Valuetainment - Episode 272： How to Scale Your Business

00:00:00.000 30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put em up, reach

00:00:09.220 the sky, touch the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for the

00:00:16.200 underdog.

00:00:17.280 I'm Patrick Bedeb, your host of Valuetainment, and today I want to talk to you about what

00:00:20.060 you could do to scale your business to the next level.

00:00:22.580 So first things first, there is a predictable side of the business that's very important

00:00:27.320 to be working on that gives you the opportunity to scale, right?

00:00:31.260 A lot of times, entrepreneurs will say, well, I want to start scaling my business right off

00:00:35.240 the bat, and they put so much time and emphasis on scalability, business goes out, it goes out

00:00:41.400 of business because they run out of funds, they don't have money anymore, and they don't

00:00:44.700 even have the opportunity to scale the business.

00:00:46.780 Before scalability comes, you may put 5 to 10% of your mind thinking about how to scale,

00:00:52.900 but you've got to put 90% of your effort in producing a predictable stream of income, even

00:00:58.040 if it's $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 that's bringing in for you to survive and not

00:01:02.300 have to worry about expenses, to ask yourself, how can I scale?

00:01:05.640 So you're working in the business, making sales, growing it, making money, having some support,

00:01:12.420 having some help in the business, scaling the business is what you're thinking about.

00:01:16.580 So how do we do that?

00:01:17.320 Let's talk about that.

00:01:18.080 People will often tell me and say, Pat, listen, the reason why our business is going to explode

00:01:25.100 is because we have the most incredible product in the world.

00:01:28.820 We have the most incredible product in the world.

00:01:30.760 Our product is going to blow up.

00:01:33.160 Look, rule number one of products, the best products don't always win.

00:01:40.800 There's a lot of books I read, and in some books I read, and I'll say, this was an incredible

00:01:45.260 book, but it did terrible because it wasn't a good, scalable marketing plan in place.

00:01:50.680 And there are some books I will, I just read a book, new book that just came out, and it's

00:01:54.720 one of the books, Inc.

00:01:55.720 Magazine recommended as the best book store.

00:01:57.160 I read, I said, no, I didn't learn anything from this book.

00:02:00.060 It's something that's been refurbished from, you know, 20 blogs that he put it into one book,

00:02:04.660 but because he has a platform, it made the book do very well.

00:02:08.040 So his product looks better than somebody else who may have had a great product, but terrible

00:02:13.600 scalability.

00:02:14.280 So product doesn't necessarily take you to the next level.

00:02:18.460 The second thing is personality.

00:02:20.100 There's a lot of people that's based on their personality and their businesses based on their

00:02:23.760 personality.

00:02:24.660 Just think about it this way.

00:02:25.980 Very simple.

00:02:26.980 If you die, or if you don't exist, what happens to your business?

00:02:31.160 If you die, the business dies.

00:02:34.060 If a business is 100% predicated on your personality, that is not a scalable business.

00:02:40.480 And two, if it is, you're not going to have a life.

00:02:43.220 The more the business grows, the more it's going to suck you in because it's 100% predicated

00:02:47.760 on your personality.

00:02:48.540 What allows you to scale, what allows you to scale is if a business, if a business is built

00:02:56.280 on a system, the foundation's got to be a system, a system that produces results with the product

00:03:04.140 that you have, not based on your personality.

00:03:06.900 This needs to be number three.

00:03:08.980 If this is number one, this is number two, this is number three.

00:03:12.480 A great system, a great system you put in place with a good product and a decent personality

00:03:19.340 will do 10 times better than a great product, a good personality, a decent system.

00:03:25.220 It's not going to scale.

00:03:26.360 You can still make good money with great product, but if you don't have a system, you're not

00:03:30.020 going to scale it.

00:03:31.100 You've got to make sure your system is driving your business.

00:03:33.900 So systems could be a step one, two, three.

00:03:36.800 Somebody comes in, first they see this, then it goes to this, then it goes to this, and

00:03:42.660 they buy.

00:03:43.380 And if they buy, then they have the option to upgrade, they have the option to upsell,

00:03:47.400 they have the option to do this.

00:03:49.620 But this is a streamlined system that takes your business to the next level.

00:03:54.720 Now, what you need with a great system, here's what you do need with a great system.

00:03:59.600 Popovich has a system, but Popovich drives the system.

00:04:05.360 So you'll see some people that have the same system as somebody else in another business,

00:04:09.860 but they don't scale the business because they're not a driver. 0.87

00:04:12.780 They're thinking the system's going to scale their business on its own.

00:04:15.760 It's not going to happen.

00:04:16.900 There always needs to be a driver.

00:04:19.140 The triangle offense that Phil Jackson ran with the Lakers and the Bulls only worked because

00:04:24.260 he drove it, okay?

00:04:26.240 Popovich works because he drives it.

00:04:28.060 The New England Patriots keep winning because he has a system that works, but he is the driver.

00:04:33.340 He doesn't have a personality.

00:04:36.000 Belichick is not a personality guy.

00:04:37.900 His product is football.

00:04:39.760 His product is athletes.

00:04:41.400 He knows how to pick good product, but he doesn't necessarily have the best talent all the time,

00:04:45.960 but he knows how to drive it.

00:04:47.920 He knows how to drive it on what he does.

00:04:50.320 So you've got to keep in mind.

00:04:51.360 Your system, ask yourself, how well is your system?

00:04:53.360 How much your business is based on the system?

00:04:54.900 And how well do you drive it?

00:04:55.800 You'll normally see one of these twos has a flaw, or you're relying way too much on becoming

00:05:01.480 an expert in products and way too much on how great of a personality you have.

00:05:05.960 These two have a short lifespan.

00:05:07.660 This is the only thing that can have a life of its own if there's a driver.

00:05:10.740 And by the way, the driver, you don't have to have the most flamboyant personality to

00:05:14.640 be a great driver.

00:05:15.500 You actually don't.

00:05:16.800 Popovich is not the most flamboyant personality.

00:05:19.320 Phil Jackson is not the most flamboyant personality.

00:05:21.980 But Belichick is not the most flamboyant personality.

00:05:23.800 There's a lot more coaches with flamboyant personalities, but they're not as good of

00:05:27.620 drivers.

00:05:28.840 Drivers do things that you and I never see.

00:05:31.860 Drivers do things that happens right here behind the desk, right there at a conference

00:05:35.280 table, right here where a meeting happens, that they know how to drive a vendor, they

00:05:39.800 know how to drive a partner, an employee, an executive, a team member, a client.

00:05:43.780 They know how to drive that behind closer that nobody sees, that the average person cannot

00:05:49.900 do because they're just happy with a system they have in place.

00:05:51.980 Now, there's still one more message here on how to scale your business.

00:05:56.440 There's five more steps on scaling your business.

00:05:59.020 And I'm going to leave the last one because I'll tell you the last one what it is.

00:06:03.140 But I want to make sure you get it at the end.

00:06:05.420 Five steps to scaling.

00:06:06.560 One, thinking big.

00:06:08.400 It's very simple, but very few people do it.

00:06:10.480 It doesn't take much, believe it or not, to fill somebody's appetite.

00:06:17.480 It really doesn't.

00:06:18.860 Very few people think big continuously.

00:06:22.680 Now, think about it.

00:06:23.320 Somebody may say, well, I'm a bigger thinker than my friends.

00:06:26.480 I get it.

00:06:27.780 But being a bigger thinker than your friends doesn't mean you're a big thinker.

00:06:31.120 You're a small thinker amongst great thinkers, right?

00:06:34.960 So if you always compare yourself to your friend, I'm a bigger thinker than my sister,

00:06:38.420 my brother, my cousin, my nephew, my niece, you're probably going to be a cool big thinker

00:06:42.880 amongst your friends because you make $280 a year or whatever your business is doing.

00:06:46.420 And all respect to you, whatever level you're at with your business.

00:06:49.440 If you're happy with it, that's fine.

00:06:51.100 But to have it scale and have a life of its own, you're not watching this video to find

00:06:55.300 out how to get your business from $240 to $280.

00:06:57.320 That's not the purpose of this video.

00:06:58.500 There's plenty of videos on YouTube to show you how to do that.

00:07:01.140 There's plenty of articles to read.

00:07:02.220 This is about scaling your business.

00:07:04.460 And if you're not refusing to think big, don't count on it being scaled.

00:07:08.920 It's not going to happen, right?

00:07:10.220 There needs to be a big thinker behind it.

00:07:12.420 Apple happened because there was a product expert called Wozniak that I had a chance of

00:07:16.700 interviewing, but behind it, there was a driver called Jobs who drove it because he was a

00:07:22.040 big thinker.

00:07:23.220 Amazon has a big thinker.

00:07:24.900 Remember, anything you think about that scales, there's typically a big thinker there too.

00:07:30.020 Don't celebrate.

00:07:31.000 The celebration lifespan sometimes is too long.

00:07:34.120 You know, people get one victory, one vendor.

00:07:36.020 Oh my God, we got this big client that's going to give us $600,000 of business per year.

00:07:40.580 This is so exciting.

00:07:41.540 Let's go to a bar today.

00:07:42.640 Hey, a game is on me.

00:07:44.300 Let's go to the Laker game.

00:07:45.300 Let's go to the next game.

00:07:46.220 It's on me.

00:07:46.760 Let's go to watch the Warriors play.

00:07:48.780 Let's go.

00:07:49.100 Hey, beer tonight, drinks.

00:07:50.020 It's way, way too much celebration.

00:07:52.660 A big thinker doesn't necessarily celebrate a big vendor coming on board because they're

00:07:57.520 expecting that to happen because they're thinking big.

00:08:01.000 A small thinker's lifespan of celebration is way, way too long.

00:08:04.780 That's why they rarely scale up because the moment they make $50,000 a month and in their

00:08:09.820 mind, they're getting paid way more than what they're worth because their entire goal

00:08:13.980 is tied to a money, because they get to that point, they don't experience what it is to

00:08:18.940 explode and scale.

00:08:20.660 They stay there too long.

00:08:21.700 Three is in, on.

00:08:24.340 You got to spend time working on your business but knowing when.

00:08:28.300 There's a certain timing here.

00:08:30.080 So if this is a pendulum, okay?

00:08:32.900 If this is a pendulum, this is in, this is on, you spend a majority of your time working

00:08:38.280 in your business and then gradually within 6, 12, 24, 18, you know, whatever months, then

00:08:43.900 you're spending more time on and then eventually you're working more on your business than you

00:08:47.920 are in your business.

00:08:49.260 But you got to time this well.

00:08:51.020 Sometimes people go on too early and sometimes people never leave in because they're controlled

00:08:56.220 and they want to micromanage everything and they never experience scalability.

00:08:59.720 So this is a timing factor that you have to deal with.

00:09:02.440 And then it's the highest return.

00:09:04.920 You got to, you know, a lot of times as a CEO, I run a firm and I'll run a financial

00:09:09.940 firm, PHP agency, and I'm running a firm and we'll have a problem that'll come up.

00:09:14.040 Okay?

00:09:14.180 We have a challenge that we have with anything.

00:09:17.360 It could be many different platforms that we have challenged.

00:09:19.860 And we'll have a meeting and I'll say, okay, how can we solve this problem?

00:09:24.200 And we'll make a list.

00:09:25.320 We'll process this together.

00:09:26.560 We'll make a list and we'll say, if we do this, we can do this.

00:09:28.560 If we do this, we can do this.

00:09:29.400 If we do this.

00:09:30.120 Perfect.

00:09:30.780 That solves the problem, right?

00:09:32.680 Yes.

00:09:33.040 But it's not the optimal solution.

00:09:36.580 It's a solution.

00:09:37.940 It's not the optimal solution.

00:09:40.120 I'm looking for the optimal solution.

00:09:42.480 The optimal solution is what is going to be able to put us in a position to not have to

00:09:47.080 face this issue again six months from now.

00:09:49.380 Or are we simply putting a band-aid on this problem that we have to face seven months later?

00:09:54.780 And why are we doing that?

00:09:55.860 A lot of times when you're a leader of a business, the entrepreneur, you'll face an issue I see

00:10:02.220 too often trying to build a business with band-aids than actually sitting down and saying, what

00:10:07.740 can I do for this pain to go away?

00:10:09.400 That's what I'm looking for.

00:10:10.440 Because I don't want to have more issues coming out later on that we're looking at having

00:10:14.800 to overcome six, seven, eight months later.

00:10:16.360 No.

00:10:16.480 You know, optimal solution.

00:10:18.240 So if I can invest money back into my business and I sit there and we're having a meeting,

00:10:22.940 we have $300,000 to put back into the business.

00:10:25.160 Great.

00:10:26.020 I think we should do it here.

00:10:27.080 We should do it here.

00:10:27.620 We should do it here.

00:10:28.280 It's great.

00:10:28.520 Let's hire three new people and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. 0.99

00:10:30.320 That's what we need to be doing.

00:10:31.760 Excellent.

00:10:32.380 Let's do that.

00:10:32.980 Awesome.

00:10:33.280 Great job, guys.

00:10:34.100 I said, no.

00:10:35.800 What can we do to get the highest possible return that's the optimal solution to scale

00:10:42.620 the business to the next level and not just throw money away at something that'll give

00:10:46.360 a 6% return?

00:10:47.920 Why don't we spend another hour in the meeting and try to find out what's going to give us

00:10:50.900 13% return and let's sleep on it and find out tomorrow what we can do to get a 19% return

00:10:56.120 and maybe we find out we can do a 29% return if we do this.

00:11:00.720 Optimal solution.

00:11:02.240 Scalability.

00:11:02.640 And the last one I left blank because the last one is an art.

00:11:07.220 The last one is an art.

00:11:09.360 The last one is an art that it takes a while to learn and you're continuously going to learn

00:11:14.240 this.

00:11:15.400 And if the last one is something that you don't touch, if the last one is something that you

00:11:19.940 don't embrace, you're lowering the chances of you being able to scale.

00:11:25.700 It can still scale, but the last one is going to give you the highest level of scalability

00:11:29.940 and that is leverage.

00:11:32.640 Leverage.

00:11:33.640 Leverage.

00:11:34.640 Leverage.

00:11:35.640 Leverage.

00:11:36.640 Leverage.

00:11:37.640 Leverage.

00:11:38.640 Look.

00:11:39.640 When you don't have all the answers and you bring somebody in who's the opposing strength

00:11:44.800 of you.

00:11:45.800 If you're a pure profit, visionary type of a CEO and you're terrible with operations, don't

00:11:50.560 try to be operations.

00:11:51.800 You've got to leverage somebody with operations to help you with the systems to increase the

00:11:56.060 speed.

00:11:56.800 If you're an operations type of person and you're not a great driver, you're just purely operations,

00:12:00.800 and you're driving skills are not good, you need to bring a driver to be able to drive

00:12:04.800 the company.

00:12:05.800 Don't try to be a CEO knowing behind closed doors.

00:12:07.800 You are an operation guy.

00:12:09.800 You keep only thinking about that and no wonder there's not somebody driving a business.

00:12:13.800 Maybe you're a good CFO and you need help with an operations or a CEO person and all you care

00:12:18.180 about is money, money, money.

00:12:19.180 You're always worried about, we can't spend money on that, we can't spend money on it.

00:12:22.880 And because of how cheap you are, you don't know how to leverage somebody else to tell you,

00:12:26.560 we need to invest into this.

00:12:27.660 We need to buy this software.

00:12:28.700 We need to go and do it.

00:12:29.700 We need to invest into marketing.

00:12:31.140 We're not going to scale.

00:12:33.240 What leverage is partnerships, right vendors, a partner that's going to come that you may

00:12:40.480 have to give something in return to be able to scale the business with.

00:12:44.700 That's all leverage.

00:12:45.700 So what can you do to leverage time?

00:12:48.340 What can you do to leverage your business?

00:12:50.000 What can you do to leverage your vendors?

00:12:51.500 What can you do to leverage your partners?

00:12:53.000 What can you do to leverage the executive team around you?

00:12:55.820 What can you do to leverage your team, consultants?

00:12:59.220 What can you do to leverage someone that's going to help you scale the business?

00:13:03.740 Not somebody just throwing money away either.

00:13:06.040 You don't hire aggressively all the time.

00:13:09.180 You're hiring very slow.

00:13:10.360 You're firing very fast.

00:13:12.100 But all you're thinking about is, what position can I put myself into to help me leverage the

00:13:16.740 business to scale it to a whole different level that I possibly couldn't do by myself?

00:13:22.220 And if you do those things, it's not just a one area.

00:13:24.280 You've got to go back and watch this video one more time and ask yourself, am I spending

00:13:27.480 more time on the predictable side or the scalable side?

00:13:29.880 Am I more a product person?

00:13:30.880 Am I more personality?

00:13:31.880 Do I drive my business based on system?

00:13:34.360 What am I most of the time working on this?

00:13:35.940 And then ask yourself these five areas, how well you are.

00:13:38.520 And then slowly but surely, ask yourself, what phase of this business you are?

00:13:42.900 And on, start asking yourself, I want to scale.

00:13:45.460 How do I scale?

00:13:46.460 How do I do this?

00:13:47.460 How do I do that?

00:13:48.460 And slowly but surely, you'll get better at that.

00:13:49.860 And then all of a sudden, the year, you have a double, double.

00:13:53.260 It's got to be a minimum of a double.

00:13:55.460 That's scaling your business when you start having some doubles in measurable numbers that

00:13:59.140 you're looking at that is doubling.

00:14:01.020 That's scalability.

00:14:02.020 Thanks, everybody, for listening.

00:14:03.020 And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.

00:14:07.740 Give us a five-star, write a review if you haven't already, and if you have any questions

00:14:11.740 for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

00:14:16.620 Just search my name, Patrick MidDavid, and I actually do respond back when you snap me

00:14:21.480 or send me a message on Instagram.

00:14:23.440 With that being said, have a great day today.

00:14:25.280 Take care, everybody.

00:14:25.940 Bye-bye.

00:14:32.020 Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - February 19, 2019

Episode 272： How to Scale Your Business

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript