Growing past the growing pains

I’m not gonna sugar-coat this last week was rough. In fact, let’s just tell it like it is… last week was one of the hardest weeks I’ve ever been through. 

It’s fine, everything is fine. But last week and the events that took place caused me to look back at my business through a lens in which I’ve never looked at it before. It’s easy to coach and help other businesses, to solve all of their problems, show them the techniques, or coach other people on what to do or how to do it. But to turn the mirror on myself and look at my own business was painful. It was painful, exhausting, emotionally draining, and forced me to confront things about what we do and how we do it in a way that I never thought I’d have to. It forced me to accept my own failures and shortcomings. 

I can honestly say, as painful as that was, as painful as that process is… I think every business owner has to go through it at least once.

I want to share some insights on business and things I’ve learned (or been reminded of) recently:

  1. Sales and Marketing Automation is this life-changing tool that will catapult your business and allow you to grow and scale easier and faster than ever before. But it can also help you grow so fast to the detriment of your own success. All the automation in the world can’t save you if you have a bad system. Automating a broken process only makes the problem worse. Build it first, write it out, create the process, refine the process, then automate it. Turning on the faucet when there’s nothing there to catch the water means you end up dropping the ball on all of your leads, clients, projects, etc, just like the water spilling out onto the floor.

  2. No more bottlenecks! For a business owner who has the means to hire a team, it’s the best decision you can make! Your ability to delegate, train a team, and build systems is the best way to grow and scale your business. But it also comes with its list of challenges. The ability and means to delegate is amazing, but make sure you’re aware of the difference between delegation and abdication. If all you’re doing is abdicating responsibilities, that’s not true delegation, that’s not true leadership. Passing the bottleneck off to someone else means you still have a bottleneck in your business. It hasn’t disappeared simply because it’s now someone else’s responsibility.

  3. You’re not alone. Entrepreneurship is lonely, it’s hard, it’s scary. Creating something from nothing, offering it up to the market, and internalizing the outcome of that launch as a reflection of our own self worth is one and only struggle every single entrepreneur goes through. And it’s a struggle that never really goes away, not matter how successful you get. But know that you’re not alone. The struggle is real, it’s here to stay, it’s part of the journey, and we’re all in it alone together.

We’ve all been through struggles. Maybe you relate to what I’m going through. Maybe you’ve been there, maybe it’s around the corner for you (I really hope not). But it’s important to have perspective and to share in the good and the bad. So, I want to invite you to hear from some other amazing people who have had their own fair share of struggles, pits of despair, and have come out the other end on top.

Grab your copy of Uncommon Results now available on iBooks and on Amazon Kindle available right now for pre-order. It’s only 99 cents and you get to hear from some incredible entrepreneurs and business owners just like you. Hear about the challenges they faced and their remarkable stories of how they’ve been able to achieve uncommon results. You’ll also get strategies from each co-author on how you can achieve the same results for yourself.

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