How to Scale Your Business (REALITY OF MILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES!)

and that's why for me i always aim to make 200 000 a month so that i have a 50 profit margin isn't that scary think about it it is so scary that your new minimum is a hundred thousand dollars welcome to the turn your followers into clients podcast i'm vanessa lau and my mission is to help new coaches content creators and corporate escapees get visible and get paid i went from quitting my corporate job with no backup plan to suddenly building a multiple seven-figure business in less than two years thanks to the power of social media my life changed in an entire year and i believe yours can too so boss let's help you get visible and get paid and dive into today's episode what's up everyone welcome back to the turn your followers into clients podcast in today's episode i'm going to talk about the five brutal truths that nobody prepared me for as i was scaling up my business to over a million dollars now to put things into contacts in 2019 i started my business and we ended the year at over half a million dollars so it was a multiple six-figure business and then in 2020 in my second year of business that's when i had a huge quantum leap i forexed my business growth and i went from 500 000 to over 2.5 million dollars oh my goodness what the heck right now a huge misconception that i had and i think a lot of people have is the fact that well if i want to make more money i just need to sell more product you know expand my visibility get more reach have more clients launch more things yada yada and i had the same misconception as well and it is totally not true yes it could be a very small percentage of the equation but emphasis on small part of the equation in fact i have a lot of episodes that i've talked about in the past where i talk about how for each income level it requires a different version of you whether that's your first 10k your first 100k your first million or your first multiple million each step requires a different identity shift that you have to make and in theory it sounds pretty simple because we've heard this a lot whether it's in my podcast and other people's podcast anyone who's a successful ceo will tell you that it's more about the identity that you present and that you uphold every single day that needs to fundamentally change in order for you to hit the next income level yes we all know that but this episode aims to show you examples of uncomfortable decisions that i had to make that led me to a million dollars but was not fun making it in the process so let's get started and let's talk about it the first realization or the first brutal truth that you will encounter as you grow your business is this one you will have the painful and i emphasize painful realization that your business has outgrown your team eventually in your business you're going to realize that the people that you hired when you were maybe a smaller business when maybe you were making your first 10k your first 100k sometimes you're gonna realize that their skills and competencies are simply not enough for your business to hit the next level and it sounds really harsh and it sounds really scary and i know it sounds really uncomfortable if you are someone who's watching or listening to this and you have team members that you love because what you have to realize is maybe the first va that you hire when you're trying to make your first 10k you love them you work with them all the time you appreciate them and especially if you have a small team and it's just you and the other person oh my goodness imagine how close that you're going to get you're going to learn about their family you're going to learn about their personal life you're going to learn about all the things that make them tick that make them happy that make them upset and as you start growing in your business let's say you do hit that 10k with that person you're eventually going to hit your 100k and then once you hit your 100k you're going to hit a million and at that point in time you're going to realize that that person does not have the skills to get you there you're going to need to upskill your team or replace your team and that sounds so scary especially if you're close with your people and so to give you an example you know i was at a place last year where i had to make a hugely uncomfortable decision to let a lot of team members go and i felt so much guilt around this because those same team members were the ones that helped me hit my first 100k or my first multiple 100k but eventually as i started scaling to seven figures i realized i can no longer just work with contractors i need to work with employees and also as i spoke with my accountants as i spoke with professionals i realized that hey no longer can i actually have people working only 20 hours a week for me i need people who are full time 40 hours a week our employees and also legally can work in canada so there were a lot of different parameters around that and so i had to make the uncomfortable decision to let a lot of people go in my business in order to hire a new set of employees who can legally become employees for my company and also can work full-time for me and i know that maybe for some of you listening to this it's an easy decision but when you're actually working with people that helped you gain your success it's really hard to let people go it's very uncomfortable and i know maybe some of you listening or watching this might be like oh well i guess it would have been an easier decision for you because legally you needed people in canada and you needed this and that and this but also i've let people go because they just weren't cut out for the work so for example let's say the va that you hired yes they had amazing tech skills to help you set up your first landing pages they had adequate tech skills to help you you know set up your booking system for calendly let's say but as you scale to seven figures you're going to need a tech person that understands evergreen funnels inside and out and you have to make the decision on hey do i want to invest money and time into this person to upskill which you absolutely can and i think that's a demonstration of amazing leadership or do you make the decision to let that person go and hire someone who's maybe a little bit more expensive but can do things in half the amount of time and brings a certain level of expertise to the table that you don't even have and that none of your other team members have it's a really hard decision to make and let's say even if you do invest the time and resources into this one person you have to ask yourself can they even step up to the plate how long will it take for that person to get to the level where you need them to be or does this person even have the capabilities to get to the level that you need them to be because sometimes it's not just about skills it's about attitude it's about competencies it's about characteristics and very similar to the ceo for example me i need to be shifting identities every time we hit a different income bracket right and the same thing applies to my team right everyone in my team also needs to shift their identity they cannot be the same team member that i hired two years ago if we want to get the company to a place where we're at multiple seven figures or even eight figures and so when you are a ceo these are the uncomfortable decisions that you have to make and especially if you're listening to this and you have experience working with team members and hopefully you have positive experience working with your team members this is a crossroad that you're eventually going to hit in your business that's going to make you cry very similar to how i did letting people go is not fun and there's a lot of guilt surrounding it especially if the same people you're letting go are the people who have helped you achieve certain milestones now the second brutal truth that nobody prepared me for is the fact that as you scale up that's amazing you make more money you know for us i love the fact that we're at a place where we've made over four million dollars to date which is insane and a lot of people focus on the revenue that you're making but you also have to realize that your expenses grow as well and so when i started my business making 10k is amazing and even if i didn't make 10k and let's say i made 5k that's fine because at that period of my business my expenses were maybe like 100 bucks a month right so i need to at least make a hundred bucks to break even and at that time period even if i made zero i had 100 bucks in my savings account or my checking account to cover the expenses that's totally fine but as you scale up it's a whole different ballgame there's a new benchmark on what your minimum is and so let's say for example to really illustrate with you guys i'm a multiple seven-figure business and that's incredible oh my gosh you see that and that's amazing but what you have to realize is that my business needs to make a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars a month in order to break even because my expenses are now at a hundred thousand dollars a month and that's why for me i always aim to make two hundred thousand dollars a month so that i have a 50 profit margin isn't that scary think about it it is so scary that your new minimum is a hundred thousand dollars now to the outside world to your followers to your friends oh my gosh you make a hundred thousand dollars a month that's amazing but for me it's like no no no i have to make a hundred thousand dollars a month because you know why when i scale up my business i'm hiring more people to do that in order to produce more revenue my software expenses also grow go up and so a misconception or something that people don't think through is oh my gosh i want a huge audience i want a big email list i want all the traffic amazing that's what you want to aim for but what you don't realize is that the more people in your audience the more increase your software expenses are gonna be for email list alone i have a hundred and twenty thousand people on my email list my active campaign fees every single month is in the four figures like about two thousand dollars or whatever or even payment failures the fact that i have so many customers i have a lot of payment failures and so i outsourced to a company called gravy to handle that and at one point my monthly expenses just to hire this company called gravy to handle payment failures was seven thousand dollars usd seven thousand dollars usd i got an invoice for seven thousand dollars and because we had so many payment failures for like a few months kind of closer to christmas where people start failing consistently it was seven thousand dollars of expenses every single month just for one contractor just for one contractor and then my software expenses in total we're looking at anywhere between twenty five thousand thirty thousand it's insane right and so that's something that is a brutal truth and your money mindset needs to be so strong when you're playing a bigger game because every single month you're now having to hit a certain amount of money and if you don't hit it you got to find a way to make it work because now you're responsible for more things you're responsible for more people if i don't hit the revenue that i'm making i take money out of my pocket to pay my people because i'm responsible for their well-being on my team and so that's one thing that a lot of people don't talk about and that they don't equip you for now of course if you're doing things well you're running a well-oiled machine you're being smart with who you're hiring you should never be in a place where you're in the red and luckily for me i've never been in the red however it's that mindset shift of being like oh my goodness every month these are my expenses these are my expenses a hundred thousand dollars a month on expenses whether that's my ad spend whether that's my people whether that's software legal fees paying my taxes all these different things paying for benefits all these different things and so that's one thing people don't think about the third thing that is uncomfortable that is a brutal truth when it comes to scaling up your business is obviously as you scale up you will become busier you will become more in demand and you will need to learn how to say no to people more often and this is very hard to do especially if you're a people pleaser like me and this is also really uncomfortable especially where let's say when you're starting out in your business of course you want to collaborate with your friends you want to help them out you want to be a part of their conferences be a part of their summits do a podcast collab all those things and maybe you're even doing it for free because you want to help each other out now as you start scaling up your time becomes more valuable and it's really easy to say no to strangers but let me tell you it's really hard to say no to people that you've said yes to in the past and so that's one thing that i really had to learn to do and i'm still trying to learn how to do i'm that person where instead of saying no i just ghost the person because it's so hard for me to say no and i've been reading this book called essentialism and i highly recommend it for anyone who has lack of boundaries anyone who says yes all the time and has a lot of trouble saying no and anyone who's a people pleaser like me and this is what i took from the book and it says denying someone's request doesn't mean that you're denying them as a person and that's one thing that i kind of take with me all the time now because as you grow in business as you scale up you're going to have to say no a lot more than you're saying yes and especially if you're saying no to people that you care about or people that have invited you to their things or have given you opportunities in the past it's going to be really hard to differentiate the difference between denying their request alone versus feeling like you're denying them as a human being and so that's one thing that you have to keep in mind of as you're scaling up that i want to prepare you for because it sounds easy to say no we talk about setting boundaries all the time but when you're in that position it is actually very hard to do that hey boss are you enjoying what you're hearing so far well i'm interrupting my own episode to invite you to my free training over at www.followersdeclines.com this training has helped thousands of my own students nail down their niche create content that brings them more leads to their door and implement an easy to deploy social media funnel that helps them close clients like a boss this training is perfect for anyone who is starting out in business and wants to know the roadmap to making 10k months regardless if you're a new coach content creator or corporate escapee by the end of this training you 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link is in the description box below i can't wait to see you there and now let's get back into the episode now the fourth thing that is a brutal truth that a lot of people don't equip you with especially if you're scaling up your business and you're growing a huge audience and a huge customer base and that is you will not be as close to your customers and your audience as you once were now you can try to be as close as you once were when you were getting started let's say but it's only going to lead to burnout and exhaustion and so let me emphasize this even further when i started my business i knew almost every customer by name i was in my community i was messaging them back and forth i was sending voice notes video notes personalizing everything really having that unique touch and i really love that because as a smaller uh when you have a smaller audience i should say you want to do that you want to make sure everyone in your community feels seen and heard that is your competitive advantage and so if you're listening to this and you have a small smaller follower base you have a small community you have a small client base you want to treat every single person like gold because people like me who have a huge audience were not able to do that and it's not the fact that we don't want to do it it's the fact that we don't have the bandwidth to manage a hundred thousand people now or thousands of customers and so that's one thing that's a competitive edge for people who are starting out or if you have a smaller community however one thing that i want to emphasize is that if you were in a position like me last year or even now you're gonna feel a lot of guilt as you make that transition from five figures to six figures six figures to seven figures but also in the amount of people that you need to manage in your paid and free community i felt so much guilt that i could no longer answer every student's question i felt so much guilt that i had to switch my business model to hire other coaches other community managers to speak on behalf of me i felt so much guilt that when someone sends an email it's not for me it's not it's even even if it's for me it's not me who's reading it it's not me who's replying it's my team and so there's a lot of guilt around that but it's a brutal truth it's one thing that you have to realize is that as you grow your time will not be able to be spread so thin and even if you try to give everyone that personal attention you are going to burn out you are going to resent your audience and you're not going to be able to focus on the things that truly matter in order for you to scale up now i want to make sure my words aren't misconstrued because talking to your customers and making them feel seen and heard does matter but it doesn't always have to be you that's doing it and it's going to be a very uncomfortable position i know so many other people who can't let customer support go who can't let community management go who can't let social media go because as ceo you care you deeply care about that customer experience but what you have to realize and this is from my experience i did that i tried to answer everything i tried to answer everyone i tried to take over customer support i tried to take over community management i tried to take over my dms do all of things and because i was trying to do everything not just as a ceo but also as someone who has my own life and my own stuff to handle i couldn't be consistent with it and that really negatively affected the customer and client and follower and community experience it's very similar to trying to do every platform if you try to do every single platform you're only going to be able to put your 25 in each which means you're not getting anything done versus if you double down on one platform you can give it all your attention give it your 100 and so for me what i was doing is i was trying to do everything and because i was trying to do everything the client experience and the student experience and the follower experience or community experience wasn't great because i wasn't consistent and i was burnt out versus if i got my team a dedicated customer support person to do it my customers inquiries were answered even faster even better and even more professionally and so that's the shift that i had to make was outsourcing and realizing that hey just because i'm personally not the one that's acknowledging that person on the other side of the screen whether that's my customer whether that's a follower or a subscriber or whatever else i need to understand that the fact that i'm trusting my team to acknowledge them is enough and it's enough for them to feel seen respected heard and appreciated it doesn't always have to be me very similar to if you buy something from tesla and you have an incredible customer experience with their customer service rep that's going to look good on elon musk and the company that they've built elon musk doesn't personally need to answer all of your questions about your tesla in order for you to have a good experience and so that's something that you have to keep in mind of but just trust me that when you make that transition i know it's hard i know it's uncomfortable and i know you're going to feel a lot of guilt just like how i did now the next thing that i want to talk about this is the last thing is is as you scale up your business you're going to realize that your company will need to use more corporate strategies and what i mean by this is maybe org charts you're going to need managers you're going to need departments you're going to need some sort of hierarchy you're going to need to enforce policies and be very strict on those policies and as someone like me where i started my company because i hated the 905 and i was bashing the 905 structure how much i hated politics how much i hated hierarchy how much i hated all these things slowly as i grew my business i realized that my business became a corporation and i had a hard time dealing with it i had a hard time figuring out how to pay people how to come up with the policies how to create the org chart because i wanted everyone in my company to feel like they had an ownership of the business i didn't want them to feel the quote-unquote political aspect of being in corporate in my own company but what i realize is as you hire more people you need to have structures in place to make sure that you create a fair workspace and for you to manage your profits and so many other things for example when i was starting my business i gave people 10k raises you know 20k bonuses all these different things because i was a smaller business and i wanted to give back i wanted my my employees to feel seen appreciated and all those things now a 20k bonus to one person yeah that's awesome but imagine once you're scaling your business to eight people 10 people 20 people can you realistically give every single person a 20k signing bonus or a 20k performance bonus no you can't can you afford to give everyone a 10k raise no you can't and that's when you really have to start falling back into some of those corporate structures that we hate about a 905 which is the five percent raise two percent raise one percent raise now obviously because you're starting your business and even for me i have unconventional ways to do business there are still things that i infuse in my business that make it not replicate the same corporate experience that i hated when i worked at my 905 but that doesn't mean i don't have structures and i don't have policies even hiring recruiting firing all these things performance evaluations these are things that you're going to need to implement in your company as you scale up there needs to be order and structure in order for a seven-figure company to operate and to make more money and to have a healthy environment for your team members you need to have those systems and structures in place and especially if you're someone who created a business to have freedom you created a business so that it wouldn't be like a nine-to-five so you can escape the rat race sometimes you can feel like a hypocrite i remember last year i felt like such a hypocrite by implementing performance evaluations i felt like such a hypocrite when i had to implement rubrics for my team on how they can answer certain questions or i felt like such a hypocrite when i had to fall back on my company policies to understand how to make decisions when it came to sticky situations with certain team members it's not fun but what i realize is that without these structures without these policies it's going to be chaotic to run your business and so that's a brutal truth that you're going to have to experience as you scale it doesn't mean it doesn't and it's not just unique to seven-figure businesses you're going to notice more systems and more structures needing to be in place for your business even as you hit six figures you're going to need standard operating procedures you're going to need certain protocols you're going to need canned responses for customer support not every email is going to be a custom you know email for each customer you're going to need to start streamlining in order to be optimal in order to be efficient and like i said oftentimes you can feel like a hypocrite and what it takes is a mindset shift around that it what it takes is for you to change your perspective on it because in the beginning i felt so much resentment for myself i felt like such a hypocrite and i felt really bad about things but what i realized is that hey in order for me to make the impact that i want to make i need to have these structures so that things can fall in line and that there's less chaos there's less pressure and noise in my business and also in order for me to create a fair atmosphere for all of my employees i need to have these policies in place so that there's no way that people can think of bias another thing that i also like to tell myself is realizing hey i can have structures but i can also add a little bit of flavor to those structures that make my company unique that make in a positive work environment not to mention when i feel like i need to have structures in place i also need to go back to my company values to my personal values and ask myself how can i make sure that even if i implement these systems and processes my values are still clear and consistent for each policy that i set for my own employees and for my own company but anyways guys these were the five brutal truths that i encountered as i was scaling up my business and remember that there are so many other uncomfortable scenarios that are gonna happen in your business as you scale up but just remember that when you're faced with these decisions understand that it's all a part of the process of growing and understanding that if you want to get to the next level it's always going to require a different version of you you just finished listening to an episode on the turn your followers into clients podcast if you enjoyed today's episode make sure you leave us a review on itunes and don't forget to share this episode with your friends on social media just don't forget to tag me at vanessaloud.com on instagram now if you want more of that good stuff head over to www.vanessaloud.com click on our blog and access all of the show notes from this podcast now boss keep doing the damn thing and building a business you don't need an escape from [Music] you

2021-06-04 23:36

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