Today we’re talking about the importance of building a business that scales BEFORE scaling your business…
 
Our guest today started her career 30 years ago in Silicon Valley, CA where she worked at a variety of companies: Fortune 500, medium-sized and then a handful of start-ups during the .com boom of the 90s. The start-ups are what set her up for success supporting entrepreneurs and to be an entrepreneur herself.
 
Today, She is a Fractional COO and business growth expert who has been guiding entrepreneurs and small team businesses to scalable, strategic, and sustainable success for 20 years. A certified professional coach with an emphasis on social and emotional intelligence, she takes a whole-person approach to her consulting.
 
She teaches about leadership development and team building, specifically, how to successfully transition from a Solopreneur to a Small Team Business. She helps her clients expand their businesses, increase their profits, and create high-quality teams—all while enjoying their lives. Based on her years of experience with startups and entrepreneurs, Lisi has developed a four-part framework and systematic process to help her clients achieve the revenue goal and the vision for their business they never thought possible. She quickly assesses the big picture, breaks complex business challenges into manageable action steps, and provides ongoing accountability to ensure her clients achieve their highest visions and full potential.
 
Please join us in this episode to see if your business is ready for growth!
 
Connect with Lisi Kempton:
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[00:00:00] Jeffrey: welcome to the light new launch podcast today. We're talking about scaling without failing. So stay tuned.

[00:00:53] Jeffrey: Welcome back to the show. I'm Jeffrey somewhere around, I'm back again with Katie Collins. And today we want to talk about the importance of building a business that scales before scaling your business, Katie. Please introduce our guests today.

[00:01:09] Katie: I would love to our guests today had a career that started 30 years ago in Silicon valley, California, where she worked at a variety of companies, fortune 500 medium sized, and then a handful of startups during that.com boom of the nineties, the startups are what set her up for success, supporting entrepreneurs and to be an entrepreneur.

Today, she's a fractional COO and business growth expert who has been guiding entrepreneurs and small team businesses to scalable strategic. And sustainable success for 20 years, a certified professional coach with an emphasis on social and emotional intelligence. She takes a whole person approach to her consulting.

She teaches about leadership development and team building specifically how to successfully transition from a solo preneur to a small team business. She helps her clients expand their businesses, increase their impacts and create high quality team. All while enjoying their lives. Based on her years of experience with startups and entrepreneurs, Lisi has developed a four-part framework and systematic approach to help her clients achieve the revenue goal and the vision for their business.

They never thought possible. She quickly assesses the big picture breaks, complex business challenges into manageable action steps and provides ongoing accountability to ensure her clients achieve their highest. And full potential. Welcome to the show. Lisi Kempton.

[00:02:39] Lisi: Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, we're so glad you're here.

Woo.

[00:02:46] Katie: Again, we have sound effects. You could play with Jeffrey

[00:02:51] Jeffrey: tinker.

[00:02:52] Katie: One day and our listeners will be like, oh, yay. He finally got the courage to push the audience applause. All right. So Lucy, I wanted to start off with a quote that I had read that you had. And it was all about to survive at a startup.

You need to be able to work outside of your quote unquote job description and wear a lot of different hats. You know, you're expected to do what it takes to get the job done. And so I'm curious about your experience working at startups and how you really see that, that mirrors, the entrepreneur role that we're all in.

[00:03:30] Lisi: Yeah, I, that's a great question. I actually think it mirrors it exactly. Um, because as, especially as a solo preneur, before you expand your business, you're responsible for managing every single department of your business. And I think that solopreneurs, um, oftentimes don't know or realize that they actually do have different departments in their business.

Everybody has a sales, marketing, operations, product delivery, product development, finance department, and they're all there. But the business owner is wearing every single one of those hats and managing their businesses. Initially launch and up until the point that they expand and they add team to help them manage the business and they can offer outsource or offload some of those departments and roles and responsibilities to other people.

So to me, it's an exact mirror, everything I was doing in the startup world, wearing different hats, doing different things that translates exactly to entrepreneurship.

[00:04:32] Katie: You know, and I I'm sure there are people out there cringing, cause they're like I don't have a, a sales thing or right. Like the things that people are afraid of.

Like, I'm kind of joking in my head because being a sales expert, I've worked with people that have that fear around sales. And so if I were to ask them, you know, what's the team that you'd like to build first. It would be, they want to bring in someone to do their sales for them. But, you know, I always think in the, you know, we've chatted about this kind of off.

Of the importance of doing the things yourself first in the business so that you understand how to do it because no one can sell for you unless, you know, you know how to sell. So I'm not, not just selling. Right. But, uh, all of those pieces.

[00:05:18] Jeffrey: And I think also like it's a little, uh, sometimes confusing for, or tricky for psyllid printers because in a big company, You'll have a department, let's call it accounts receivable and it's clear what they do.

But as a solo preneur, it's just called sending an invoice. So you kind of lose track of like, oh, there's a position for that. Or there's a, that that position plays a role in building my own business, you know, where we kind of lose track of that because you know, we're just sending an invoice.

[00:05:55] Lisi: True. Yep.

That's exactly true.

[00:05:58] Katie: But in order to send the invoice, you have to have a conversation that gets someone to say, yes, I'd like to work with you.

[00:06:05] Lisi: Some things that happened.

[00:06:10] Katie: Um, so, you know, we talked about the importance of, um, you know, first you wear a lot of hats, right. But eventually. I know you're, you're a tagline. Go ahead and say your tagline.

[00:06:22] Lisi: I think it's so powerful. Can't scale your business until you first build a business that scales.

[00:06:30] Katie: And so, um, you know, in, in really getting to know each other, uh, I've learned so much from you in terms of like, what does it mean to foundationally build that business?

That scales, because a lot of us think, oh, to scale my business, I'm just moving from one-to-one. To one to many easy peasy. All I got to do is package up my one-to-one service into a group program and put it out there. I'm gonna launch it. It's going to be a major success first time around and I'll be a millionaire right now.

That's the hope. That's the hope. And unfortunately that's not the truth. Um, so tell me, like, what are the mistakes. We as solo preneurs are making that are preventing us from actually building a scalable business right from the beginning.

[00:07:17] Lisi: Uh, I think that Katie that's, uh, you said the first thing, for sure as though scaling from one to one to one to many, you know, expanding, when I say expanding your service offering, like I work with service-based businesses, I guess it would be the same.

Product-based businesses potentially. Um, but the other part of that equation that I've seen is then they think it's just generating more leads and sales and that those two things equal scaling. And what I found from working, this is really where I learned about scaling and the essential components of building a business designed to, you know, for longterm.

Because everyone wants a long-term right. Long-term scalable, sustainable success, success. They want it to last, they want their business to be sustainable, scalable, and sustainable. So where I learned, uh, you really. What I've teach today is with my seven figure clients. So they brought me in, as you mentioned, a fractional COIs fractional CEO for many years.

And, uh, does that means, you know, I'll be, I was a part-time COO for, um, these business owners and they brought me in. To scale their business or to manage their operations. And what I found is that their operations and their businesses were a mess. So they were trying to expand to the next level, whether it's, you know, a million plus or a six figures into multiple six figures or six figures into seven figures.

And they were just a mess. They were trying to expand their business, add more clients, generate more sales and they couldn't their business wasn't designed to support it. So there was a lot of things that were broken. A lot of things were happening in the team members. Weren't happy. For sure, because they just, um, there was too much going on and things were disorganized.

They couldn't find what they needed. They're trying to support too many clients without infrastructure to support them, supporting the clients. The business owner was stressed out and overwhelmed because he was still trying to do too many. He or she were still trying to do too many things and finding more clients and then trying to support the clients.

And they were still, most of them were managing a lot of their customer support on their own. And the product or service delivery. I did work for a product based company. Um, so those are just a couple of examples. Like everything was broken and. Figured out after a period of time was there was, uh, the same things I was finding in these businesses that needed to be fixed.

And I actually developed a five-part framework around that, which to me is what you need in order to scale your business successfully. So I think the misconception is, I think it's just a misunder and miss understanding or people just don't know what they don't know. Right. They just don't know that there's other things to me.

What I like to say also is that every part of your business has to scale you can't. So you have to look at it in the departments. Like I mentioned before, you can't just scale your sales and marketing department. You can't just scale your product development department. You have to look at every department in your business, the finance department, the customer support department, the operations department, all of them should scale at the same time.

[00:10:33] Jeffrey: As a solopreneur, you do have all of the departments. It's just that you're, you're the

[00:10:39] Lisi: one in the department. Yeah. Yes. True. That's another part of scaling is you got to figure out what you should be doing. You know, what's what work you should actually be doing the way you should outsource is another big part of

[00:10:54] Jeffrey: let's talk about that.

Cause I love this idea and, um, Let's see, I think you also said you absolutely have to stop trying to keep up with the minutiae of your business and start freeing up your time for more strategic tasks. It's a quote by you. So let's talk about how somebody might start freeing up, uh, freeing up their time.

[00:11:22] Lisi: Well, in my, um, my program, what I ask people to do. Map out each department, like pretend free. I'm not pretend because there are departments do exist. So identify each department in your business and identify all of the tasks that you perform in each department. And then I take them through an exercise to help them identify which, which things.

Like say there's zone of magic. And I actually got them from, um, a friend of mine. That's not my term. I didn't coin that, but zone of genius, people have heard for sure. So I like zone of magic and borrowing that from Eva. And I can't remember pellet Chakota I think that's how you say it anyways. Um, so, uh, I coined, I mean, she coined that phrase.

I believe I'm borrowing it, but what, for me, what that means? Th the areas of your business or the tasks you perform that you do well, that you don't have to think about doing the ones that you do best you've been doing for many, many years when people tell you you're really good at it. And they've been telling you for years and years, you're really good at it.

And then I help them identify. The things that they love to do, the ones they do first out of that list, right? The ones that you don't procrastinate on, you always find time and energy to do it. And I'm sure there's other coaches that do this, but so I help them identify their zone of magic. Exercises or through that exercise.

And so that's the work they should be doing now. There's other things that they obviously probably have to keep doing as the business owner that they don't necessarily love doing. But for the most part, you should focus on the areas that are in your zone of magic and outsource as much of the other stuff as possible to outside resources, contractors, uh,

[00:13:11] Jeffrey: What could you say to those entrepreneurs that are like hesitant to building a team?

Like there's I know there's resistance out there. It's real. What, what,

[00:13:20] Katie: especially about cashflow, like, to me, like most people are like, I would love to have a sales team or I would love to bring in a COO. Right. Um, but it's, it's the. Cart before the horse, you know, I don't have the cashflow for that. So I think that is like the main reason why people don't bring in a team.

So what do you say to those people?

[00:13:42] Lisi: Well, I think there's two, um, fears, two main fears. There's other fears. Of course it depends on the person, two main fears and Katie you're correct. Like the not having the cashflow is a big one. And then the fear of managing a team is another big one as well. But the cash flow, what I say to people who are.

Who bring that up as an objection, it's fine. To not scale your business. You can stay at, you know, five figures, maybe into six figures and be perfectly happy when you start talking about having a bigger impact, you know, scaling your business to multiple six and seven figures. You have to invest in your business.

You have to find usually unless you have a savings account or something, you have to find outside capital, either a grant line of credit, it does take money to make money. So, so you do have to invest, um, put some money into your business to hire those outside, outside resources in order to expand to the next level.

It's just the way that it is. And if you can't get past that, there's certain. Um, you know, coaches and I do have some of this in my program to help people overcome limiting beliefs or, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for blocks that they have around money and investing in their business. That's a big one for a lot of entrepreneurs and people that are on entrepreneurs, but people have issues with money.

It's just the way that it is. So you have to do some work around that. If you want to expand. Also keep in mind that it's okay not to expand. Like I want people to understand it's fine to stay where you're at. There's no pressure to expand, but yeah, no judgment, but I think that it is a requirement to expand, to have some outside capital to do that.

And then there's the full managing the team part, which is another fear. I think that people. Yup. Yup.

[00:15:44] Katie: You know, um, the, we talk about that a lot, finding capital for your business and the something that I picked up from someone else that I just really appreciate is like stop listening to Suzy Orman. And I always blank that other guy's name, but anyway, because they're talking to consumers about consumer debt and they are not talking to business owners.

And I think that is that solo preneur mind. This is my business. I'm building it, you know, I'm going to bootstrap it. And that, you know, I refuse to go into debt. That kind of thing. It's just, I think it comes from people like Susie Orman, who are teaching people how to get out of debt that's consumer debt.

So totally

[00:16:28] Lisi: we'll have the fear. You're right, Katie, they have fear about debt and business. Debt is not bad when used strategically and mindfully in your. Right. And responsibly, strategically, responsibly, responsibly mindfully. Yeah. Yep. And that

[00:16:45] Jeffrey: takes time and

[00:16:46] Katie: guidance.

[00:16:48] Lisi: Yeah, for sure.

[00:16:50] Katie: Um, so let's talk about like the whole team management thing.

Um, because you know, I, I too kind of got my start by working for other companies and, um, you know, I've worked for companies that treated me very well. And I've worked for companies who didn't, you know, I worked for companies who saw my genius before I did, and really elevated my leadership status. And I worked for other companies that squashed my leadership.

Right. So, um, is that something you help people with is really like improving their leadership skills? And helping them understand what keeps the team around. Cause I, my sister owned a retail shop for more than 20 years in a popular ski town. Um, she actually just sold it this fall and um, her biggest pain in the butt was keeping employees and, you know, the ski town mentality, the Colorado.

Smoking weed.

something to do with it. Then the quality of employees you're getting, you know, Th that is like the biggest, um, I think problem that people are facing is, well, I had a VA, but then she disappeared. Right. Or I had someone on my team, but we had an upset and they left. Right. So what, what do you say to people around how to really build up themselves so that they can work better with people and keep them around and everyone's staying on the same vision?

[00:18:21] Lisi: Yeah. I love this part of my business. I love helping business owners. Um, understand what it motive, what it takes to motivate and inspire their team members to do their best work. Um, there's just a special place in my heart because I've worked with these team members and I really got to understand what their complaints were, what their challenges were, what their, um, you know, what their dreams were.

And, um, the business owners. Usually it doesn't have time. I mean, certainly there's business owners that have training in this that are naturally gifted in this department. That's not really who I'm talking about, but there's a lot of business owners that just don't have leadership experience. They don't, it's challenging for them to connect with their team members.

And so there there's more than just one thing that they need to do, but certainly having some base leadership training or a COVID. That's helping them, um, you know, with some leadership development and team building, um, I think is important and it doesn't have to be a lot. You can certainly even find somebody, uh, you know, an OBM online business manager or an operations person that is more gifted and experienced in that department.

That's kind of a role that I started playing for a lot of my clients. They weren't. Uh, it wasn't their thing. It wasn't, and there's zone of magic. It wasn't in their lane. And so it was something that I stepped in and started doing. And then I also actually worked with the leadership development development and team building coach for six years.

I was his fractional CIO. So I learned a lot about this from him as well. So, you know, there's, there's definitely some things that need to be done to keep the attrition. And I see it happening over and over again, the business owners just don't know again, it's what, they don't know what they don't know.

They don't know to pay attention to that or what they need to do to keep their team members happy. They just sometimes think, oh, they should be as. Inspired as I am, or as committed as I am to my business. And it's just not true. Usually they should

[00:20:35] Katie: understand that I'll pay them. Eventually

[00:20:41] Lisi: it doesn't

[00:20:42] Katie: work, right. People are waiting for

[00:20:45] Lisi: you to get paid totally. Or even expecting them to just do whatever. To get the job done. Not everybody's like that. You know, that's just, it's a mindset that some people don't have. And a lot of times, um, you know, one of the things I coach is to help them, your team members find what they're passionate about.

So I, I do the same work that I do at the business owner, with the team members, you know, what are you best at? And what are you. Passionate about and find their zone of magic. And they're more light, more likely to stick around if they're doing things that when they wake up in the morning, they go, yay. I get to go do that today versus, Ugh, I got to go do that today.

You know, it's the same with the business owner, as it is with the team members. You got it. And you have to kind of look at it, look at that as well. And

[00:21:32] Jeffrey: I see that kind of manifesting in a way where, uh, For a lot of tell me if this is true in your experience for a lot of solo preneurs are coaches and course creators and healers and health professionals.

That technology is a real barrier. Right. So w would you say that,

how would you, how would you push this in that barrier for an entrepreneur? Like. W w how did they overcome that? Or is that a part of scaling at all? Just improving yourself.

[00:22:12] Lisi: Oh, yeah, that's a big part of scaling. Um, but you can't usually understand. And I call that the operational infrastructure, you can't usually understand or structure in my framework, but the operational infrastructure needs to scale just like every department.

And you typically don't know what the requirements are until you understand, you get clear about your. Right. What are the goals that you have for your business? What is the vision you have for your business? And then you can identify the operational infrastructure that you need to support the goals and the vision.

Um, so, but for sure, the things that come up all the time when you're scaling or expanding is needing a CRM, you know, a lot of, um, small business owners still have their customers in an Excel spreadsheet or a Google. Which is fine, but you can't do that anymore. If you're onboarding a team, they need to have access.

You need to be able to take, you know, keep track of what you're doing with your clients. That's a big one that comes up. Email marketing tool becomes, you know, super important. Um, maybe people need a help desk, you know, that comes up. Document management, like Google drive, you know, the Google suite is what I recommend and that I that's what I use.

So for sure technology. It's a big one. And if it's not in there, it's not in their tools, kit or their tool set, then they need to hire somebody to help them implement that and then manage it ongoing. Because another thing that happens is they'll implement it and then they just let it all fall apart. So I call that maintaining operational excellence.

You need to have somebody maintaining that on an ongoing basis or at all, just. A mess.

[00:23:52] Jeffrey: I want to kind of continue on this a little bit. I've I've had clients who

the it's it seems like an insurmountable hurdle where if I recommend a software, even if it's something simple as like a Google workspace or G suite, as it was known, um, you know, working from. Using that as a tool, like, there's this, this idea, like, okay, I've got to, I've got to get it because my advisor said I should get it, but then they'll get it and not do anything with it, you know?

And you know, what, what, what is that barrier? What is that barrier and how do we overcome that? Or what is the, what is the process of overcoming? And it really, if, if, if you can't overcome it as the business owner, What's the next step.

[00:24:53] Lisi: Well, I think it comes from overwhelm, right. Again, they're still trying to do too many things themselves, so they have to just accept that they have to hire somebody to manage that department, an operations person OBM, you know, whatever you want to call it.

Virtual assistant. You know, plenty of, many of them are really good in these departments. So I think it's just, again, this is all, when you're expanding your business or scaling your business, it's a mindset that you have to accept. You have to step into that. Yeah. You have to step into that and except there are certain things you have to do.

You're going to have to do, if you really. To scale your business. And so I meet people like that, Jeffrey that are having that challenge, having that block. And if they can't overcome it, I can't help them. You know, I try, but it really is. Uh, they have to be able to step into that and accept that certain things are going to have to do.

If they, if they're ambitious, they're really serious and ambitious about scaling their business, then it's just is what it is. I

[00:25:59] Katie: think that people get attached to what they started with. Um, so if somebody started with MailChimp, because it was a free email marketing system and they don't want to have to pay for email, you know, and then we get to a place in our business where we're like, oh, now we're going to want to set up a campaign and tag and segment.

And they're like, oh, I don't think that my, and I don't mean to diss MailChimp. I have no idea if MailChimp can do that or not, but. Platform. And they may say, well, I don't know if that is possible in my platform. So we'll have to find a workaround. And that's when Jeffrey and I are like, or you're going to have to learn a new platform because to make decisions based on.

Refusing to change your platform doesn't make any sense as a scaling entrepreneur, right? So it's like

[00:26:47] Lisi: the scaler. I love MailChimp. MailChimp is a great tool. I, you know, certainly solopreneurs should be fine using that, but it's not scalable. So that's really, that's all you need to say is MailChimp is not scalable.

So no, we cannot use that as you guys know. I mean, I know you say you can't keep MailChimp. If we're scaling your business, it's not.

[00:27:08] Jeffrey: Yeah, and I think that's, uh, uh, a point worth driving home is that there's, before you can build a business that scalable, there's actually a mindset for scalability right there.

There's got to be some level of I'm willing to do what it takes. To scale it I'm willing to be come someone different than I have been in the past in order to make it happen. And I think that might be hard 11,

[00:27:50] Lisi: right? Yeah, that's exactly right. They have to look at their business differently. They have to look at themselves, you know, Katie and I have talked about this.

They have to accept that there, the CEO. Of their business. Like they have to have an expanded vision of themselves and expanded vision of their business, expanded vision of their impact. Everything has to expand, not just one thing. And so that's, yeah, that's a big part of it and you're right. Jeffrey, they have to be committed to doing whatever it takes.

Otherwise they should stay where they're they're at, which is perfectly fine. That's totally fine. But you cannot go. Halfway really? I haven't seen success going halfway. Yeah.

[00:28:30] Jeffrey: Right,

[00:28:30] Lisi: right. Right. It to me once you're expanding beyond six figures, it just takes your business. Just changes. It takes on this whole nother life and it becomes something different.

[00:28:42] Jeffrey: Yeah. The term new level, new devil. Right. That kind of idea where, uh, and there was a. I don't know that term come from this book, but the book is what got you here. Won't get you there. Right? So this is kind of, kind of the same idea, but it's that, it's that point of change, right? Where you, you can't, uh, ha have a business earning.

Certain let's, let's say five figures or something and say, I want more, but I'm comfortable where I am and I don't want to change, but I want more, I want more customers. I want more income. I want to break six figures or more, but I'm comfortable where I am and I want to stay comfortable. But those kinds of ideas are diametrically

[00:29:35] Lisi: opposed, essentially.

They're not in sync for sure. Yeah. And usually they want to have a greater impact. Right? That's usually part of it. They want to make more money because they want to have a greater impact or they want to have greater impact so they can make more money.

[00:29:52] Jeffrey: Yes. And thank you for saying that because it's not always about money.

It really isn't. It really isn't. Katie. You were about to say something.

[00:30:01] Katie: Well, I, I really would love for you to share, um, if you're open to it, the stages of your process, um, that you have so that people can see themselves in it, right. Or maybe see themselves on, on that journey in some way, because I think that there's a few different groups of people listening.

There's a group that's like, no, thank you. I'm good where I am. And this is interesting. There's a group that's like, I would love that. But, um, Mindset. Isn't quite there and there's a group that's like, tell me more. Right. Like, or is there some sort of assessment that, you know, how do I know if my business is scalable and that kind of thing.

So I'm just wondering if you want to share that process and see if people can find themselves in the journey. Yeah.

[00:30:45] Lisi: I'd be happy to thanks for asking. Uh, and I won't go into all of the lessons that are in, you know, the minutiae detail, but I'll stay high level. Um, at the main pillars they can, whoever wants to, can go find my ebook on my website and if it goes into more detail, but,

[00:31:03] Katie: and getting the show notes too.

Okay, cool. They won't have to look for it.

[00:31:07] Lisi: They'll have it. Yup. Great. So the five pillars that I identified as they just kept coming up over and over again. So I was able to identify like a pattern. The first one is. S E L L S CLF. It starts with yourself because your, you know, your greatest asset in your business.

Um, and that's all about teaching the business owner to achieve how to achieve their highest potential. And so there's a lot of things that go into that obviously, and mindset optimization is in there for sure. Um, and then the second one is something. That's S U M cause I needed an S um, that's all the financial manager, all of these are SS, but that's the financial management part.

And that's about empowering the business owner to make informed, confident decisions about their business, getting comfortable with their finances and understanding how to leverage that knowledge to make informed, confident decisions. And then the third part is strategy. And that's about being in control of your business, right.

Having a strategic plan and then having an action plan, having goals, you know, really being in control of your business, instead of it controlling you being proactive versus reactive, right? And that's, you have to identify some strategic initiatives in order to make that happen. And then the fourth phase is starting.

And that's the operational infrastructure that I alluded to before. And it's all about making their operations, business operations streamlined and efficient and identifying the tools, the scalable tools that they need to expand to the next level, but streamlining and efficient, making their operations streamlined and efficient, and then the whole operational excellence, um, part of maintaining that is in there as well.

And then the last. Phase is support and that's about the support. I need to achieve my vision. So that's about building the team and learning how to motivate and inspire them to do their best work and all of the things that I, all the other parts of the framework actually feed into that. Right. Having an operational infrastructure.

Supports the team, right? That they can access the things that they need to do their work. If everything's streamlined and efficient, then they can be streamlined and efficient. Uh, if they understand, if the business owner understands how they can achieve their highest potential, then they can help the team members achieve their highest potential.

So there's a lot that happens in those phases before that helps the team, um, do their best work as well and helps. It makes them want to stick around. Right. It makes them happy with the work that they're doing and they want to stay. And attrition is a big problem for small business owners, you know, or probably any business, but especially for small business owners, you know, you train them to do this, you spend all this time and energy training them to do this job.

And then they leave and you're like, oh, I gotta start over. So I do teach people how to make that a less painful process for sure.

[00:34:17] Jeffrey: Would you say that that support. Um, also not only how the business owner can support. Their team, but also the support that the business owner seeks out in the form of coaching and guidance and advisors and things like,

[00:34:37] Lisi: yeah.

Yeah. That's part of it as well as being part of a community that supports you, whatever that may be. There's a lot of entrepreneurial networks now that are supportive, potentially having a COVID. You know, or a mentor advisor to support you and then having the team as well. So thanks for mentioning that.

I do expand it actually beyond team getting support from those other areas, I think is super important as well.

[00:35:04] Katie: I love that. Yeah. I personally.

[00:35:09] Jeffrey: Some

[00:35:10] Lisi: strategy, structure, support. Yeah. Echoed together.

[00:35:17] Katie: I really feel like it's impossible to grow without someone's expertise showing you the way. I mean, you don't know what you don't know.

Right. So I couldn't, couldn't be where I am. If it weren't for the various mentors have hired to show me the way.

[00:35:33] Lisi: So as well, I've spent a lot of money on coaches and mentors and on my path. Yeah, for sure.

[00:35:40] Jeffrey: Uh, you know, you could say, you could argue that you could get that. But man, would that be a long, arduous journey, right?

A

[00:35:50] Lisi: lot of trial and error, for sure.

[00:35:54] Jeffrey: I think that's something that I, I I'm glad I learned sooner than later is that, you know, there are smarter people than. Um, and if I could just tap into that genius and learn what they learned in less a time than man that is worth every penny, every penny,

[00:36:17] Lisi: well, and these days, um, the female, um, community entrepreneurial networks that I'm in everybody is so supportive.

They're happy to share their genius with people. So it's kind of, um, it's not as competitive as it used to be. It's more supportive. Now. And so it's for sure, you know, worth joining those networks in those communities and just, you know, asking as many questions as possible. People I've found are superstitious.

Yeah, I love that.

[00:36:47] Jeffrey: I love that father to do girls. I'm super, super excited to see that the female entrepreneurial world is like exploding and there's so many opportunities and so much support. I love it.

[00:37:00] Katie: It's really morphed into a collaborative, you know, you're kind of not the norm. If you want. Not collaborative.

Right? It's like the competition, I don't think is no longer the norm, which is so refreshing. I have, um, this fortune out of my fortune cookie taped to my monitor that says a mentor is someone whose hindsight can become your foresight like that. I just loved that. I just, I really think people, um, that resist hiring again because of money or whatever.

It's like, you're just, you know, you can't outperform your limiting beliefs. That's something I say a lot in my sales trainings. Um, it's really hard to expand unless someone has that flashlight and shows you the way right. That spotlight. So, yeah. Awesome. Anything else you want to add to this conversation around, you know, building a business that can scale you think we've touched upon everything?

Or is there something that we're missing here for our, our

[00:38:02] Lisi: peeps? I think that was pretty thorough, but I will add one final comment that I found that when, um, clients, when my clients are expanding their business, they do. Kind of have the similar experiences they have when they launched their business.

Initially like a lot of those doubts and fears come back and the I'm not good enough and the imposter syndrome things come back. So I think it's important when you're, um, starting on that path or you commit to that path that you do have support around you in whichever, whatever way you need, you know, uh, therapists, communities like, uh, coach.

To help you overcome that, um, those limiting beliefs and at the same time, they should keep in mind that they've achieved a certain amount of success already because my clients in particular, I mean, when you're expanding, you've already been in business. So you wouldn't be expanding if you've already been in booth, haven't already been in business.

So they should keep that in mind. They've already been successful. They've already achieved success. They've already proven that their business model and their product or service is, um, you know, desirable and wanted and needed. So for them to keep that in mind as a big, you know, a big, uh, a big deal, they should definitely keep in mind that they've already achieved success.

They're not an imposter and they just, they can get to the next level with, with the next level of support. Right.

[00:39:34] Katie: Yeah, awesome. That's a really great place to land because I know I've experienced that, you know, like, do I have it in me to go to my next, I always call it the quantum leap into the next income level, whatever that is.

Right. Do I have it in me? And every step of the way I would ask myself that, do I have it in me? You know? And then inevitably I would have, uh, either a boss or a mentor that would be like, you have it in you. And I'm like, thank you. Yeah, I like you have to borrow the belief of the other people, if you don't yet believe it yourself.

Right. But you do have it in you. And I think we don't have any desire that we're not meant to, you know, have expressed. Right. I think like, I love the name of your business, you know, soul tree ops. Like I'm always talking about how, like the business comes from your soul, the desire, the ideas, the inspiration is soul based.

Sure. So you wouldn't be inspired to do something that you're not meant to do.

[00:40:31] Lisi: Yeah, for sure. Yep. So can

[00:40:34] Jeffrey: you tell us really quickly about your, your, the, um, ebook that you have on your, your website? We're going to link to that, but could you tell us about it?

[00:40:44] Lisi: Yeah, it just, um, basically walks people through in more detail than I did today.

My five-part framework. So it's, it's called, um, is your business designed to scale? So it helps, um, business owners identify the gaps that they might have in their business, um, preventing them from scaling. So there's that, you know, description. And then there's a checklist after each, uh, phase to help them identify the gaps that they might.

[00:41:14] Jeffrey: Yeah. Okay.

[00:41:17] Katie: All right. And so, um, we will get the link from you and pop that in our show notes. So people can go grab that. And, um, thank you so much for being here today. This was so informative. I think that a lot of people are making those mistakes of not building that scalable business to start. Um, and so, you know, and just getting that team in place and stop doing everything yourself, um, all, you know, valuable lessons here.

[00:41:41] Jeffrey: Thank you guys for joining us. If you liked this episode, head over to wherever you're listening to this right now, hit that subscribe button. Click that five-star reviews and write us some kind words. Uh, we'd love to hear from you. if you want to connect with Lisi and check out all the show notes, head over to the launch squad, lab.com forward slash episode 64.

See you next time.

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About the Show

The Lighten Your Launch Podcast is for Coaches and Course Creators who want a lighter online launch experience. Maybe you’ve done a few launches already, and feel exhausted just thinking about it! Or, it’s been one of your goals, but you don’t know where to start.

Tune in to learn from our team of experts, The Launch Squad, who aren’t afraid to dig into all aspects of launching: sales, strategy, technology, mindset, funnels, and even a bit of woo to get you through the toughest times. Let’s put a stop to perfectionism and procrastination, and finally take your launch from intimidating to money-making!