The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 107: Consistently Scaling Your Business

In today’s episode I am going to be talking about how to consistently scale your business. We will be diving deep in how to continue to keep the needle moving forward and overcome the entrepreneur roller coasters.

Consistently Scale Your Business

By: Melissa Lin

Now, every single week, I choose topics that I know my audience will benefit from. Sometimes the topics are things my clients are struggling with and sometimes they're topics that I receive from you on Instagram or my Facebook group.

This week's topic is all about how we can consistently scale your business and always be moving the needle forward. Now I see a lot of entrepreneurs start their business and reach the 5K month level and then they kind of stay there and get stuck there. I also see so many reach the 10 month level and also a plateau. They kind of stay there and get stuck there.

Now, any time that we hit a new level, we typically feel that we've reached our upper limit and don't always have that new upper limit or don't move that upper limit once we've reached it and gone through it. This is something that we get to always do. Now, we always get to be moving forward and move that needle forward so that we can continue to create an even bigger impact.

You've probably heard this before, maybe from me or somebody else, but you've definitely seen a picture all about the entrepreneur roller coaster. I know you know what I'm talking about, that up and down roller coaster. It really is a real roller coaster that most of us hop on at some point in our business journeys. I want to help you start to kind of reconstruct that roller coaster that goes up and down and start to construct it and move it into something that's always elevating it, always increasing, going up.

The Income Roller Coaster

Now, the first type of roller coaster that I like to call is the income roller coaster. Now, you might have a great week and then take your foot off the pedal a little because you hit your goal for the month, maybe by the second week. And what happens then? Instead of continuing to grow, you allow yourself to stay at the $5k or $10k month level because you're comfortable with that current upper limit. Now, you take your foot off that pedal and relax a little from selling for the last two weeks of the month. Then you get back into it, get back into selling at the beginning of the next month instead of consistently moving the needle forward every single day and consistently scaling.

This is where you see the roller coaster, that lack of consistency in business. And you're going to see a lot of burnout and feel a lot of burnout as well. So you see, as you start to take your foot off the pedal a little bit, you are going into that roller coaster and it's going to feel harder and harder. So we get to consistently grow little by little, move the needle forward. And sometimes that even means slowing down a little bit so that you can speed up.

The Delegating Roller Coaster

Now, that is one of the first roller coasters. Another piece of the entrepreneur roller coaster is what I like to call the delegating roller coaster. Or in other terms, the hire and fire roller coaster. Now, what many early business owners do is they realize fairly quickly that they get to delegate and outsource more of their business as they start growing. Typically, I start to recommend my clients that once you get to about that $3K month level, you get to start to hire your first team members or to delegate your tasks and outsource, if not sooner. So $3K or sooner.

Now, what I see a lot is, you know, you hire your first team member or maybe your first two team members and start to pass off a few tasks to those team members. However, instead of giving those team members the power to make some decisions in your business, everything still has to go through you. So this is what I see happen a lot. So let's say for example, maybe you've handed your email sequences and your social media content over to a virtual assistant. But they still need to wait for your approval and wait for your feedback. Now what starts to happen is many entrepreneurs feel they haven't actually gotten any time back because they're still the big decision makers in a lot of that process and end up feeling they can do it faster and eventually fire that team member. So hence the hire and fire roller coaster.

So they start to get into that cycle again and feel burnt out. And what happens is they're doing everything alone again. They're wearing all of these hats and then rehire and then they get back into that feeling again that they're still doing a ton of work because they haven't properly delegated and are still making all of the decisions and fire again. So let me know if you feel like this is happening in your business right now, like send me a message on Instagram or on Facebook, because this is something I can definitely support you with. I know this is something a lot of entrepreneurs go through. And so do you see the rollercoaster cycle happening here?

You hire somebody and they start doing some work for you. However, they still have to continue to come back, you know, a few times a day to get your approval on certain things. And so you feel that you're still doing a lot of the work, even though you aren't. But it's such an open loop, you're always thinking about it. And because of that, you start to go back into that mindset of, well, you know what? I can do it faster. It's taking a lot of my energy right now, just even thinking about it. I can do it faster. I'm going to go ahead and get rid of that team member and do it again myself, because I'm still spending time doing it. And a big reason is we aren't properly delegating and handing that task off the way it should be handed off.

So how can we fix this, this rollercoaster cycle here of that hiring and firing? Well, what we can do and this is what we've done for quite some time and our business is we can create some guidelines, some expectations for our team members. So, for example. Let's say that you have a team member that maybe they handle chargebacks. Instead of them coming to you for every chargeback that you might have and asking what you would like to do, empower them to make the decision on your behalf or let's say anything, two hundred dollars or less. So if there's a chargeback that's two hundred dollars or less, they're going to make the decision of how to handle it and anything higher than that gets passed on to you. That way, you're at least giving them some of the decision making process, some of that, so they can continue to work through that and not having to come back and handing everything to you so that your pile of papers just continues to pile up.

That's not what we want. We definitely want to start to delegate so that you're not needing to do all of that. And at some point, all of it can be delegated, but definitely understand, you know, chargebacks that, you know, a few thousand dollars may not be something that you have a team member do that definitely gets to come to you. So that is another type of roller coaster that I see a lot.

The Launching Roller Coaster

The next roller coaster I see some entrepreneurs go through is what I like to call the launching roller coaster. Now, having big quarterly launches is great. It's so amazing. Huge cash injections into your business, But what are you doing between the launches? Do you have a huge launch and then take a break for a few months because you're burnt out from that last launch. Do you only get back into selling when you're launching? If yes, then you are creating that roller coaster effect for both your energy levels because there is some energy that goes into launching and you're also creating a roller coaster effect for your income, Right? That huge cash injection the month of January when you have that big launch and then you don't launch anything February, March or April and then do another big launch the month after and May, you see how that starts to turn into another roller coaster. Up, down, up, down, up, down, lack of consistency. And so we want to be able to create consistency and continue to move upward and increase it, Right? Kind of going up a huge roller coaster hill, but never going down the roller coaster, just keep on going up, keep increasing, keep scaling.

So what can we do about this? How can we start to make adjustments so we’re not on these roller coasters? For this specific one, for a launching roller coaster, if you're in the launching roller coaster, Definitely ok. We've all been there at some point. Now, what we get to do is, and something that I truly believe is, you can scale a successful business however you want. I truly believe this because I've helped my clients scale businesses no matter how their business model looks. Some love launching and love those big cash injections. Some don't like launching and prefer The Evergreen model, so no matter how your business looks and no matter how your business runs, you can move away from the ups and downs of the roller coasters, specifically by always having something available, always having something that you can sell to your audience.

Is this always going to be a big launch? Not necessarily. It could be a course that you have in your back pocket or a secret menu item or a revolving door group program or maybe a few private coaching spots you have available. A downloadable product. Have something that you can always sell that you're not in that cycle of only having cash injections coming in every single month. If that's something you want to do. If you want to stay in that roller coaster of a few huge cash injections, you know, once per quarter, that's all you, do what you want to do, to your business. You get to run it the way you want it to. However, if you wanted to continue to be increasing and have money coming in every single month, then this is something you may want to start to think about. So if you're in any of these roller coaster paths at the moment, keep listening. Got some stuff coming your way in this podcast episode. If you're not still, keep listening to learn how you can avoid hopping on to that roller coaster.

How To Avoid These Roller Coasters

So some of the biggest things that have helped me scale my business without constantly hitting that roller coaster, because, trust me, I have hit every single one of those before at some point in my business. What I want to help you with is prevent that from happening. Right? I've made the mistakes already. I know what not to do. So I want to help you avoid hitting those mistakes.

Being Intentional

Now, the first thing is being intentional, I wake up every single day and I am so intentional with what I do. I'm intentional with how I run my workday. I'm intentional with what I'm doing throughout the week for the business. I'm intentional about what I'm launching. Everything has meaning, everything. There's a reason. There's a strategy behind it. There's intention behind it.

So if you're about to go into a big launch, make sure there's intention behind what's going to happen next. Are you going to be down selling to something right when the launch closes? Do you know what's coming next after your launch? Do you know how to be setting up your workday? All of these things, be intentional with that. That has been a huge shift in my business in the last two years, because I've been so intentional with everything I do.

What Do You Want More Of?

Now. The next thing I want to chat about is really focusing on the things that matter to you. So ask yourself, what is it that you want more of? Do you want more sales? Do you want more people in your programs? Do you want to grow your list more so that you can sell on the back end via email sequences more? Do you want to create more funnels? How do you want to run your business? What do you want more of in both your business and your life? What do you want more of? Know what that is. Figure out with that is. Determine what that is, And it may be different than it was six months ago. And that's OK. Right? Those priorities can definitely shift and start to focus on those things. So if you want to grow your email list, focus on it. As you start to focus on these things, those things will grow. You will start to see that number every single day of how many people on your email list. And if it's not moving, it's going to push you to take action and maybe put out your freebie a few more times throughout the week so that you can be growing it. So really focus on the things that you want to grow and you'll start to see them grow, because if they're not growing you're going to do something about it.

So, we want to be looking at all of that. If you want to focus on increasing your sales, let's look at your sales and ask yourself what it is that gets to be improved. Right? If you want to increase your sales, there's a few things that we can look at. Are you wanting to increase your sales conversion? Is your close rate a little low? That's a sales skill that we can spend some time improving. Are you wanting to get more people through your funnel and have a higher conversion? Are you wanting to just get more people through your funnel? Maybe it's a lean generation gap that you might have.

Ask yourself what it is that you want more of, and ask yourself how can I get more of this, get more of what I want and start to focus on it. Those are the things that will start to grow in your business.

Automating, Delegating And Outsourcing

Now, the third thing that has really helped me scale my business and be consistent with scaling is the mixture of delegating and outsourcing, automating, and then removing things from my business and keeping things so simple. I love simplifying. I love to simplify things in my business! Because we like to make them a little harder than they really need to be. Now, there are things in your business right now that you can delegate and outsource. And again, I usually recommend once you've hit the $3k month level, start to delegate or sooner. But there are things right now that you do where there are tasks in your business you can delegate and outsource that you can spend more time in your zone of genius and be focusing on those things to help you scale. Right? You spend all of your entire day on the little tasks. The day to day tasks may not necessarily help you move the needle forward in your business. So definitely something to think about.

There are things right now in your business that you can automate that are not being automated right now. I can guarantee that there's so much you can automate your business. It's pretty amazing, actually, what technology can do these days. But everything in your business can be automated, almost everything can be or delegated.

There are also going to be things that you find in your business that you may want to remove from the business. Or maybe you're on a social media platform that really hasn't benefited you at all. Maybe you have a YouTube channel and you spend time creating YouTube videos every month, but it really hasn't helped bring any new business in. And maybe you don't even enjoy it. Maybe this is something that gets to be removed from the business for now, at least until you've got everything else under control and have the space, and the energy to create that platform.

So there's always things to delegate. There's always things to automate, and there's always a few things that we can most likely remove from the business or temporarily put on hold. This kind of goes hand in hand with the next thing that I want to talk about, doing quarterly business audits.

Business Audits

Now, we do business audits once a quarter minimum, at least once a quarter. And it really ties into, OK, this helps us figure out and determine what it is that we get to focus on more. So if we know that this one area of our business is lacking a little bit from our audit, then we know, if this is something that we can improve, we know this gets to be our priority. So doing business audits, and I do this with all of my higher level clients inside of my masterminds, we do business audits and we take them through how to do a business audit.

What you can do is once a quarter, go through this business audit and see what it is that you get to work on next. And based on your priorities and the things that you want more of in your life, in your business. So we do quarterly business audits and we look at everything. We look at the front end of the business, the back in the business or client experience with onboarding and offboarding. We look at everything in the business and I highly recommend that if we're not looking at things inside of the business, then there's a gap because you are a CEO, you're a business owner, you get to know these things about your business, the ins and outs of them, and then this goes into the next thing, which is tracking your KPIs, tracking your numbers.

Know Your Numbers

You get to know your numbers. You've most likely heard me say this before, but your numbers tell you a story about your business. Your numbers tell a story about how things are going. You get to know your numbers. You are a CEO. You get to know how close you are to your sales goal. You get to know how your conversions are doing. You get to know where your email list open rates are and click rates are. At least be tracking it so that maybe once a week during your operations team meeting you can be chatting about it. This is what we're going to try next to increase these conversions or increase these click through rates. You get to know this information. You are a business and the numbers are a part of the business.

So you get to be intentional, be intentional with everything that you do. Even social media, when you hop on social media, do it with intention, know exactly what you're going to do when you hop on, do your post, respond to comments and the engagement of your posts and then hop off, go in and respond to everyone that you know you've got to respond to in the DM's and then hop off and don't be scrolling. Be intentional, right. You're a CEO. Be intentional. Your time is so valuable. All of our times are so valuable and we don't need to be in the business Twenty four, seven. You definitely get to be intentional. Start to focus on the things that you want more of and you'll see them start to grow, especially if you're intentional with all of them.

Delegate, outsource, automate and remove things from the business. And you can start to do this more and more with some of those quarterly audits or monthly audits, however often you want to do them. I would recommend doing some type of business audit at least once a quarter to see how the business is running versus six months ago versus last month or last quarter, you get to know where your business sits and where it stands one thousand percent and then start to track things.

Track your KPIs, track your numbers, know how the business is doing so that you can continue to grow the business consistently. How can we grow the business if we don't even know where we're at right now? Right? You've got to have a baseline that you know what's next and consistently be improving that baseline and making sure that you know what the new numbers are. Right? Update those numbers every week. It can be once a week. If you want. Track those numbers or have a team member do it, you get to know the status of your business and how it's doing. All of these things are going to help you start to scale your business and be consistent with it, because with intention and focus, those things are going to start to grow. Your business will start to grow. I've seen it. My clients do it. We do it in the business. And you're going to do it, too. And so you get to start to grow your business consistently.

Let's get you off of that roller coaster. We don't want to be going up and down in the business anymore, because it's not fun. It's overwhelming and stressful. Let's not go up and down on the roller coaster. Let's just be going up in that elevator and continue to scale the business. Now, I'm sure your notebooks are full with notes. I would love to hear your biggest take away. Take a screenshot, Share an Instagram story. Let me know what your biggest takeaway from today was. I'll see you next time.

Topics we cover include:

The Income Roller Coaster
The Delegating Roller Coaster
The Launching Roller Coaster

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(6:17) The income roller coaster

(7:45) The delegating roller coaster

(10:25) Tips on delegating more efficiently

(12:06) The launching roller coaster

(10:38) Moving away from quick cash injections

(15:34) Being intentional

(16:32) Focus on you!

(18:29) Keeping things simple

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