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Business success is dependent on a solid financial foundation & success looks different to everyone & there is a lack of equity of access to resources and information for small business owners and independent contractors & there is a societal narrative making us believe “balance” is our ultimate goal & … There are so many “&”s that impact being your own boss. Let’s have some frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success.
Molly Beyer: [00:00:08] Welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond, the podcast where we have frank discussions on the basics of business with a holistic focus on everything that helps business owners define and find success. Each episode is a reminder that success isn't one thing, it's a whole lot of ambiguous ands. Like, subscribe, or follow, and let's explore these ambiguous ands.
[00:00:35] Hello, and welcome to The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. I'm your host, Molly Beyer, and I'm here to lead you through frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business. Today I wanted to talk about two words that get used almost interchangeably in business conversations that really shouldn't be, and that is scalable and sustainable. Now, somewhere along the way, business owners started believing that they were the same thing. Well, spoiler, they're not. And honestly, I think a lot of people have been chasing scalability when what they really wanted was sustainability. Because here's the truth, I'm not interested in building a business that looks impressive on paper, but feels miserable to run every day. And I've met plenty of business owners with growing revenue, growing teams, growing stress levels, and shrinking personal lives, and to me, that's not success, that's just survival with better marketing. So I want to break down what does scale actually mean? When people talk about scaling, they usually mean more clients, more employees, more revenue, more locations, more services, more, more, more. Now, none of these things are inherently bad, but none of them guarantee you're building a better business. Scale simply means you're getting bigger. And it really says absolutely nothing about whether or not your business is getting healthier.
Molly Beyer: [00:01:51] And none of the amores are actually scaling by themselves, they're really just the results. Scaling is what happens behind the scenes to make those results sustainable because if your business doubles next month, could your operations really keep up or would everything just start falling apart? Because so much of the time when people start talking about scaling, their brain goes first to marketing, but mine really does the opposite. It goes to the operations first because operations really determine what your capacity actually is, and it really is capacity that determines growth. So kind of think of it like a bridge. You don't make a bridge stronger by just driving more cars across it. You reinforce the structure first. And businesses work exactly the same way. So one of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is by measuring their capacity by hours available. They think something like, I have 20 more hours so I can fit three more clients. Well, maybe, but capacity is so much bigger than just your calendar. Capacity really includes your mental bandwidth, the financial resources available, documented processes available for technology, communication, decision making, leadership. And if any of those breaks, capacity immediately shrinks and dramatically. It is also imperative to remember that every growth stage creates new problems and requires a different operating system. So for me and for the businesses that I work with, I've really observed four general stages of growth. That first stage is where you're doing everything.
Molly Beyer: [00:03:28] Everything lives in your head. You can remember it all. There really isn't that much to remember, and it works until it doesn't. Because then you hit stage two and now you're busier. You're answering emails while returning phone calls, while invoicing, while delivering services. So nothing is technically broken, but nothing feels smooth and you start forgetting things and deadlines get missed and you wonder why you're working 60 hours a week. So this is really where systems become necessary. Then you get into stage three, you're hiring somebody. Suddenly, everything you've always just known has to be explained to someone else, and you discover very quickly whether your business actually has processes or just habits. Then you hit stage four and you have more employees, more clients, more software, more moving parts. So it's at this stage of business that it really becomes less dependent on your individual work and more dependent on your operational design. So leadership starts to replace hustle. Systems replace memory and documentation replaces constant questions. I think almost every growing business eventually develops five operating systems. And this is whether intentionally or accidentally, when they're either moving for growth or they're just growing organically. So you have your financial systems and that is how your money moves. So it's pricing, payroll, cash flow, forecasting, reporting, decision making. And without these growth does really become risky. Then you have your operational systems and these are how things get done. So your SOPs, your checklists, task management, project workflows, consistency. This is really where businesses stop reinventing every process, every time they do it.
[00:05:11] Third, you have your communication systems, and so this is internal communication and client communication. It's the rhythm of your meetings, it's the expectations you set, response times that you give and decision ownership. And so many business problems are actually communications problems. Fourth is your technology systems. And so this is like your software stack. You have your integrations and automations, your data flow, your information security and technology really shouldn't create more work, it should eliminate your repetitive work. So keep that in mind. That is something that people get tripped up on a lot. And then finally your leadership systems, and this is one that surprises people. But leadership really is a system, too. It's how the decisions are getting made and how priorities are getting set, it's how feedback is happening, how accountability works, and how success is being measured. Without leadership systems, everything really flows back to the owner, which means the business can never really scale. Now sustainability is different. Sustainability asks different questions. It asks things like, can this business continue operating if I take a vacation? Can it survive if I have an employee quit unexpectedly? Can we weather a slow season? Can I keep doing this work without burning myself out? Can my family actually enjoy having me around? Now, these are very different measurements of success. And I have to tell you, growth magnifies everything.
Molly Beyer: [00:06:33] One of the biggest, biggest misconceptions that I see is that growth is going to solve existing problems. And it almost never does, because growth really is an amplifier. If your systems are strong, growth is going to make them stronger. If your communication is weak, growth is going to create confusion faster. If your bookkeeping is behind, more transactions don't magically organize themselves. If you're feeling overwhelmed today, adding 20 more customers probably won't fix that. So whatever already exists in your business is going to get magnified. So that's why I spend so much time focused on building foundations before chasing expansion. And it's advice that I need. I've had two pivotal growth moments in my business thus far, and both have highlighted all of the systems that I didn't actually have in place. So what happens then is it becomes harder to train my new employees. It becomes harder for me to focus on being more of that CEO because I have to work more in the business. And unfortunately, it often means something gets missed somewhere, and we create a client experience that is not aligned with our values. And that's absolutely what no one wants. We also have to explore the idea that bigger isn't always better. So we've created this strange culture where every business owner is expected to become the next giant company. Well, why? Maybe your ideal business serves 20 amazing clients. Maybe it's 50, maybe it's 100. Maybe it's just you and one employee. There really isn't a magic number. There isn't a prize for having the biggest payroll. The question isn't how big can this become? The better question really is how big do I actually want this to become? And those are not the same conversation.
Molly Beyer: [00:08:10] So the key to define is to define success before you build it. And one of the exercises that I encourage business owners and that if you've listened to any of my other episodes, you're going to be really familiar with is that idea of defining what success actually looks like. It's not what social media says. It's not what competitors are doing. It's not what your networking group is celebrating. It's really, what do you want, you know? And for me, success is time freedom, it's financial stability, meaningful work, helping people, being present with my family, having enough energy left for my own life. If building a $1 million business requires sacrificing even one of those things, is it really success? Only you can answer that for you based on your idea of success, but for me it certainly is not. So really, scalability is about capacity, and sustainability is about longevity. And you do need both. But sustainability comes first, because if your business can't support the life you are trying to build, then it really doesn't matter how big it becomes.
Molly Beyer: [00:09:17] Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. We'd love to hear your feedback on today's episode, as well as any requests for future content. Drop a comment or suggestion and join us next time for more frank and holistic conversations on the basics of business, where we will focus on sustainability without the hustle. Please also like, subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode. And until next time, I'm Molly Beyer and this has been The Ambiguous &: Business Basics and Beyond. Have a wonderful day.