Let Success Drive Scale

In our business, we work with entrepreneurs who have created momentum. They have actually created an opportunity that they're having trouble fulfilling. It's one of those incredible places as an entrepreneur, to actually know you've created something people want, there's demand for, and you can grow.

One of the biggest challenges we see with our new clients is that they have scaled, but they have not let success drive their scale. That's the only way to win.

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast, made for empire-builders, game-changers, trail-blazers, shot-takers, record-breakers, world-makers, and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat, because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

When you're growing a business, there are an infinite number of decisions to be made about who to hire, how to scale, what you should do next, how you should generate leads, how you should convert those leads, what should you actually deliver as a business, what is your value proposition, what is the unique thing that you do in the market. All of those things are decisions we make as we're growing and driving a business to grow, and what seems obvious is that we should scale the infrastructure of the business, the people we hire, the processes we document, the projects that we create and execute. We should do all of those around the success of the business.

However, here's what we see happen so often with entrepreneurs who are growing a business, especially those who are well-funded, so let me explain to you what I mean by that. If you're an entrepreneur who has cash, if you're somebody who's starting a business but maybe you have money from before, or you're well-funded, or you've been successful in the past and you're starting a business now, that can actually be dangerous. Because here's what we see happen all the time with entrepreneurs who are growing a business that are not scaling around the opportunity, what we see is they're scaling around the perceived opportunity.

And here's what I mean by that. Instead of scaling by saying, "What does the business need next," instead of analyzing the five core functions and looking at lead generation, lead nurture, conversion, delivery, retention, resell and upsell, and saying, "Where is it? We need to create the next project, document the right process, hire another person." What happens so often is that entrepreneurs scale around a perceived opportunity. They start thinking there's an opportunity coming and they start hiring people and putting process in place for the opportunity that could be there but isn't there yet.

And one of the most dramatic of the examples of this, and one of the most embarrassing, is me. I'll be very candid and clear with you. You know, we all get confused at times in our business, and we all use the wrong inputs and the wrong data to make decisions, and years ago when I first introduced this Entrepreneurial Personality Type content, it was like a bomb went off. I was invited on a stage at Genius Network, and at Titan Summit, and at ClickFunnels, and at event after event, and we got tons of attention, and we got calls from newspapers and magazines, and people wanted articles, and I was on hundreds of podcasts and I got interviewed all over the place. I got on local TV. It was like so many people were interested in the Entrepreneurial Personality Type content that we started hiring people to support it.

I hired a writer, I hired an artist, we hired people that were going to help us support this huge opportunity we were creating, but you know what we were doing? We were making a lot of noise, but we weren't actually scaling anything. I was bringing in people to do stuff, but they weren't actually building around a business, and here's what happened to me and happens to so many entrepreneurs. It's just it's hard to admit, but sometimes we want to scale so bad, we want to move forward so bad, we actually force scale. We start hiring people that we don't really need, and we actually forced growth by hiring people that there isn't really something to do there, but we feel like we can anticipate it and they'll help us solve it.

We started hiring people to figure things out for us in the business plan, which that never works. That's hiring success, and that's just one of the most difficult things to do. In fact, go back and listen to my podcast called You Can't Hire Success, there's a reason. You can't buy success either, you have to do it yourself, and I've done this. What we do is we save entrepreneurs from unintentionally scaling just like I did, because here's what I had to do and here's what so many of our clients have to do. I had to stop and assess where I was. I had to realize we were selling very little consistently, and I had a team supporting, really, no consistent revenue.

And I had to make the very difficult decision in July of 2017 to cut everything off. We went all the way down to one single team member, and really, our revenue was such that that's where we should be. We cut it all the way down, and that's July of 2017. It's not that long ago. Today, we have a $3,000,000 a year run rate business that is growing like crazy, that's profitable, that we're excited about, and I can tell you that I absolutely believe that it came from that time of where we cut down the pressure and noise, we pulled back any scale that we had that was driven by anything other than success, and we actually scaled around an opportunity.

That's really the only way to do it, because when you scale around an opportunity, when you ask yourself, "What do I need in terms of lead gen, nurture, conversion, delivery, retention, resell and upsell," when you're clear about what's actually going to move the company forward, you scale way faster and it makes everything move forward faster, because here's what happens when you scale too fast. One, you're team members will be underutilized. I know I was in that place. I had team members that really didn't know what to do, but they were doing activities because they had been hired to do activities.

And so I had team members that really didn't have clarity, didn't have clear outcomes, weren't being managed in a way that created momentum, and it was harder for them, and it was hard for me, that managing people who don't really have clear outcomes, who don't really have a purpose. That is a ton of operational drag. It was painful. When you scale too early, you also cause massive noise within your team, because here's the only way to scale correctly. You have to have a team that absolutely needs another person. You have to have a team that is desperate for another person, and then when you add that person, they're assimilated quickly, they become productive quickly, and you adopt them and absorb them as a team and they become productive like crazy.

When you bring somebody in who doesn't have a real job, they know it, you know it, and everyone on the team knows it, but you know what's so weird is so often you don't talk about it. You pretend like it didn't really happen, and that causes massive noise within the team. When somebody is not really being utilized, when they don't have a full-time job, when they're not excited about what they're doing, that will cause operational drag and noise.

And when the team isn't clear and focused on real outcomes that are driving success, that are actually creating an even bigger opportunity, you will have massive conflict and chaos on your team. If you have conflict and chaos on your team right now, chances are they're not clear about what success is. If you have conflict and chaos on your team right now, chances are they're not clear about how to really drive scale and how to really grow the business, because when teams are excited, when they're moving forward, when they're making things happen, there's no conflict, there's no chaos. There's excitement, like every day right now our team is getting on a huddle, every morning, our daily huddle, and it's constant excitement and congratulations and good news.

Yesterday we had a day where we sold like $60,000, the entire team pumped out of their minds. We got clients that we've wanted for a long time. That's exactly how it should be. It should be a daily celebration of achievement, not looking around and trying to figure out who doesn't have a full-time job, so here's what you need to know. Let success drive scale. Number one, scale only where you need it, not where you feel like you need it. Prove it to yourself by collecting the right data, look at lead generation, lead nurture, conversion, delivery, retention, resell and upsell, the five core functions, and make certain that you know what your business needs.

Because when you scale where you need it, you feel instant momentum. When you scale or add process, people, or projects where you don't need it, you feel bogged down, you feel dragged, your team will feel like they're running through molasses. And then here's what you need to know. Scale in a way that lowers noise for you first, and you will grow fast. When you scale in a way that isn't intentional or isn't necessary, it makes things harder. If you've hired someone and you're irritated or frustrated with them, you probably don't need them. If you've brought on a project or a process that you're documented and you don't feel like it's moving things forward, it probably was not the highest priority.

See, in a business one of the hardest things we need to do is consistently choose the most important project, the most relevant project, the highest priority project, process, or hiring of people, in order to move the business forward the fastest. So when you document a process, complete a project, or hire a person, and you don't feel massive momentum, if means that you missed. It means that you did it in a way where you are not allowing success to drive scale, because here's what will happen. When you allow success to drive scale, when you allow your results to drive scale, when you're looking at a result and then hiring people to help you continue that result, you will stop guessing and start growing fast.

If in your business today you have people that you feel frustrated with, you have a lack of productivity, there's a lot of things going on but you don't really see things moving forward, maybe, just maybe, you've scaled too fast, brought on too many people, caused chaos and confusion, and it's time to simplify, bring things back down, and maybe get to the place where you can scale being driven by success. Because when you do, you will feel infinite momentum. When you scale in any other way, you're counting on getting lucky, and let's be honest, luck is no way to grow a business.

If you're ready to start growing your business fast and drive growth through scale, join our Facebook group. Look up Billionaire Code on Facebook, and it is a free Facebook group for businesses that are growing and scaling teams. And here's the only warning, there are three questions to answer when you join, and yes, you have to answer all three or you will sit there forever and my team will not approve you, so check out the Billionaire Code Facebook group, Billionaire Code on Facebook, join, answer the three questions, my team will add you. And then watch for my next Facebook Live on how to grow and scale your business. And remember, let success drive scale and your business will grow quickly and you'll be happy that it did.