It's Time to Scale Differently

I think there is no better time than right now to start thinking differently about how we scale our businesses.

As you know, there has been a lot of change over the past few years. Most things stopped working the way they used to a couple years ago at the same time the pace of change has accelerated significantly.

Add in how technology has completely changed what’s possible, and it shifts everything from our business model to our offers who what we need from our team, and how we think about the work we do.

We talk a lot about all of the external changes that happen, but there are some significant internal changes as well.

Business can be so incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging at the same time, and it pushes the edges of who we are in ways we never could have foreseen.

When we go through seasons like the one we’re in now, where things are moving at a really rapid pace, I think it accelerates that growth even further.

And what I’m finding in so many of the conversations I’m having is that for a lot of founders, their business has taken on an even deeper meaning for them.

The impact they want to make has taken on an even deeper meaning. The profit they want to make, because of what it enables them to do in their life and in the world, has become much more important to them.

And I think that last part is becoming increasingly important.

The beautiful and challenging thing about scaling differently is that it is unique to every business.

That’s a big part of what makes this particular season in business so interesting.

One client was spending six figures every single month on a team to support a business model and way of selling that she didn’t even want anymore.

Another was tired of feeling like “she needed to feed the content creation beast” (her words) to stay visible when she didn’t even want to be on social media.

Another had wanted to close her signature program for a couple years but felt like she would be letting down her clients and community so she kept it.

The beautiful thing about things not working the way they used to was that each of them were finally able to reinvent things.

They always could have, but they finally gave themselves permission to.

So what does scaling differently look like?

They want a business that’s much less complex, with fewer moving parts, that’s more boutique and more high touch.

They want to go deeper with fewer people, scale intimacy, and have deeply personalized connections and experiences with their clients.

I love being the strategic partner for my clients, the one who can hold their vision and who they’re growing into, and remind them of what’s important to them when all of the external pressures start creeping in and they begin questioning what they really want. So that’s what I am doing.

I’m also creating space for the things that matter to me personally.

For me, that’s breathing new life into my jewelry business, traveling, and having space for personal passions and the things I want to experience outside of my work.

All of that influences the way I want to scale my business, and I’m seeing so many founders asking themselves some version of the same question…

What do I really want my business and my life to look like now?

Only you can decide what success and scale mean for you.

I’m also seeing founders whose big bold vision has gotten even bigger and bolder because they’re looking at what technology makes possible, what the changes happening in the market make possible, and what they can do today that they may not have been able to do even a few years ago.

Some have already been on a steady trajectory and can suddenly see a future that’s possible faster or in a completely different way than they could see before.

Everyone has their own unique path, yet the underlying thread I keep seeing is that people want a business that feels much more aligned for them.

They’re looking at how they want to sell and market, what role they want social media to play, what they want their team to look like, how many clients they want to work with and how intimately they want to work with them.

They’re thinking about how involved they want to be in the day-to-day, what they actually want to spend their time doing, and what role they want to play as the founder.

Ultimately, they want something that matches this particular season in their life and this particular version of the vision they have.

Vision is an interesting thing in that you never fully achieve it because it naturally keeps expanding. It’s not like a project that you consider done and move on from.

As the business is growing, you are growing too. The person you were when you originally envisioned the future of your business is not the same person as you are today.

You may have wanted a very different role in the business or a different lifestyle. You may have had different priorities or not yet known what would become possible through technology. You may not have experienced enough yet to know which parts of the business you absolutely love and which parts continually pull you away from the work you want to be doing.

Sometimes the vision you’ve been scaling toward no longer fits the person you are right now or the person you feel yourself growing into.

• What do you want your business to look like, and what do you want your life to look like?

• Where do you want to spend your time and who do you want to spend it with?

• What impact do you want to make?

• What kind of profit do you want the business to generate, and what does that profit enable in your life and in the world?

• What role do you want to play in the business?

• Who are you growing into as its founder?

• And what becomes possible when the way you scale is actually aligned with those answers?

AI is obviously a huge part of every conversation around business, and a lot of founders have spent time over the past few years experimenting with it and learning what’s possible.

That can be a great thing… but it can also become all-consuming when you’re the one owning it in your business.

Far too many founders are realizing that they inadvertently turned themselves into the Chief AI Officer in their business instead of the visionary who gets to do what they actually started their business for in the first place.

That realization raises a much bigger question about how we use these capabilities in a way that allows the founder to spend their time in the role they actually want to play.

Because when we look at technology through that lens, we can rethink our teams and business models, how work gets done, what needs a human, and where technology can expand our capabilities.

We can look at what becomes possible with a smaller, leaner business, or what becomes possible when technology gives us the capacity to pursue a much bigger vision.

There are so many different ways this can go, and that’s exactly the point.

You might want to scale up and out in a really big way, or you might want to scale things back and work much more intimately with a smaller number of clients.

You might want a leaner team, dramatically expand your impact, simplify your business, or create space for family, travel, personal passions, or something else that has become increasingly important to you.

You might be looking at a vision that has gotten much bigger or realizing that the vision you’ve been scaling toward no longer fits where you’re headed.

Whatever this season looks like for you, there is an opportunity right now to get incredibly intentional about what you want and look at your business through that lens.

I think we’re in one of the most exciting seasons we’ve had in business in a very long time.

There are capabilities available to us that didn’t exist when many of us started our businesses, entirely different ways to structure teams, offers, delivery, marketing, sales, and business models, and we’ve grown into different versions of ourselves along the way.

I would genuinely love to hear your answer in the comments.

This conversation is also at the heart of a change I’ve made to my podcast.

After almost six years, the Simplify to Scale Show is now Scale Differently.

Each week, I’ll be exploring different ways to think, lead, and scale, sharing some of what I’m experiencing as I scale differently myself, and bringing on incredible guests to talk about how they have scaled differently and how they’re thinking about what comes next.

Dig deeper into this topic on episode 293 of Scale Differently on Apple, Spotify, or search It’s Time to Scale Differently (The Evolution of Simplify to Scale) on your favorite player.