The Real Reason Businesses Plateau | TPCP077

Profit doesn't happen by chance; it happens by

design. Let's dig in. A lot of entrepreneurs come to me and

they ask me some version of the same question. Sharon, I'm

working really hard. I I'm busy all of the time, I have so much

going on, yet it doesn't seem like my business is getting

stronger. I don't feel like my business is growing, and my

answer usually surprises them. I say that is because you have

gotten really, really good at running your business, but you

haven't spent enough time building your business. Most

entrepreneurs think that they're building a business, but the

truth is, most of them, probably you, are just running one, and

those are two very different jobs. We need to do both of

them, and they are different. I remember a season when I ended

every single day exhausted. I spent the entire day doing

dozens of tasks. I crossed things off my to-do list. I

served clients. I solved problems. Yet every morning, I

felt like I was starting over. Every day, at the end of the

day, I'm like, "What did I accomplish? How did I get here?

And and I really believe that if I just worked harder, that I

would get ahead. And then one day, I realized that it I wasn't

building anything. I spent all of my time maintaining my

business. I was maintaining it. I was running the business, yet

I wasn't building it. And that realization really changed the

way that I started to look at my business. It changed how I spent

my time. I started protecting the time that I set aside to

build the business, to improve the business, to vision, to put

those pieces in place that that were going to actually move the

business ahead and not just keep it running where it was. I was

able to pay the bills, to keep the lights on, but I wasn't

moving and building the business. So running a business

keeps it alive. We have to have that piece, but building the

business is what makes it thrive. And every entrepreneur

has to do both, like I said. But we most of us spend the time on

the running piece and very little time intentionally

building. Does this sound familiar to you? You spend your

days putting out fires, playing catch up. You are late on follow

up or delivery. You're doing last minute supply orders, or

you're showing your staff one more time, how you need that

thing to get done, and while it all sounds familiar and every

business experiences it, it's actually a trap. If you spend

most of your time in your business in reaction mode,

putting out fires, retraining people, showing them again late

responses. Your business is actually running you. Reaction

mode puts you behind the car. Reaction mode is like you're

you're running after it, right? You're running to catch the car.

You're not in the driver's seat. I worked with a business owner

whose phone just never stopped ringing. She was so so proud of

being responsive because, in her eyes, that's what really good

customer service looked like. She was constantly on the phone.

She was responding. She was constantly being there for them,

and every interruption that she experienced during the day

became her highest priority. If you're an ADHD person, you will

associate. You will just honestly see yourself in this.

Oh, this is now my priority. Oh, now this is my priority. Oh, now

this is my priority. And and when we are and we're not ADHD

and we're just in reaction mode. That's what it feels like. It's

like that whack a mole. That's where the attention goes

wherever the next thing is popping up, and every day is

driven by the most urgent. When urgency drives your business,

you are not. You are in responsive mode. You are not in

a position where you are actually making the things

happen. You're just constantly responding. So when we mapped

out her week, she realized that she spent almost every hour

reacting and almost no time planning. She wasn't. Leading

her business, the business was leading her. So just by creating

dedicated planning time, putting in a few simple boundaries, this

is the time I'm going to be working on this thing in the

business. I will not be responding to customer calls.

This is the time I'm going to spend planning and and and and

marking things out for marketing. I will not be

answering emails during that time. Now, obviously, it's not

the whole day every day, but putting those assigning time in

your day, putting those pockets, and actually honoring them will

release you from the urgency to allow you to plan. You really

need to be conscientious and really choose this because it's

not just going to naturally happen. You're just going to

naturally run your business the way you run your business. This

won't happen. You actually have to build out time and protect

that time that you put towards building the business. And

whenever we did that, she stopped feeling like she was

constantly behind, because when every day is spent putting out

fires, making last minute decisions, and chasing the next

sale, there's no place to grow and create something stronger.

So, if reacting isn't the answer, if we shouldn't just be

riding along in in the stream with the current, and we should

be doing something else, like what what does that actually

look like? Because build your business sounds great, but you

know it's a little vague. I'll be honest. So we're gonna

actually dig into what that means. So we've really put that

put a point on this. There is activities and there is things

in your business that's building the business. I mean, running

the business, like answering the emails. You're running your

business when you're taking care of customers that's running the

business when you're creating your the thing that you do

that's running the business anything that is that keeps the

wheels spinning that's running the business so we can have

wheels spinning with no destination right so how do we

get that destination? How do we get that structure in there?

That's the piece that we need to always be remembering. That is

structure. How are we building that structure and putting it in

our business so that, in addition to the wheels running,

they're going to the place we want them to go? One of my

clients could not understand why sales kept slipping through the

cracks. She was getting inquiries, she was having great

conversations, yet they just were not converting into

customers. And so she just thought, "It's my marketing. My

marketing is bad. I need to improve my marketing. I need

more leads. It's it's that piece of the of the puzzle is just not

working, but actually, when we took a look behind the scenes,

we stopped to figure out what what was happening at every step

of the process. And turns out, she wasn't following up. She had

great conversations, but then she never spoke to them again.

She just assumed that if they want to buy from me, they will.

They have the information. They know what to do. They don't need

me to call them and follow up. Or if she followed up, she

followed up just once. And we know that it takes seven to 12

times of follow up before someone will buy from you. So

that whole piece of her structure, that

behind-the-scenes piece, was completely missing. So when we

put that in place, we didn't have to change her marketing. We

didn't have to get more leads. We built a follow-up system, and

then opportunities that she already earned, that she already

put the money and the time and the energy into those turned

into sales. So having just that one piece, that one structure

where she was building the business, not just running the

business, enabled her to have more paying customers. So

systems, follow-ups, financial clarity, leadership, customer

experience, and strategic planning don't always feel

urgent, but they're what makes the growth happen. You are

sustainable. Your business can keep running in the direction

you have decided that it wants to run when you have systems in

place for all of these areas: follow-up, financial clarity,

leadership, customer service, and strategic planning. So those

are the areas that you want to look at whenever you are looking

at the behind-the-scenes stuff, the foundation, building the.

The business that you want to have, not just running the

business, but building the business. So, building business,

building activities. You've heard this from me before.

Growth magnifies what's already there, right? If you have cracks

in your foundation, the bigger you grow, the larger they

become.

If you have weaknesses that that are that are there in your in

the way that you operate your business as you grow and expand,

those weaknesses can become chasms. It will the floor will

just fall out underneath them. You really have to focus on

what's not going well in your business, what is the building

business, the business building things that we need to do in the

background, the behind the scenes stuff. We do need to

focus on them as we are growing our business. I remember another

business owner who was thrilled because sales were finally

coming in, and she assumed she. She assumed that more business

would solve the issue. More business coming in, more money

coming in the door would eliminate the stress. She

assumed that the fix for the stress, the fix for the anxiety,

this fix for what wasn't working in her business was just more

sales. And if that's you, if you've ever been there, if I

could just get more sales, everything would be easier. That

was my client. However, what actually happened was that

everything became harder. Customers were waiting longer

because she didn't have systems in place to accommodate the

growth. Mistakes increased. Ah, when we get busy, when we have

things going on, and things are moving a mile a minute, and it's

it's more pressure, more time, more you know work that needs to

be done that increases mistakes because if we don't have things

in place, then we are going to make more mistakes. Her cash

flow got tighter, but that doesn't even make sense. She had

more money coming in the door. How did her cash flow get

tighter? Her growth hadn't fixed the problems; it had actually

created and magnified the problems, and it exposed the

weaknesses that were already there. So once we strengthened

those foundational pieces, once we went back in and fixed the

places that were weak, that were causing the log jams, that were

causing things to get stuck and stopped. Once we looked back at

what's going on in the business, running the business,

building-I'm sorry, not running the business. Running the

business is doing the work. The building of the business is

fixing the things in the background that are not right,

so that you can actually get the improved and increased sales

going in the direction that you want them to go, so that when

you make the more money, when you have more sales coming in,

you have the structure to support it, and your quality

doesn't decrease, and your customer service doesn't get

worse, and your frustration level doesn't increase, and your

staff doesn't get overwhelmed when you build it for the size

that you want it to be. Then, when you get there, it will be

easy. So, once we strengthened all of her foundations and

growth, and her growth stopped feeling chaotic, it actually

started to feel exciting. So, more customers, more visibility,

or more revenue will expose the cracks and weaknesses in your

business behind the scenes if you do not address it before you

get there. So where do you start? What do you do in your

business to address this? Because now you recognize it,

right? We've talked about it. You're like, oh, that's me. I

know that's what's going on in my business. What do I do? How

do I fix it? Don't start with a 47 point business plan. Don't

stop your business and overhaul everything immediately. Become

aware. First of all, the first thing that you have to do is

become aware awareness of what's wrong in your business is a

giant piece of the puzzle because when we ignore it, or we

blow it off, or we I don't want to deal with that that kind of

attitude, or just not knowing at all, that is what keeps you

stuck. So first thing is we need to be aware of what's happening,

and then start small. Start with one question. I've learned that

the biggest breakthroughs rarely happen through one giant

decision. We really need to think that transformation comes

from finding the per. Yeah, we think that. Transformation comes

from finding the perfect strategy. I fall into that

myself. If I just had the right answer, the the overall, the big

picture, just point me in the right direction. That will fix

everything, and it doesn't.

If we if we take it step by step, as successful businesses

do, they are built through dozens of small improvements.

You know my my phrase: micro strategies. Small changes lead

to big, small adjustments. Small changes lead to big revenue, big

dividends on the other side. So small things lead to big things.

So let do one small thing at a time, and those dozen little

small things that you have done will actually compound over

time. So that's why I recommend you asking yourself this one

question every week. Are you ready? If you want to write it

down, here it comes. Did I spend more time running the business

or building it. Remember, running the business are the

waiting on the customers, doing the work, answering the emails,

answering the phone, keeping the wheels running in the business,

keeping the business moving forward. Building the business

is fixing what's going on behind the scenes, building the

business is where are we going? Visioning what is the next level

that we want to achieve. When my sales becomes stronger and I

have more money coming in, what is that going to mean on the

other side? Do I need to hire people? Do I need to get more

equipment? Do I need to get more supplies? How do I accommodate

the growth so that when the growth comes, you're prepared to

do it? A very small example is when my husband and I were

running our media business. In the beginning, I would always

ask him everything that was happening with the individual

jobs. I waited on the customers; he did the work, and so I would

ask him, and he'd get really annoyed with me. He's like, "I

know, I know what needs to be done. I remember, and I kept

saying to him, "I don't know. I need that information. I can't

walk around inside your head. And he really was very resistant

because he could not kind of comprehend why I needed to know,

he thought it was like, well, you're just nosy. However, I

needed to know so that I could give good customer service on

the other side. And what we started to do, and the way that

I got him to adjust and change a system in our business was I

challenged him with when we have customers, they are going to

need to know. I'm not. I'm sorry. When we have customers,

we had customers. When we have employees, when we have

employees, they will need to know all of this information

because now they will be doing the work, and that was a switch

for him. And he was like, "Okay, yeah, that makes sense. So I

actually created a form that we filled out every single time a

customer came in, and we used this form from probably month

six all the way through you know more than a decade, and you know

until we sold our business for a profit. We used this form, and

of course we adjusted it along the way. However, we had a form

where we wrote everything down, so that did a lot of things to

help our business. Number one, it systematized every customer

experience. Every customer that came in was asked all of the

same questions. Everything was written down so that once once

the job was, you know, ordered, when it went back to production,

they knew exactly what the client was expecting. So that

helped on client expectations. We had a common language. We

wrote everything down, but putting that, my point was

creating that that one little system enabled us to communicate

more effectively in our business between the the employees, the

owners, and the staff how we're doing this thing. So just doing

one small thing created a dozen benefits to us as a staff and to

our clients and the service that they received, so when you're

that that that is a building the business task, running the

business was taking the order, building the business was how do

we systematize that to benefit not just communication but a

dozen other areas of our business, and that changes how

you prioritize everything when you do that. So every week, ask

yourself one simple question: Did I spend more time running my

business or building my business? The business that

grows predictably are built one intentional improvement.

At a time, so over the course of the year, if you will ask

yourself every single week, "Did I spend more time running the

business or building the business? and focus your

yourself on one business building question a a week, at

the end of the year, you will have made 50 improvements, more

than 5052, weeks in a year, just once a week. Asking yourself

that question and figuring out one thing that you can improve

on the building the business side, you'll have 50 by the end

of the year. So it doesn't have to be one giant breakthrough. It

does. It's just 100 intentional decisions. So block out the time

on your calendar this week. Not serving clients. Not answering

emails. Not catching up. Spend one uninterrupted hour if you

can. A half hour if you can't. But spend one section of time

building your business, and as you put this system into

practice, you will actually be able to make it a whole entire

hour once a week, where you are intentionally building the

business. You strengthen one system, improve one customer

experience, create one process, clarify one number, because

businesses aren't transformed in one dramatic moment. They're

transformed by micro strategies, by the small decisions that you

are making over and over and over again to build your

business stronger. Your business is kept alive by running it, but

your business thrives by building it. So, what kinds of

tasks are running a business? Answering your emails-that's

running a business. Creating a follow-up system. That's running

a business. That's building a business. Solving today's

crisis. That's running a business. Improving your

customer journey. That's building a business. Chasing the

next sale. That's running a business. Strengthening the

foundation that creates the hundreds, the hundreds of sales.

That's building a business. So put some time aside this week.

Start with a half hour, build to an hour once a week, working on

your business minimum, and you can keep it small, or you can

have a year-long plan. But make sure that at least you're

spending time every single week building your business. Now, if

you would like to get a tool that can help you evaluate where

you are in your business journey, where you can look at

all areas of your business where where you're doing well and

where you have some weaknesses, I have a tool available for you.

It's called the Profit Growth Audit. It takes about 10

minutes, and you go in and rate yourself on all the different

areas of your business. It's a free gift that I have for you in

my community. So the way you're going to get that is you're

going to go to ProfitConnectors Club. That's

ProfitConnectors.club.club. That's That's the website

address that will put you into the community, and you can

download and take the profit growth audit. And in addition to

the profit growth audit, you will have access to all of our

podcasts, all of our podcast guests, and some of those guests

have given us some gifts as well, so you will have access to

that as well. The whole community is free. It's just

ProfitConnectors Club. Go check it out. Go grab the Profit

Growth Audit this week. Be that that let let that be the thing

that you do this week during your 15 minutes or 30 minutes or

one hour of building the business. Start there, take the

profit growth audit, and then choose one thing. Remember,

build with clarity, lead with purpose. Thank you for

listening, and I'll see you next time.