Beyond Margins

Instead of shutting his business down and starting over when he realized that something needed to change for him, Mark Butler created a complementary business with a different business model–one that was designed for maintenance.

Key Takeaways:

- How Mark makes two very different business models work under one roof
- Why his team is always empowered to tell him no
- How side projects sustain his creativity and generate new opportunities for the business
- Why every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves what they really want to be when they grow up

Show Notes

Sometimes we end up building a business that just doesn't fit our lives.

Not intentionally. Sometimes it just happens that way.

Maybe you don’t have the freedom you thought you’d have. Maybe you’re doing group courses but you really want to be 1 on 1 with clients, or vice versa.

Sometimes when you step back and examine what it'll take to get to maintenance mode or what it will take to scale or grow, you realize that you don't actually have the capacity to grow this thing you built. The business you built isn't designed for that.

In order to get to maintenance mode, you need to shift.

Ryan Lazanis and I talked about this in Episode 75 - we'd each built businesses that didn't fit how we wanted to live our lives and so we ended up starting new businesses and specifically building them for maintenance mode.

But you don't have to burn the whole thing down.

Meet Mark Butler. He's the founder of the accounting startup Let’s Do the Books, as well as a freelance CFO for life coaches. And instead of shutting his business down and starting over when he realized that something needed to change for him, he created a complementary business with a different business model–one that was designed for maintenance. 


Listen to the full episode to hear:
  • How Mark makes two very different business models work under one roof
  • Why his team is always empowered to tell him no
  • How side projects sustain his creativity and generate new opportunities for the business
  • Why every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves what they really want to be when they grow up

Learn more about Mark Butler:

Learn more about Susan:

Resources:

Creators & Guests

Host
Susan Boles
Speaker, Podcaster & Consultant at Beyond Margins | 15+ years of experience as both a CFO and COO

What is Beyond 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.