Episode 272： How to Scale Your Business
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
196.89578
Summary
In this episode, Pat talks about what you can do to scale your business to the next level and why it's important to have a system in place that allows you to do so. He also talks about why the best products don't always win when it comes to scaling.
Transcript
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30 seconds, one time for the underdog, ignition sequence start, let me see you put em up, reach
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the sky, touch the stars up above, cause it's one time for the underdog, one time for the
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I'm Patrick Bedeb, your host of Valuetainment, and today I want to talk to you about what
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you could do to scale your business to the next level.
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So first things first, there is a predictable side of the business that's very important
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to be working on that gives you the opportunity to scale, right?
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A lot of times, entrepreneurs will say, well, I want to start scaling my business right off
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the bat, and they put so much time and emphasis on scalability, business goes out, it goes out
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of business because they run out of funds, they don't have money anymore, and they don't
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even have the opportunity to scale the business.
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Before scalability comes, you may put 5 to 10% of your mind thinking about how to scale,
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but you've got to put 90% of your effort in producing a predictable stream of income, even
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if it's $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 that's bringing in for you to survive and not
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have to worry about expenses, to ask yourself, how can I scale?
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So you're working in the business, making sales, growing it, making money, having some support,
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having some help in the business, scaling the business is what you're thinking about.
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People will often tell me and say, Pat, listen, the reason why our business is going to explode
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is because we have the most incredible product in the world.
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We have the most incredible product in the world.
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Look, rule number one of products, the best products don't always win.
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There's a lot of books I read, and in some books I read, and I'll say, this was an incredible
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book, but it did terrible because it wasn't a good, scalable marketing plan in place.
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And there are some books I will, I just read a book, new book that just came out, and it's
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I read, I said, no, I didn't learn anything from this book.
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It's something that's been refurbished from, you know, 20 blogs that he put it into one book,
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but because he has a platform, it made the book do very well.
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So his product looks better than somebody else who may have had a great product, but terrible
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So product doesn't necessarily take you to the next level.
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There's a lot of people that's based on their personality and their businesses based on their
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If you die, or if you don't exist, what happens to your business?
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If a business is 100% predicated on your personality, that is not a scalable business.
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And two, if it is, you're not going to have a life.
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The more the business grows, the more it's going to suck you in because it's 100% predicated
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What allows you to scale, what allows you to scale is if a business, if a business is built
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on a system, the foundation's got to be a system, a system that produces results with the product
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If this is number one, this is number two, this is number three.
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A great system, a great system you put in place with a good product and a decent personality
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will do 10 times better than a great product, a good personality, a decent system.
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You can still make good money with great product, but if you don't have a system, you're not
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You've got to make sure your system is driving your business.
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Somebody comes in, first they see this, then it goes to this, then it goes to this, and
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And if they buy, then they have the option to upgrade, they have the option to upsell,
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But this is a streamlined system that takes your business to the next level.
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Now, what you need with a great system, here's what you do need with a great system.
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Popovich has a system, but Popovich drives the system.
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So you'll see some people that have the same system as somebody else in another business,
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but they don't scale the business because they're not a driver.
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They're thinking the system's going to scale their business on its own.
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The triangle offense that Phil Jackson ran with the Lakers and the Bulls only worked because
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The New England Patriots keep winning because he has a system that works, but he is the driver.
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He knows how to pick good product, but he doesn't necessarily have the best talent all the time,
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Your system, ask yourself, how well is your system?
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You'll normally see one of these twos has a flaw, or you're relying way too much on becoming
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an expert in products and way too much on how great of a personality you have.
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This is the only thing that can have a life of its own if there's a driver.
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And by the way, the driver, you don't have to have the most flamboyant personality to
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Popovich is not the most flamboyant personality.
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Phil Jackson is not the most flamboyant personality.
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But Belichick is not the most flamboyant personality.
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There's a lot more coaches with flamboyant personalities, but they're not as good of
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Drivers do things that happens right here behind the desk, right there at a conference
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table, right here where a meeting happens, that they know how to drive a vendor, they
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know how to drive a partner, an employee, an executive, a team member, a client.
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They know how to drive that behind closer that nobody sees, that the average person cannot
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do because they're just happy with a system they have in place.
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Now, there's still one more message here on how to scale your business.
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There's five more steps on scaling your business.
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And I'm going to leave the last one because I'll tell you the last one what it is.
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It doesn't take much, believe it or not, to fill somebody's appetite.
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Somebody may say, well, I'm a bigger thinker than my friends.
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But being a bigger thinker than your friends doesn't mean you're a big thinker.
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You're a small thinker amongst great thinkers, right?
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So if you always compare yourself to your friend, I'm a bigger thinker than my sister,
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my brother, my cousin, my nephew, my niece, you're probably going to be a cool big thinker
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amongst your friends because you make $280 a year or whatever your business is doing.
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And all respect to you, whatever level you're at with your business.
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But to have it scale and have a life of its own, you're not watching this video to find
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out how to get your business from $240 to $280.
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There's plenty of videos on YouTube to show you how to do that.
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And if you're not refusing to think big, don't count on it being scaled.
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Apple happened because there was a product expert called Wozniak that I had a chance of
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interviewing, but behind it, there was a driver called Jobs who drove it because he was a
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Remember, anything you think about that scales, there's typically a big thinker there too.
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The celebration lifespan sometimes is too long.
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Oh my God, we got this big client that's going to give us $600,000 of business per year.
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A big thinker doesn't necessarily celebrate a big vendor coming on board because they're
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expecting that to happen because they're thinking big.
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A small thinker's lifespan of celebration is way, way too long.
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That's why they rarely scale up because the moment they make $50,000 a month and in their
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mind, they're getting paid way more than what they're worth because their entire goal
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is tied to a money, because they get to that point, they don't experience what it is to
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You got to spend time working on your business but knowing when.
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If this is a pendulum, this is in, this is on, you spend a majority of your time working
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in your business and then gradually within 6, 12, 24, 18, you know, whatever months, then
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you're spending more time on and then eventually you're working more on your business than you
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Sometimes people go on too early and sometimes people never leave in because they're controlled
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and they want to micromanage everything and they never experience scalability.
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So this is a timing factor that you have to deal with.
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You got to, you know, a lot of times as a CEO, I run a firm and I'll run a financial
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firm, PHP agency, and I'm running a firm and we'll have a problem that'll come up.
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We have a challenge that we have with anything.
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It could be many different platforms that we have challenged.
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And we'll have a meeting and I'll say, okay, how can we solve this problem?
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We'll make a list and we'll say, if we do this, we can do this.
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The optimal solution is what is going to be able to put us in a position to not have to
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Or are we simply putting a band-aid on this problem that we have to face seven months later?
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A lot of times when you're a leader of a business, the entrepreneur, you'll face an issue I see
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too often trying to build a business with band-aids than actually sitting down and saying, what
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Because I don't want to have more issues coming out later on that we're looking at having
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So if I can invest money back into my business and I sit there and we're having a meeting,
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we have $300,000 to put back into the business.
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Let's hire three new people and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
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What can we do to get the highest possible return that's the optimal solution to scale
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the business to the next level and not just throw money away at something that'll give
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Why don't we spend another hour in the meeting and try to find out what's going to give us
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13% return and let's sleep on it and find out tomorrow what we can do to get a 19% return
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and maybe we find out we can do a 29% return if we do this.
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And the last one I left blank because the last one is an art.
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The last one is an art that it takes a while to learn and you're continuously going to learn
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And if the last one is something that you don't touch, if the last one is something that you
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don't embrace, you're lowering the chances of you being able to scale.
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It can still scale, but the last one is going to give you the highest level of scalability
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When you don't have all the answers and you bring somebody in who's the opposing strength
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If you're a pure profit, visionary type of a CEO and you're terrible with operations, don't
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You've got to leverage somebody with operations to help you with the systems to increase the
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If you're an operations type of person and you're not a great driver, you're just purely operations,
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and you're driving skills are not good, you need to bring a driver to be able to drive
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Don't try to be a CEO knowing behind closed doors.
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You keep only thinking about that and no wonder there's not somebody driving a business.
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Maybe you're a good CFO and you need help with an operations or a CEO person and all you care
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You're always worried about, we can't spend money on that, we can't spend money on it.
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And because of how cheap you are, you don't know how to leverage somebody else to tell you,
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What leverage is partnerships, right vendors, a partner that's going to come that you may
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have to give something in return to be able to scale the business with.
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What can you do to leverage the executive team around you?
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What can you do to leverage your team, consultants?
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What can you do to leverage someone that's going to help you scale the business?
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But all you're thinking about is, what position can I put myself into to help me leverage the
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business to scale it to a whole different level that I possibly couldn't do by myself?
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And if you do those things, it's not just a one area.
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You've got to go back and watch this video one more time and ask yourself, am I spending
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more time on the predictable side or the scalable side?
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And then ask yourself these five areas, how well you are.
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And then slowly but surely, ask yourself, what phase of this business you are?
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And on, start asking yourself, I want to scale.
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And slowly but surely, you'll get better at that.
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And then all of a sudden, the year, you have a double, double.
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That's scaling your business when you start having some doubles in measurable numbers that
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