisn't working with our programs.
(08:54):
We've created a trainingeducation company, something's
not working, our customersaren't converting. They're not
ascending. People aren't, aren'tparticipating. They're not like,
there's just something that'sgoing on. Or they come to me and
they're like, so listen, we knowthat we have our sales and
marketing dialed in. But we'reafraid that once we put more
(09:15):
people into our programs, it'sgoing to break because it's
pretty much put together withduct tape and paper cups right
now. So we know that we need abetter system.
So typically, all of these aresymptoms of that scaling
process. And it's totallynormal, right? Like, I had to go
through that. You know, Istarted a business from scratch,
(09:37):
it was all me. And then Istarted to build a team to help
me fulfill and then I had tobuild a team to fulfill without
me, right that's the progressionof building a business. And you
may also be in that thatprogression of building the
business is at some point itgrows beyond your cap can
(10:00):
Keep ability to be able to doall the things. So again, if
you're in that position, likejust know that your, you know,
what you're doing right now isnormal. And once you can get
yourself sort of out of the theswirl of that, right you kind of
sit in that uncertainty you sitin that, that place of being
(10:24):
unmoored, then you can keepgrowing, and you can keep
scaling. And your customersstay, your customers ascend, and
they're all in the right place.And, and so what I want to give
you are five signs that you maybe kind of in this place in your
business.
(10:45):
So the first one is that you'reoverwhelmed, right, you feel
like you need to be doing all ofthe things. And if you don't do
all the things, or you stop, andtake a break, then all the balls
are gonna fall and you're notgonna be able to pick things up,
right? Like, you're either gonnadisappoint your team, you're
gonna disappoint yourself,you're gonna disappoint your
(11:07):
customers. Like there'ssomething going on, that you're
just constantly on the hamsterwheel and you don't feel like
you can get off. That's usuallythe indication that you actually
need to stop, right? Like, ifyou feel like, you know what, I
know, I need to do this, but Ijust don't have time. That is a
sign that it's time to stop.And, and really dial in some of
(11:29):
the systems that you need inorder to keep growing, because
it may not be today, buteventually, like, the problems
aren't going away, right. Soeventually, you're going to have
to stop. So before it gets toofar out of hand,
it's good to stop, get the helpthat you need, and then be able
to move forward. Okay, that'ssign number one, Sign number two
(11:53):
is, you don't have a clearcustomer journey. So your
customers
are confused when they join yourprogram, and they start to get
results. So so there's not aclear customer journey, and
there's not a clear customerascension path. So when you have
customers who come in and theyget a result, do you have a
(12:16):
clear next step for them? Like,is there a different level that
they get to ascend to becausethey've completed your first,
your first program that youhave? So often, I have customers
who come in, and they're like,Well, you know, we've got, you
(12:37):
know, 5000 people on our list,or five dozen people in our free
community, but only a handful ofpeople who have, who have
bought, and like even less thatare taking our other offers, or
you revamp your offers and youyou, you know, take all of your
(12:57):
customers who have been with youlike your juicy people who like
follow you everywhere, they liketo pay you for everything, you
you dump them back into the mainprogram, because you're not sure
what to do with them. That's asign that your customer journey
in your customer acquisitionplan is a little wonky, right?
Like there's something happeningthere. And chances are because
(13:18):
you have that first time whereyou're super overwhelmed, you're
you're just like thinking aboutgetting your thing out there and
selling it versus, you know,what happens when somebody
becomes a customer because thegoal isn't to just churn new
customers all the time, right?It's so expensive to do that. In
fact, it's like five times moreexpensive than just keeping the
(13:40):
ones that you have. And so thesecond sign is like customers
aren't quite sure what to do.And if somebody has been in your
world for a really long time,and they've been you know,
getting great results. And andthey're like your person, and
you put them back into abeginner program, that that's a
miss, right? You you have theopportunity you're leaving money
(14:03):
on the table because you're youhave the opportunity to keep
ascending them to higher andhigher levels within within the
journey. Okay, so that's sametwo, same three. Yes, you've
created and recreated your coreprogram more than three times.
So if this is you, and youyou've created it,
(14:25):
and then you're like, this isn'texactly right. And so you re
recreate, you re recreate it,you read it, you recreate it
and and you're doing it notbecause customers are asking for
it right like not becausethey're confused, but because
you're feeling like you'redisconnected, right? You're not
involved in what they'relearning. So you just feel like
(14:47):
you want to keep
keep recreating it. This is justas a side note, this is for live
teaching and automated teaching.So if you're teaching your
cohort live
Like your teaching materials,not the coaching and
accountability, which teachingmaterials, if that is happening
(15:09):
more than three times. And Iwould say, once you have your
beta, and your actual, like corecurriculum locked in, like, you
may have to test it a bunch oftimes just to get the curriculum
set. But once you have thecurriculum locked in, if you're
constantly repeating theteaching elements,
as that could be,
(15:32):
you know, put in as assets, thatis also you're recruiting three,
three times right, in automatedif you are just constantly
redoing it,
without a specific reason forit, this is also a good
indication that you are kind ofin this place, you're just re
(15:53):
recruiting it because you feeldisconnected with the process
and with the customers. And thething to remember about this is
this is about your customers andthe journey that they're going
on, not about you,
you know, working through yourmaterial. And so this is also a
(16:14):
sign that we see a lot of isjust constant reiteration, or
iteration in
for only the purpose of beinginvolved in it.
There's lots and lots of otherthings you can be doing in your
business, other than recreatinga solid program that you already
(16:36):
have. And so if you're findingyourself doing that, you need to
connect with your customers inone way, shape, or form, not
through the the educationcomponents, but through coaching
or accountability or evenchecking in or maybe it's time
to do a live event. So you feelconnected to your community.
Because that's a need that youhave not so much a need that
(16:58):
your customers have, as asthey're going through, and, and
getting to the milestones thatyou've set out for them. Okay,
so the fourth one is your teamand systems aren't working for
you things are not working likea well oiled machine. So things
are breaking, or things are
just constantly,
(17:21):
just constantly not right,right. So you're making changes
in the systems and team likethey can't quite like they can't
quite keep up, right? Or you'remaking a change. And there's a
sort of a lack of communication.And that's super common, right?
So even if it's your automation,you make a change to an offer
(17:44):
and your automation isn't, isn'tupdated, right? And so like just
small things like that, thatmake a huge difference to your
customers, because they'relooking at it going well, what's
happening, right, like, there'sjust some basic errors that are
going on. And, and that's areally strong sign. A lot of
times we see this in
(18:07):
I don't know, maybe I'll call itsloppy work, right, like so, you
know, examples of this are likeemails that are going out there
don't make sense, or
being invited to join an offer,even if you've already bought it
right, like so, there's waysthat people should be taken off
once they buy an offer. So ifyou're constantly getting weird,
(18:32):
you know, your customers areconstantly getting kind of weird
messages, or over, over beingbeing over communicated in terms
of random things, that's areally good sign that you're
kind of in the middle of thistoo. And then sign number five
is your customers are stayingascending and signing up
naturally for everything thatyou have.
(18:56):
versus
you know, versus they're notstaying right. So when you have
this symptom, or this sign, it'slike, people want to stay people
want to be in your world, theyin fact, they would probably
just give you whatever money youasked for. But they're like,
there's too much friction forthem to do that. And so there's
(19:19):
a lot of confusion of like,well, do I buy this one or this
one? Or like, what's that? Orlike, why am I why do I go to
this system for this and thissystem for that? And like, what
am I supposed to becommunicating with the community
in Facebook or in circle or inschool? Like where am I supposed
(19:39):
to be? Right? So there's thissort of confusion as to
customers being able to justnaturally go through the
process, because it's dialed inbecause it's organized. And so
if if you're in that place whereyou're just sort of like
purposefully breaking things,this is another place
(20:00):
Where that starts to happen is,and this is, again, like a sign
that I get from a lot ofcustomers is they have like,
three or four different deliverysystems that their customers are
in. And so maybe one course isin Kajabi, and another one's in
WordPress and another one's inschool and another one's in
(20:21):
click funnels. And so customersare like, Well, where do I log
in to get XYZ, or when do I getaccess to ABC, right, they just
like are so confused, they don'tknow what to do. And so that's
when all of this stuff starts tomake a difference. And by by
(20:42):
focusing on the strategy byfocusing on kind of the bigger
picture, while you're leadingthis process, it allows you to
help your team stay,
sort of stay on the right path,instead of doing random
activities that happen whenyou're overwhelmed, or they're
(21:03):
overwhelmed, or there's noleadership, who's driving the
bus of the business, right. Andso anyway, so
sign signs that that that'shappening in your organization
are what I just described. So ifyou're feeling any of those,
one, I just want you to knowthat that's a normal part of
(21:25):
growth, it's a normal part ofyou creating something you will
have in your your hands andeverything in being able to do
all of the things.
And then moving to a moreleveraged and scalable model,
where you have to trust team,you have to trust your your
systems, and you have to trustyour automations to help you
(21:48):
leverage your time in a way thatallows you to provide that
customer with the bestexperience that they can get
in all of the things that youhave. And so the people who come
to us are usually you know, theyusually have one or sometimes
all of those particularchallenges. And, and that's when
(22:11):
it's important to sort of stopand re assess the strategy and
the leadership
sort of plan for how to moveforward. So hopefully this
serves you. This is one of thoseepisodes that's near and dear to
my heart, just because I justremember so clearly going
(22:31):
through this process, one havingto make the decision. And to
that day that I was standingoutside our conference room,
looking at my team rocking itwithout me and I just felt
awesome and completely unmooredall at the same time. And I
needed to step in and and solvethese complex challenges in
(22:56):
order to keep growing andscaling. And we did and and the
business was so much better forit. It was so much better for it
when I stepped out and and wasable to start leading the
process instead of doing theprocess.
Just as a total side note, Iwill tell you, one of the
biggest challenges that I hadaround this whole process was I
(23:19):
loved to tinker with. With thetime we were building custom
courses, I loved to tinker inthe in the tech I loved to
tinker in, you know how to solveproblems, right? I'm a
Maximizer, I'm a fixer. And so Ineeded to have some time where I
(23:41):
was doing that or I was goingout and finding kind of some
cool new ideas and techniquesthat I thought would be helpful
for the team and the clients.And so I reserved at first it
was one day a week. And then itbecame one day a month, I
reserved time on my calendar forme to just go in and tinker and
(24:03):
do the things that I felt like Iwas missing when I wasn't hands
on in the projects. And thatreally helped me stay connected.
And also stay out of fixingthings. And I seen air quotes,
fixing things for my team.Right? At one point I remember
(24:23):
one of my one of my projectmanagers is like tear out you
can't fix anything like youcannot come in right now and do
any of these things becauseyou're screwing it up. And I was
like, Oh my gosh, you're totallyright. And so by reserving that
time for myself that I could dokind of more of that strategic
tinkering. It helped me stayconnected and it didn't it
(24:46):
fulfill that need so I didn'tfeel like I had to go and like
fix and change things randomlythat we're going to kind of hose
up the business. So if that'syou and that's your biggest
challenge with going throughthis transition
I hear you, I see you put sometime on your calendar to just be
able to go and, and tinker andplay. And eventually, you know,
(25:10):
I will tell you that I was ableto uninstall all of our
elearning software off of mycomputer. And, and that was sort
of another day that was freeing,it's like, I don't actually have
to know this, this software, Idon't actually have to code I
don't have to do all of these,you know, technical things that
(25:30):
I was doing when I was sort ofgrowing the business by myself.
And
and once I was ready, I was ableto do that and it felt so
awesome to be able to lead theprocess have a really strong
foundational understanding ofall of the, the mechanics that
went into the business, but Ididn't have to be the one
(25:52):
pressing the buttons. And soagain, if that's you, I hear you
and I see you. And so, you know,be you know, dedicate your your
time to being able to spend, youknow, however much time that you
want to,
in in whatever mode it is thatyou think that you're going to
miss the most and, and justdon't just don't apply it
(26:16):
randomly to your programs oryour products. Alright, there
you go. Hopefully this servesyou if you want to talk about
this, you know, even just toshare your stories. My
information is in the shownotes. I would love to have a
conversation with you aboutwhere you are in your business,
whether or not you've gonethrough this, or this is
(26:38):
something that you need to gothrough, because we're here to
help. So have a great day.
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