The 5 Phases of Scaling your Company with Allison Maslan

I want to say thank you for the whole NGLCC team. Sabrina, Justin, Sarah, let's give it up for them. So which leader are you? Are you the hero? Are you the octopus? Or are you the visionary CEO? And what if your company could be a team led company that could actually not just run without you, but thrive without you there? How many of you business owners would like that? Anybody? Those of you that are working 100 hours a week, well, over the next 15 minutes, I'm going to show you exactly how to do this. Does that sound good? All right, so everything I'm going to share with you is from our proprietary method called the scale it method. And in my company for the past 15 years, we have helped over 150,000 businesses scale using this proprietary method. It's the only method specifically focused on scaling that addresses the entire company, not just operations or marketing or sales. It's every single aspect of the business. And it's really critical for all of you that are running companies that you have all of these five pillars shored up in your business. And when we talk to business owners, often when we meet them, we find that maybe one or two of these pillars are strong or working and some of the others are non existent. You see, you need a strong strategic vision. It's the most important pillar out of all five. But interestingly enough, it's often the one that we spend the least amount of time on. We create something in January, we check in in June and we see how we landed in December. But you need to know where you're going because how is your team going to get on board if they don't know, then your cash flow, it's the oxygen of your business, right? It's driven by marketing, sales and the organization of your finances. You need it coming in every single day. Alliance of the team is with the focus on alliance. We need diversity, we need diverse backgrounds, we need diverse thought. But we all need to be aligned to help move that vision forward. And then leadership, that's all about you. That's how you show up and it's how you raise the vibe of your team. It's how you think, it's how you show up on the good days and the challenging days and execution is how everything rolls out. It's how you hold everybody accountable. It's your KPIs, it's how your strategic vision actually happens. Now the reason that I'm so passionate about, about this is because you see millions of business owners, you're working so hard in your business and what I find is that you get to a certain level, could be five years in, 10 years in, and you hit a ceiling in your growth, and you think, I'll just work harder. But the truth is you're already working 60, 80, 100 hours a week. There are no more hours. Can any of you relate to this? Raise your hand if you can relate to that. Right. And you think, I'll just focus more and you might get some incremental growth with that strategy, but you're not getting the big leaps that you want, and this ends up affecting your health and your relationships. And I get it. I was there many years ago. My business imploded because I just couldn't carry it all. But once I figured out the formula to scale, I was able to build nine more companies and help a lot of people and have them run without me. So this has become my mission. So what I'm going to share with you now are the five phases to scaling your company. Now, I want you to pay attention to this because awareness is key. And what I find is that most companies have no idea where they are in the scaling process. And then what happens is that you can get stuck at a level for years and years, and it doesn't have to be this way. So phase one, it's the startup. We call it the seeker. Now, most of you are beyond phase one. There's really no scaling happening here, although the startup is important. Right. But everything's dependent on you. And so you've got to move to phase two, which we call the pioneer now. The pioneer. You're in the thick of your business. You're getting your hands dirty, you're out there on the planes and you're getting more clear on your products and services. You're well into the six figures at this point, probably around 500k in revenue, and you're growing. So you start to build a small team, maybe an assistant, a marketing person. Hopefully you're not doing your own bookkeeping at this point. And so all that is good. But what happens is that you're so afraid to let go. Even though you have this small team, you feel like you got to have your eyes on everything. So you become. What? What do you become? The bottleneck. Which really means you're the control freak, right? So let's be honest here, for any of you that are afraid to let go, and I get it, it's the scariest thing you'll ever do in your business, right? We're afraid that things are going to start slipping through the cracks, but actually what you're doing is you're choking the growth of your business. You've got to get out of the way. You've got to start thinking much bigger in your business. You've got to start thinking more strategically in growth instead of just chasing tactics. You've got to systemize, you've got to automate and you've got to work on you. You've got to invest in you as the leader. If you want to grow by 40% in this next year, you personally need to grow by 60% to be able to carry that 40%. Right? And that's exactly where Fran Dean Bishop was when she came to work with us. She'd been running her company for 20 years already, Aerobodies Inc. And she does health and wellness for corporations. And she was ready to throw in the towel. She was burned out and she was really struggling getting her team aligned with her vision. And she didn't even really have a clear vision at this point, even though she was at the seven figures of her company. So we helped her get out of her own way, build a team managed company. And now she's getting nine figure contract after nine figure contract. But the best part about it is she's not running any of them. She's able to be the visionary CEO focused on the future. Now moving on to phase three, your business is starting to grow. You're getting more people, which is good, right? But what happens here in the biggest fallback? And think about if this is something that you struggle with, you get people on the team and you get all excited, you think they're going to be the right one, and then you realize they're not. And the issue here is that you're often hiring people before you're clear on what success looks like for the role. And if you don't know what success looks like, if you don't know those KPIs, if you don't know those benchmarks, your team doesn't know those benchmarks. And then you have mix match expectations and then nobody wins and you've got this revolving door. And then all of a sudden you gotta jump back in, save the day, you gotta be the hero, right? And then you're on that hamster wheel and that you never get off of. You think that it's got to be you that answers everybody's questions. And so you start to build this culture of chaos. It becomes your way of living. And this is why business owners often get stuck in phase three for decades and often die there. And that is why having this awareness now and understand what it is to keep you from getting to that next level. So are you going to be the hero to save the day? I know it feels good to give everybody the answers, right? But then they become dependent on you instead of being empowered and doing it on their own or the octopus that has to have their hands in every part of the business, you know what that's like. It becomes a way of life. And so we end up having. In phase three, you got people in the wrong roles, you're micromanaging, that's no fun. Nobody likes to be micromanaged. And your team, they want to make you happy, but they're not sure how to make you happy. And this is where you get burned out, right? Where you just have nothing left because you're giving so much. You've got to get out of your own way. You've got to think much bigger in your business, right? And you've got to shift from being a boss to being a leader. Instead of telling people what to do, I mean, do you guys like to be told what to do? No, no, I don't like to be told what to do. Ask my husband who's sitting out there. You gotta shift into being a leader and empowering people into action, right? Because when they own it, they're gonna take it and run with it. And instead of jumping in and giving the answers, you might say things like, well, what would you do in this scenario? Or what steps have you taken so far? Or why don't you put a plan together and present it to the team? And you get people thinking for the same. Because this is what they want. They want to be part of the vision. And this moves you into phase four. And in phase four, because you've been empowering your team, you start to see these leaders emerging, you know, those shining stars that start asking those important questions like I wonder how we can improve the customer journey? Or you know, I was up all night long for you business owners in the room. How would you like your team to come to you and say, I was up all night long and you know, I was racking my brain on how to increase profits, right? So you don't have to be the rainmaker, the decision maker and the everything maker. You have a team built on collaboration. They're building the team with you. It's not a top down company or bottom up. It's a horizontal company. And it's a beautiful thing because now your vision and your values are so entrenched in the business that you can start Stepping back. And this is how my husband and I bought a home in Mexico. We lived there half the time, and we did it to get out of the way because our amazing team could take the business and run with it. And I can focus as a visionary CEO on where we're going. And when you do that, you just need to know those important North Star metrics of every single department in your company, that everyone is focused on those two main metrics so you know how everyone is doing. And if there needs to be a shift. Now we have a full team managed company at Pinnacle Global Network. We mentor CEOs around the world to grow and scale companies that change the world. And I'm proud to say many of our CEO ventures that work with our clients are here today. You guys hear me now? They all run their own multimillion dollar companies. They've had international companies. They've done mergers and acquisitions. Thousands of employees. These are the people that are mentoring our CEOs around the world. And they really don't need me. They got it handled. And what an amazing thing when you have that in your company, because your company's going to grow so much faster. You're going to help so many more people when you get out of the way and you become that visionary CEO in phase five. Now, we know you love your business, and some of you might be thinking, well, Allison, I actually like my business. I don't want to leave my business. That's not what we're saying here. But when you get to phase five, you have choices, because 87% of businesses are not salable. 87%. And it's often because the day you leave, your business falls apart. So you need a company that can run without you. Then you could sell the business if you want. You could pass it down to your children. You could become chairman of the board and bring in the CEO. Or scale it up further. Right? Does that sound good? Yeah. Does that sound good? Yeah. All right. But you don't have to do it alone. As Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, said, it's hard enough out there. Get all the help you can get. Right? And so we're really proud of the work that we do at Pinnacle Global Network. So which leader are you? I know it feeds the ego to be the hero, and I know it can be wild and crazy to be the octopus, but you owe it to your team, and you owe it to your dream to be the visionary CEO. Thank you. Thank you. And.