That Awkward Teenager (Business) Growth Phase: It's Time to Get Unstuck
Episode 412: Show Notes
A relevant question recently popped up in our Facebook community, one we felt warranted some unpacking. The question came from someone who wanted to hear from others whose businesses were also past the early stage and now in the season of awkward adolescence. You have made some sales and lined up loyal clients, but you still have higher goals and are eager to learn the next steps. Frankly, you need reliable strategies to get you past this almost-entrepreneur phase ASAP!
Listen on your favorite podcast player
We’re in the unique position to offer our advice not only because Boss Project has mastered that stage but because our side hustles are now entering the teenage realm, so we are having to go through all of that again – at this exact moment. But rather than bumming us out, we’re excited about this challenge because it feels familiar now; we’ve been here before and therefore we have a good idea about how to navigate it. Tune in for advice about growing through the awkward teenage phase and running your business like a boss!
Let’s Talk About What This Phase Feels Like
Not sure you can identify with what we’re talking about? Well, the first thing is, the teenage phase makes you feel desperate because you know you are growing but you’re not quite ready to make the investments you think you need to make to move the needle. When we were at this stage with Boss Project, we had consistent clients and we were able to pay the bills and also draw good salaries for ourselves. But everything felt fragile – one bad move could cause the castle to crumble. We also knew we hit this stage when we were launching every two weeks and felt unsafe about not doing that. You have these big goals but not the audience to support it, and thus you realize you might need to pivot or expand. You’ve created the opt-ins, communicated with your followers, and sent the emails, now what? The biggest conversation you need to have with yourself here is around what kind of growth you are seeking. At this point, it is tempting to look around at what everyone else is doing because what was once exciting has become boring and is now rinsed and repeated daily. It is therefore easy to fall into the trap of trying to do too many things at once and you end up doing a bunch of unnecessary things.
Take Time to Figure Out What You Want Your Business to Do for You
Book yourself into an Airbnb and go think about what you want your business to do for you and how you want it to serve you. Also, ask yourself what impact you want to make and how much money you want to get out at the end of the day. Do you want a team of employees or would you rather work with contractors? Do you want an office space or would you prefer working from home? And then make sure the goals you have in mind are what you actually want. At the same time, you want to ask yourself whether you want an agency model or a one-to-many model. Many who serve clients leave the client space to have a one-to-many model through offering courses or books. But then don’t forget about the agency model option where you serve clients one-on-one. Don’t pivot from an agency model to a one-to-many model just for the sake of reaching loftier financial goals – be sure to move into the direction you ultimately want. Following these tough questions, make a list of the things you don’t want such as working set hours, having an out-of-home office, or working on weekends. Be sure to outline exactly what you don’t want.
Organize Your Systems Before Hiring More People
Rather than hiring a bunch of additional people, start by organizing your systems better. Figure out ways to automate sales as well as the customer journey. And just so you know, it’s okay to change your mind about something! You might think that in order to grow you necessarily need more people on your team, but this is not always true. If managing other people is not your thing, there are other ways to scale your business without having to pull other people in. And this applies to many other aspects of business around which we have preconceived ideas. You don’t have to follow the entrepreneurial roadmap – what matters more is that you do things that are in alignment with the lifestyle you want to live. When you are in the teenage phase, you might also notice all your free trials are running out. This forces you to reconsider whether you need all that software. Also, stop signing up for all the opt-ins and freebies on the internet; they clutter your inbox and divert your focus to unimportant things.
Pay Attention to Those a Few Steps Ahead
Don’t pay attention to all the voices out there; choose to focus on those who are one or two steps ahead of you. Follow the people who are living the kind of life you want and seem to be doing business like you want to do it. And be specific about what it is that you need to learn from them. Choose one thing and learn that instead of trying to learn about SEO, marketing, email lists and podcasting in one day! Also, don’t follow people with businesses and business models you don’t want. We used to think being highly visible, popular, and part of the influencer community was necessary, but it’s not. We know a lot of people who are making tons of money without being famous on social media. You don’t need to be attending conferences and networking events to make it in any industry either. Make your own rules.
Which Roles You Might Want to Offload First
It’s important to offload responsibilities that you generally avoid doing the most since those tend to be the things you are not naturally drawn to. Abagail is still creating all the landing and sales pages and the sites, while these tasks could be given to someone who designs web pages specifically. Emylee feels like she would like to have a system in place that takes care of scheduled posts to their audience. While she enjoys going live on Instagram, she would prefer to delegate the task of posting regularly about their offerings. She also needs more help with copywriting for sales pages, emails, and Facebook ads; to sit and brainstorm with someone with a copywriting mind and then have them come up with something amazing. Sometimes hiring someone else is difficult because they don’t have all the background knowledge that you do about how you have always done things. Hiring a project manager would be great for us because we do not like following up with people 75 times before getting a response or result. So, we need help with middleman tasks.
How We Are Doing It Better The Second Time Around
We’re in the unique situation where we are going through this again not in this business, but in our individual businesses. Emylee is in the preteen phase whereas Abagail has hit full-on puberty. Abagail feels somewhat resistant because she knows what it takes to move her business forward but also recognizes the work it takes. But going through this a second time, we do go through the necessary steps more quickly. We are willing to look at systems, investments and offload certain tasks sooner than we did before. But what we see is that we are still in the weeds far more than other same-level business owners, but that is perhaps because there are two of us. You have to figure out what kind of business owner you want to be. How involved do you see your own role? What kind of money do you expect to take out of it? Do you want to run a high or low margin business? How big do you want to go? The advantage of having gone through this once already is that we are far more confident in our abilities to do whatever we set out minds on.
Quote This
It doesn’t matter that you’re checking boxes on the entrepreneurial roadmap. What matters is that you are doing things that are in alignment with the lifestyle you want to live.
Highlights
Let’s Talk About What This Phase Feels Like. [0:03:36.1]
Take Time to Figure Out What You Want Your Business to Do for You. [0:10:01.1]
Organize Your Systems Before Hiring More People. [0:12:48.1]
Pay Attention to Those a Few Steps Ahead. [0:18:42.1]
Which Roles You Might Want to Offload First. [0:31:24.1]
How We Are Doing It Better The Second Time Around. [0:39:04.1]
