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Discover the critical turning point every successful entrepreneur faces: the shift from hands-on problem solver to strategic leader. In this enlightening Biz Bite, hear firsthand accounts of the challenges of scaling a business and the personal toll it can take when you're juggling all the hats.
Gain insights on the importance of consistent evaluation and course correction in your business journey, all while maintaining your well-being and personal relationships. Learn from those who've walked the path before and understand the delicate balance between rolling up your sleeves and stepping back to steer the ship.
Listen to the full episode here - https://beyond8figures.com/podcast-episodes/
Watch the Episodes On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Beyond8Figures/videos
Connect with Philip:
Listen to the full episode here - https://beyond8figures.com/podcast-episodes/
Watch the Episodes On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Beyond8Figures/videos
Connect with Philip:
Creators and Guests
What is Beyond 8 Figures?
At Beyond 8 Figures, we believe in DELIBERATE entrepreneurship. It means creating a solid foundational framework for your entrepreneurial journey, building from a place of passion, and intentionally aligning your actions with your goals so that you can create success on your terms.
Join A.J. Lawrence, the journeyman entrepreneur with several 7 figure exits, as he shares honest conversations with successful entrepreneurs about their experiences starting and scaling businesses to $10M and beyond, the realities of being a modern-day entrepreneur, advice for practicing deliberate entrepreneurship, and more!
Philip Blackett:
Oftentimes business is just a series of experiments until you find the one that works, that you're willing to scale it and reap the benefits of. But you have to keep trying, you have to keep testing to find out what works. Otherwise you're going to be still at point A when you're trying to get to point Z.
A.J. Lawrence:
As someone who has gotten hit upside the head for not doing so, I always had cocky belief because all three of the businesses that I was able to sell came about because of my own initial skill capability at doing the service, marketing, media, whatever. And as we grew, even if I was doing less of it, in the back of my head, things get really bad. I'll just dive in. That's good when you're small and you're rubbing sticks together really quickly.
But somewhere in the early seven figures, business complexity, size, the amount of moving parts really does change. And you're in a position where if you're not thinking about how to handle things, it may not happen once, but it kind of becomes more and more fragile. And at first it was a super strength I had that I could just jump in and fix the fire, fix the problem. But each problem was bigger the next time, bigger the next time. And I was getting weaker, I was stressed more. So yes, I completely agree. I've learned the hard way. Mine was more of making sure that the kitchen and the coffee was always cleaned, or the place was swept and all that, because no one else would. So yeah, I know hard.
Philip Blackett:
Which is helpful too, A.J. And at the same time, it's also like a cautionary tale, because as CEOs and owners, we also want to have an attitude that no job is beneath us. We want to have that humility, that we'll do whatever it takes to keep the business running, even if it means sweeping floors or cleaning the coffee machine because somebody forgot to do it. At the same time, there's also jobs and tasks to be done that only you could do. And you're only one person and there's only 24 hours in the day.
And so if you're not able to do those type of jobs that you know that only you could do in that day, then your business loses out from that. It's a lost day for that one. Like, we got to see if tomorrow you have the ability to do that and if you can't do it tomorrow, then your business lose out on that too. And not to mention, not only is the business suffering, but how sustainable is that for you personally? As you mentioned before, as far as getting stressed out.
And if you have a family at home, does that bleed into the home life as far as like, with your spouse or kids and that sort of thing, and your relationships with people that you hold dear? Your business can very much be all in all for you. You eat, sleep, and drink it, and everyone else is going to see the side effects of that too, one way or the other, positive or negative. So it's like, how do you proactively start to work on building some sort of sanity around that?
And for me, one of the things that if I were to do this all over again, it would have been helpful for me to be able to carve out some resources so I can at least forward a Chief of Staff or an executive assistant, one of the two. Because I took on so many hats to get us through the pandemic, it was exhausting to the point that everyone else is excited about Friday but me. When people were asking, Philip, what are you going to do on this weekend? I told them, I'm going to sleep and I'm praying that I'll have an answer for next week when we go through this again. And the challenge behind that is that that's not sustainable.
I got these gray hairs because of that stress, and it's just like, you can take it on for a certain period of time, but you can only keep doing that until it takes on a deeper wound for you to realize it. Maybe it's actually like something that happens in your health later on, maybe not this year, but maybe a couple of years down the line. You keep going down this hamster wheel, and you're just constantly working on your business.
You can't figure out a way to just give yourself some space and some time to think clearly, that it may come to a point where your doctor has not a good news for you on your next checkup that makes you say, hey, I got to pump the brakes here. Hey, I need some help. Hey, I need to build some team capacity here to help support me because this has to be sustainable, not just for the business, but also for myself. Otherwise, the business and my family and everyone else will suffer because of it.
A.J. Lawrence:
As I experienced, because I kept just trying to do more and more and more, my sleep dropped. Watching myself drift down over time below 5 hours a day. The amount of alcohol I was drinking kind of went from like a drink at the end of the day with the team, a drink on my walk home, maybe a drink or two with dinner. So it was like at least three was the baseline, and normally above. Then the amount of times I was working out started decreasing. My weight blew up. All of a sudden I was like, wait, when did I become my father? When did I become this round?
Let me not say that because he sometimes listens to these, but I became a lot more looking like my father than my mother because my mother is a tall stick and my dad big round guy. But one of the things that when reading through your material was the consistency of evaluating where you are in the business because the amount of times that I made a plan as things were happening but then didn't kind of revisit.
And I have a chemistry degree and all sorts of things, and it was like, yeah, you estimate and then you re-evaluate based upon actuals. And when we started growing so quickly, I would just estimate and stick with it until things blew up. And you kind of referenced earlier about the consistent fine tuning and you use the map reference for long term. And I like that because it kind of leads to like yeah, a couple of teeny error uncorrected early on, you're going to go way off. But if you keep doing course corrections throughout, you're going to be pretty close on the way and maybe a couple of minutes late into your destination. So how do you kind of help your entrepreneurs going through your program to course correct?
Philip Blackett:
Yeah. And I think you hit on a key word there to emphasize it's course correction. Right? It's not so advanced that a rocket scientist has to explain it to us. But at the same time, course correction is what rocket scientists and the people at NASA have to deal with as well. Because I remember one mentor told me, when it comes to landing a space shuttle on the moon, you got to solve two questions and be very crystal clear on those two questions if you're going to do this. The first question is, how do we get there? The second question is, how do we get back?
If we don't answer both of those questions with crystal clear accuracy here, we're going to have a problem, Houston. Because essentially what's going on there is, yeah, I know where I'm trying to go as far as the moon is concerned and I know I have to take off here in Houston or in Florida here in that sort. But once that rocket is off and running, like you said, it's about course correction the whole time. I'm not a math major, but I know enough to know that if you just go off just a few degrees and you stay consistent, those degrees, you're going to veer for the sun after a while.
And I can promise you, you won't be coming back after that. Right? So it's a similar thing with business. It's the thought of, okay, let's get clear on what are we trying to achieve this year. We can talk about three year, five year plan too. But in this scenario, it's talking about, okay, what are we trying to achieve? And as we start moving towards it, let's build in an expectation that we are going to course correct, that we are going to make adjustments and adapt along the way. This is not something that is just like two plus two is four. And that's it. It's so simple, straightforward, black and white. It's incontestable.
There's going to be certain things just by the fact that business is like another person told me before, the great thing about business is that you work with a lot of good people. The bad thing about business is that you also have to work with a lot of people. There's a lot of variables that come in play for you to reach your goal. It's not as simple as just somebody individually doing it. But when you're having other people, as far as like employees, you're engaging with customers, you got vendors, you got investors, you got all these different stakeholders that you're having to account for. You got infrastructure, you got equipment, you got technology, all this other stuff that you're trying to move together, almost like sheep, like herding cats here towards a certain goal. There's going to be certain ones that stray off. You got to pause everyone and reach over and grab the other one and bring them back to the bunch and keep moving along, moving along. Then a lion or a bear is going to jump in the middle of it trying to take some of your sheep away.
You don't have to battle that thing like David, and just get that bear off of them so you don't have any casualties along the way. So the thought is like, that is a given about business, that it's almost never going to be a straight shot. Let's just go ahead and just be on the same page that it's not going to be that. Given that, if we're all on the same page there, and we all understand there's going to have to be some course correction regardless of our goal here, then let's figure out what are we going to do, how we're going to go about doing it, and then let's get that feedback and figure out, are we still on the right path? Do we need to make an adjustment? How do we make that adjustment and try that and keep going? Oftentimes, business is just a series of experiments until you find the one that works, that you're willing to scale it and reap the benefits of. But you have to keep trying. You have to keep testing to find out what works. Otherwise you're going to be still at point A when you're trying to get to point Z.