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For this episode, I wanted to figure out what maintenance mode means to different people and what it looks like in different kinds of businesses. I started asking podcast guests and people around me what maintenance mode meant to them and I never got the same answer twice.
Show Notes
I've been spending a lot of time this year thinking about capacity.
A lot of the work I do focuses on helping clients streamline their operations to increase their capacity without increasing their costs or business complexity.
ScaleSpark actually started as an outgrowth of me running businesses and holding a full-time job. We owned a guest ranch and a brick-and-mortar store while I worked full time and ran all the back ends of those operations.
I had to figure out a way to make that backend run seamlessly and efficiently because I only had maybe an hour or two a day before I went to my day job and I needed to be really effective with my time… which led me to software.
I used software tools to make the operations mostly run without me. Understanding how to use technology to boost capacity was something I had to learn for my businesses to survive. And eventually I started ScaleSpark to help other businesses harness those tools and boost their own capacity.
Even though increasing capacity is one of my core competencies, capacity has been a real issue for me over the last year. So the first question I asked was: what can I stop doing?
It actually turned out that there was a lot of stuff that, when I really examined it, wasn't bringing value into my business, but it was sucking up my time. I needed to get my business back to a place where if I needed to, I could set it and forget it. Maintenance mode.
For this episode, I wanted to figure out what maintenance mode means to different people and what it looks like in different kinds of businesses. I started asking podcast guests and people around me what maintenance mode meant to them and I never got the same answer twice.
A lot of the work I do focuses on helping clients streamline their operations to increase their capacity without increasing their costs or business complexity.
ScaleSpark actually started as an outgrowth of me running businesses and holding a full-time job. We owned a guest ranch and a brick-and-mortar store while I worked full time and ran all the back ends of those operations.
I had to figure out a way to make that backend run seamlessly and efficiently because I only had maybe an hour or two a day before I went to my day job and I needed to be really effective with my time… which led me to software.
I used software tools to make the operations mostly run without me. Understanding how to use technology to boost capacity was something I had to learn for my businesses to survive. And eventually I started ScaleSpark to help other businesses harness those tools and boost their own capacity.
Even though increasing capacity is one of my core competencies, capacity has been a real issue for me over the last year. So the first question I asked was: what can I stop doing?
It actually turned out that there was a lot of stuff that, when I really examined it, wasn't bringing value into my business, but it was sucking up my time. I needed to get my business back to a place where if I needed to, I could set it and forget it. Maintenance mode.
For this episode, I wanted to figure out what maintenance mode means to different people and what it looks like in different kinds of businesses. I started asking podcast guests and people around me what maintenance mode meant to them and I never got the same answer twice.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
- Growth mode versus maintenance mode and how you can be in both at the same time
- How the skills, systems, and tools that you would build and develop for maintenance mode are pretty much the same as the ones you would build for scaling
- Why process can be so powerful for increasing your capacity, whether that's for
- maintenance mode scaling or just to make your job take less time
- How maintenance mode affects product-based businesses and how to define which products require you to be more involved and which ones can run on their own
Learn more about Ryan, Anna, and Tamara:
- Ryan Lazanis – futurefirmaccelerate.com
- Anna Wolf – superscriptmarketing.com
- Tamara Kemper – trainual.com
Learn more about Susan:
- Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
- Twitter @ScaleSpark
- LinkedIn @thesusanboles
- Check out Float and sign up for your free 14-day trial here
Creators & Guests
What is Beyond Margins: Build a calmer business with comfortable margins?
Can you build a business based on… “calm?” On Beyond Margins, host Susan Boles looks beyond the usual metrics of success to help you build a business where calm is the new KPI. With over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, CFO, and COO, Susan shares the business strategies that lead to a business with comfortable margins—financial, emotional, energetic, and scheduling margins. Join her and her guests as they counter the prevailing “wisdom” about business growth, productivity, and success to provide a framework for making choices that align with your values and true goals. Episode by episode, you’ll get a look at the team management, operations, financials, product development, and marketing of a calmer business.