How to Scale Your Business with Allison Maslan

Welcome to the Conscious Marketer Podcast for entrepreneurs, authors, spiritual teachers, healers, coaches and creators deeply committed to making an impact in the world. Listen for strategies about launching in the digital space, marketing trends impacting the future, and the behind the scenes stories about what it takes to be successful. Hi and welcome to the Conscious Marketer Podcast. This is Richard here and joined by Kylie. Hi, Kylie.

Hello.

And today we have a special guest, Allison Maslin. She's the CEO of Pinnacle Global Network, also the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Scale or Fail. I've listened to the audio version of that book and it's endorsed by Damon John and Barbara Cochran of Shark Tank. Allison's has built 10 successful companies starting out at the age of 19. Some of our clients include Ben and Jerry, Supercuts, Merrill lynch and Allstates. And today we're going to be talking about how to scale your business. Hi, Alison, Welcome.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, it's great to have you here. And I know you're kind of in the San Diego area. I used to live in Encinitas, Lecadia, back in the day. I don't live there now.

Oh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not far from there.

Okay, great. Could you maybe share. I know I know a little bit of your story because I listened to your audiobook. I'm kind of curious how you got into your work of helping businesses to scale. And probably like most origin stories, it came from experiencing some pain or some difficult times. Would you mind sharing how you got there?

I don't know any entrepreneur that gets to a certain level without going through that roller coaster. Right. But you know, I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family and so that's really just what I knew was to start your own business. So I started my, my first business when I was 19 years old and I built a full service advertising and PR firm. And by the time I was 25, I had, you know, big clients like Ben and Jerry's and Super Cuts and, and Charlotte Russe. But I didn't know how to scale at all. And so as the business grew, I felt more and more the weight of that. Even though I had some employees, I really was the control freak of the business. And you know, so many businesses, business owners might relate to that, that are listening because it feels so scary to let go. And so that's really the slope that I was on. And I ended up just from the exhaustion and the weight of it all, the pressure, I ended up having a car accident just from, you know, really not being in the present moment. And that was the wake up call for me to say, okay, this really, this model, the way I'm operating isn't working. And so I began to study my clients that had thousands of employees to understand how was it that the CEO or the founder, they weren't like standing over everybody, micromanaging and you know, what, how were they spending their time to grow the company more strategically and what were the systems and processes that they had in place to have a more well oiled machine? And so that became my mission to figure that out. And that was the development of what we call today our scale it method that we use with our clients in Pinnacle Global Network. And I went on to build nine more companies. And just over the years, people would say, alison, you know, how do you do it? You know, can you teach me? And so that was company number 10, 14 years ago, the how when, you know, we started Pinnacle. And that's really been my mission because I feel, and we see this, we've seen this with literally hundreds of thousands of business owners that hit that ceiling of growth. And it is because they are, you know, the bottleneck of the company. And when you can learn to get out of your own way with the system that we have, it truly is life changing. Now you have a company that can run without you.

So what are the first steps that people need to take when they start to think about all this?

Yeah, I'd say first is just having awareness, is to see where am I at, you know, what are the stuck points? Because, you know, awareness is power once you know where you're at. And the reason I say that is we often will get business owners that come to us that are at the same place for more than a decade and they just don't know their way through. And we are creatures of habit. So first thing is to have awareness, to say, okay, I am in the weeds of the business. I am needing to approve everything going in and out of the company and what are areas that somebody else could do this instead of me doing it? Because you ultimately, you want to be the visionary of the company. And the day to day of running the company should be other people ultimately. So it might be starting with an assistant. How can you delegate a bunch of the things that you're doing if you're on the phone with Verizon, if you're driving to the post office, if you're even, you know, beginning, even meeting with clients, ultimately you want other people to do that and so that you can be more Strategic in the business. But it first starts with the awareness to say, how am I spending my time?

Yeah, it's really, it's really interesting because I think, you know, I mean, you've been around for a while, so have I. But I think in the market, the marketers want you to believe that some magic technique is going to save you or some like, thing. And a lot of times I think it's the mindset and the inner game that you bring to it, you know, and once you have that, then the right technique is really important.

Yeah.

But without it, it's like. Yeah. So I'm kind of curious, what are some of the. What are maybe some of the mindset traps that people have that keep them locked into where they can't scale? Or I guess the flip side would be what are some of the things that are questions that somebody who's able to scale is, are. What are they asking themselves? Like, how are they approaching it? Completely different, you know?

Yeah. So I'd say most business owners think way too small, first of all. And, you know, it's just sort of how we're wired. And I try to help them or my team. I have 30 mentors that, that work with our clients. They've all built very successful companies. And we try to help them think much bigger because it really just is a number. But we tend to, you know, this idea of looking at what's right in front of us and thinking that's our reality instead of making decisions from where we're going rather than where we're at. And so, you know, it's a lot of money mindset. It's a lot of, I try to say, instead of what's your yearly goal? What if your yearly goal became your monthly goal? And, and just really expanding the possibilities. Instead of one location, why don't you have a hundred locations? You know, if what are, you know, why don't you add on other recurring revenue like subscription programs or certification programs or adding a software or, you know, adding a product to a service. A service to a product. So it's really just expanding, expanding your mindset, your possibilities of, of the opportunities that are in front of you. And once you do that and once someone's holding a bigger picture for you, then it's game on. It really is game on. And it. And it's exciting.

What I love about that, and, you know, we say this to our clients as well, and it's like, you can always sweat yourself to like, 50 growth or, you know, to like double your client base, even but if you go, like you said, if it's the, you know, if you go from one store to a hundred or, you know, your yearly revenue to monthly, then your thinking has to change completely because you can't sweat yourself that, that way you'll run yourself into the ground, you know, then you have to kind of like shift. Are there other mindsets that you could point out that might be helpful? Because I think this thinking big one, I, I love that. Absolutely. And even as you ask that, I think, okay, I gotta start thinking bigger for our company too, you know.

Well, it's thinking bigger and playing bigger. Right. And so it's one thing to think it, but then it's other than, okay, if I was at that level, who are the people that I would hang around with? What are the kind of steps that I would take? You know, I would hire that person instead of being so conservative and I wouldn't be spending my time, you know, doing this task. Right. I would be out there building my ecosystem, my joint venture relationships. And, you know, so I think you start looking at your priorities a lot differently when you're seeing yourself as this bigger company. But it first has to start with seeing that, yeah, why not? Why couldn't I create a $50 million company or $100 million company or $1 billion company? Why not? You know, we had Naveen Jain speak at our event a few years ago and he came to this country with $5 in his pocket and he's built 2 billion dollar companies. And he says, people always say the sky's the limit, but the truth is there is no sky. So there is no limit because we live in a completely expanded universe. And so when you think of it that way, there really is no ceiling on what it is you can create. And then, you know, the opportunities are limitless. It's not about, I don't have the resources. It's how resourceful are you?

There is no sky. That, that sounds like some kind of a Zen Cohen or something you'd find in a ancient book from India or my God, I love that. I'm curious. Obviously you have really dialed in processes. You've used it to grow 10 companies and you've helped. You said, did you say thousands or hundreds of that? Something like that. So can you give us a story or an example of somebody that came to you needing your processes and kind of how they went through that and what happened on the other side?

Yeah, I have several of those stories and I, I'll say, for instance, Marshall Doyle, he runs a company in Oregon called Calcert. So it's a machine calibration company. He had 35 employees. He had not taken a vacation in 20 years and he was working 60, 80 hours a week. And even though he had a team, he had his hands in every single area of the business. So if you can imagine not taking a vacation in 20 years, working 60, 80 hours a week, it became this was just his life. And so when I met Marshall, I said, we're going to extricate you from the day to day. You're going to replace yourself in every area of the company. And he laughed at me. Yeah, you know, I mean he was nice, but he laughed like, prove it. So within, you know, we worked together I think for about three years and within that time he grew to over 100 employees. He grew by several million dollars. But he only attends one meeting a week now for 90 minutes. That is it. He has also purchased 20 other companies. So this is his scalable model now. He doesn't run any of those businesses now. He's one of the mentors on our team now that works with, with our clients. So or, and I have another story. So David Chang, he has a martial arts company in San Jose, California called Wushu Central. He'd been in business for 18 years. He was in the seven figure level, but he was stuck at the same level for 10. So stuck for a decade again, working crazy hours, not having time with his family or his children. And he came to our event and you know, started to put the scale up method into place. He started, you know, I, and I remember him being at the event, I remember the look on his face. I just, I don't know, I have a memory of these, where people were and I just, I remember the, just this look of just such frustration at the time where he was and kind of at his last, it was like his last leg when he came and within seven months he doubled his revenue by one year. He tripled his revenue, opened a second location, had 500 students in the second location. Shortly after that, opened a third location. Now he's opening a fourth. This is in under two years. And he doesn't work in any of the locations anymore. It's all team led. So, you know, growth just for growth sake, just adding on more pressure to me is not really success or you know, the kind of life that really is healthy. So it's the growth but also having the team run the company without you so that it actually will grow faster and you'll help more people. But we have many Many stories like that.

I love it. You know, one of my favorite topics is also like the identity shift. Somebody has to go to make the change. And I'm curious, you know, as people step into creating more scalable businesses, my, my sense is that they actually become a leader rather than, you know, like they're kind of caught in the doing rather than the leading. And I'm kind of curious how you help people to see that focus or bring that focus out so that actually they start to lead their companies instead of the company leading them. Is there anything that you have in your process that does that or how do you look at that?

Yeah. So one of the first things we do is we help them create something called their big picture vision. And it's interesting because it's the area of the company that most business owners spend the least amount of time on, but it's the most important because once you have this vision and we help them create, it's like a four page, 11 by 17, really beautifully designed. And it really is the state of the union of your company three years from now. And we really help you to, to think outside of the box as you're building this. And so we, you know, future pacing. So everything is written in future tense as if it's already, let's say, 2026 or 2027, whenever you're listening to this podcast. And, and then they use that for hiring for the team. Everybody in the team has it. All your clients have it, all your vendors have it. It's like your statement to the world, this is who we are. So they begin to step up right from the beginning into this higher level. And then all decisions are tracked based on that. Like, is this thing that we want to do, does that line up with the big picture vision? Is that going to get us there faster? And if not, then, you know, that's a no, or at least a not now. And so right from the get go, you start to, you know, like I said, you start thinking much bigger. And that really is critical. If you don't believe internally that this is going to happen, you know, it's just going to be a longer road because you're going to have your foot on the gas, your foot on the brakes, put on the gas, put on the brakes. And so, you know, we want you to make smart decisions, calculated decisions. So the metrics are super important. So once we have that big vision, then we can divide it up between each department of the company. And we know that in marketing they need to reach this metric every month. In operations, they need to reach this metric every month. So it's not just kind of pie in the sky. Like, yeah, that sounds good. Like, how do we reverse engineer that and actually make it happen?

If I was sitting next to you at a table and I had a big notebook and a pen or a marker and I wanted to make my big picture vision where. What would you tell me to do first?

Yeah. So we start with, it's like a kind of a three step process. We have a, we call it the big picture vision mind map. And you know, a mind map is just these circles and you're just kind of designing and coming up with ideas. So you first want to think of what are the most important things that you want to have in your business and in your life. And if you were designing this for three years from now, what would your team look like? Your revenue and profits? What would, what would your clients be saying about you? What would your team be saying about you or the company or the experience of working there? Like if they were going to write a glass door review, what would they say? And so you really just as if you're watching a movie about your business and you're, you're stepping into that. What are all the pieces? How would you want to spend your day? What do you want to do with your time? And so that's like just kind of a messy notes everywhere first step. Then we take that and you take all the pieces and you mark like a half a day off a few times and you just journal on each piece. Like really? Let's go deeper. What does this look like? What does this feel like? If I was there now, what would the experience? And try to get as visceral as possible. And then once you have all that writing, which is, you know, several pages on a word doc, so you have to be disciplined in doing it. You know, that's the key is to really schedule this. Otherwise you will replace it with other things going on. But it is that important. And then once you kind of edit that down, then you go to your team. Because when you can build this with your team, you're going to get way more buy in from them and they're likely to be excited about it instead of going, hey, this is who we are and this is what we're doing and this is what you have to do. No, we want to enroll them in the process of the creation of the vision because if they feel part of the development, they're more likely to, you know, run with it. And so you take it to the team and say, what do you think? What would you add? What am I missing? What would you change? What excites you? Circle the pieces that are really speaking to you, you know, and you spend a day or two doing this together. And once you do that, then you do the final edit and then you build it to this beautiful big picture vision. Like I stated.

I love that and because I've listened to your audiobook and have kind of gone down the rabbit hole a little bit into your world. But I know right before we got on, you said you started a company that was homeopathy and you were a mom and you know, in terms of our work, we work with a lot of therapists and healers and conscious businesses. And I think the, the good news is that the, the business world is starting to integrate more. I would say like higher values. You know, I would even say spiritual values. I'm kind of curious what your take on it is and how, because I think people want to, want to both work and buy from companies that are value led. How does that kind of integrate into your process and how do you, especially for your own company, how do you integrate that into your me? Because I think it's a, it's a really a competitive advantage when you can build that in right from the start.

Yeah, I, I think you, you're spot on with that. And it's interesting because I had run all these companies and even though when I had my homeopathic practice, I had other businesses that I was running in the background.

Yeah.

And you know, homeopathy, if you don't know it, it really is a way of life. And you know, was one of the first homeopathic physicians in Southern California back in 1996. And so, you know, when I decided to move on from that, I still really loved it. I just felt that with this other business starting to take off, I couldn't give the patients the care that they needed. And so, but it was, it's interesting over the years when people hear that about me, it actually drew them to this. They love that this is this philosophy of take care of the business owner, not just the business. Like, what if you actually designed your business around your life and not your life around your business like most business owners do? They take care of everybody else before they take care of theirself themselves. And if you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be able to take care of anyone. And you know, business owners get health problems, they get divorced, you know, burnout, just all of this stuff and I've been there, so I know it and so I know the, how critical it is that, you know, you have a passionate life. And I think that people, it's not just scale the business, it's scale, scale your life. And it really is about true transformation and stepping into your own leadership. And so it's, you know, you can make a lot of money and be miserable, so let's make a lot of money, create wealth, make a difference in your community, give back, take care of your employees, your employees, families, all of that, and have time to do all the things that you've dreamed of in, in your life. And I, I truly believe that you can do, do that. And I, you know, that's what we do. And so I feel like we're a really good example for our clients.

So one of the first ways that people can start to create that life that they love and scaling is to come to your event in San Diego coming up here. So I would love to hear more about that. I think that a lot of our listeners would be interested in attending what, what's happening there.

Yeah, so we're very excited. It's called Scale it live. It's our third 13th year leading this event, which, you know, even during COVID we did a virtual. But this is actually in person, all in person. It's at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, a beautiful venue overlooking the Bay of San Diego. It's May 4th to the 6th, so it's a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and you we spend three days building out your step by step scale plan to multiply your, your revenue, your profits, the number of people that you impact. And it's about building a team managed company that can run without you and to expand into a more scalable model. And event is for CEOs and founders that are generating a minimum of 500k in their business. Because you're really not ready to scale until you get to that point. But there's a lot of business owners at that level, even seven figures, like in the health space, you're still taking care of everybody. So we've worked even with doctors and dentists and all this that have A, or, or CPAs that have this whole book of clients and they're trying to be the business owner and the CEO, which is really hard to do. And so by the end of the event, you have a step by step plan for your strategic plan, your marketing and sales blueprint for the year, your hiring plan, how to replace yourself, your execution plan, everything. So you're really ready to hit the ground running and to scale it over the next 12 months.

So how do people find out more or sign up or show up?

Yeah, yeah. So you just go to scale scaleitlive.com scaleitlive.com it has all the details there. And we have Lori Greiner from Shark Tank. She will be there on stage with me, Amy Porterfield, Anthony Trucks. So. And we have several hundred CEOs in the room, so the networking alone is going to be off the charts. But scaleitlive.com thanks, Allison, for sharing your.

Story and giving us some of the principles and some of the mindsets and some of the identity. It's really been a pleasure to have you on here. And I also want to mention, if you can't make it to that event, there are definitely other ways to learn from Allison. She has her book Scale or Fail. You can just Google that on Amazon. And then she also has two podcasts, the Scale It Method podcast, and also the Women who Own it podcast. So you can. I'm assuming you can get those on itunes or Spotify, is that correct?

Yes, all the above. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you so much for joining us here today and it's been really a pleasure to hear your story. Thanks, Allison.

Ah, thanks so much for having me.

And for the readers, if you want to get the show notes or all the links, you can also go to consciousmarketer.com podcast and thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. Bye for now.

Bye, everybody.