Episode 29: Growth & Scale Will Open Pandora's Box

Welcome to the Create youe Laptop Life podcast, where entrepreneurs all around the world come to learn how to market and grow their online business right from their laptops, wherever they are. We don't have traditional nine to five jobs and we don't want them because financial and lifestyle security and freedom is too important to us. We know the world is changing for the better and that the freelance and entrepreneur economy is the cleaner, greener, smarter way to work for both families and businesses. My name is Julie and this podcast will teach you everything you need to know about creating and growing your laptop life. Hey everyone. Hope you are doing amazing today. I want to talk about how productivity and scaling your business will open Pandora's box. And typically in our culture, when we say you're opening Pandora's box, it suggests that you're about to do something that has unintended consequences. Right? We have this idea in our head, oh, we want to make a million dollars, we want to grow our company, we want to scale, we want to be more product. You know, we set out to have a laptop life and then we just constantly look towards the promised land of what will be. Now, it is true that scaling a business creates more leverage, gets you your time back, all that kind of stuff, but productivity and scaling and growth and all those things have unintended consequences that people don't often see when they're imagining their future. So let me ask you a question. If you are currently running either whether it's a one person or a 10 person, you know, laptop style business, your to do list is most likely a mile long, right? You're probably crippled by opportunity, by ideas, and you probably can look in your past and see that you have wasted time and money on things that don't really move the needle. A lot of times this happens. We come to the end of ourselves, right? And our ability to produce what we need to to produce in order to have the life and business we want, we just feel lost, right? That's actually not a bad place to be because it means that you're willing to do whatever it takes to kind of make sure that your business and your life is on the course you want it to be. I know a lot of people come to me and they say, well, if I could just get more done, be more productive. If I could just get over this revenue hump, this next hump, things would be better. But I guess I want to ask you a question. When you say that you want growth or scale or you want to be more productive, do you know what you're actually saying. So let me give you an example. So the definition of the word productive, right, which is an adjective, by the way, it means having the quality or power of producing in abundance, right? So it means like think about it. When you think about trees, right? It says, oh, that's a productive peach tree. Well, what's happening? It's producing a lot more peaches than the other tree. The problem is most entrepreneurs have no trouble producing ideas in abundance, okay? So this is definitely a trait of any sort of entrepreneur or someone who has like taken matters into their own hands to have a laptop life. So it's probably, this is probably one of the key things that gets you in trouble, right? You, you say that you want to be productive, but you already are incredibly productive in the idea generation world. So. Okay, so then let's keep looking, right? So if we talk about producing, what does that actually mean? It means to birth something, right? So it's not really just the idea. It's not just the plan of growth or scale or the idea of a new course or product. It's actually birthing it. So to be productive means that you have the idea and you birth it, right? Now, birthing is hard work. And I know this. I have four kids. There's the fun part of birth, which is sex, right? That's the shortest, easiest part of the process. And if you're lucky, It'll take about 30 minutes. But then there's the long nine months of pregnancy, right? That's annoying and cool at the same time. You need a lot of patience. Then there's labor and delivery, which is, I don't know if you've ever been in a labor and delivery room, but it's nothing short of barbaric, right? It's hopefully short for you, but then finally you have a baby, a beautiful baby, right? So when we talk about growth and productivity, right, we want to not just produce abundant ideas, we also want to give birth to those ideas. But we realize that it's a lot of freaking work, okay? So we get to the next part of the problem, which is even if we have the ideas, even if we can birth the ideas, we don't have the time to do it all because we're not efficient, right? So I would argue that in order to get to the goal that you see, which we're going to get to the point in a minute about why it's opening Pandora's box, you not only need production and abundance, but you also need efficiency, right? So I would say when we talk about growth and Scale and productivity. It's basically the efficient and abundant birthing process for your business. Okay, let's just talk about one other thing and then you'll see why I call this Pandora's box. What happens after you've birthed something new? Course, coaching program, mastermind, product. The nurturing process begins. Just like a baby, right? You birth a baby, then you've got to raise that baby for the next 18 years. Okay, so here's the reality. Productivity growth and scale by its very nature will produce more need for more productivity. The more productive you get, the more you grow, the more productive you will need to be in order to nurture everything you birth to its full potential in the first place. And so the problem that I see in the entrepreneurial world is that we talk about growth and scale and productivity because we think that's the answer to getting all our time back now. It is and it isn't. Because most people don't realize that the more productive you become, the more productive you will need to be. It's like your status quo, your default changes, right? You look at a business that's making $10,000 a month and you long for the future when you can make $50,000 a month. But you don't realize that the entire like energy level, process level, operations level that you need at 50,000 is completely different at 10,000. And once you're there now, you've got to maintain it. I know people who work out talk about this all the time, or people who run for marathons, right? They train and they train and they train so they can run 26 miles. But then what happens when they get to being able to run a marathon is they have to continue to run at that pace to be able to maintain that level of productivity. Okay, so you know, if you, if your reason for becoming more productive, right, is just to get done stuff done fast and go lay on the beach with your, you know, your Mai tai or pina colada. Like I just want to say, you're opening Pandora's box because true productivity, true growth, true scale will create more demand for scaling process operations and productivity. Does it mean you have to be the one doing it 100%? No. Okay. So that's where the key factor is. Because if you actually continue on this path and you really push for that growth and you start taking your ideas and birthing those ideas and nurturing those ideas, you're going to create a monster of a business that needs so many more resources than it needs right now. So if you are not comfortable with outsourcing, if you are not comfortable with building a team, if you are not comfortable with management and leadership and communication and system and process and all of those things, your longing for that productive growth and scale will bankrupt you. It will cripple you, it will burn you out. So it's super important that you have both of those things in mind when you start to imagine that future. And I have another podcast episode where I talk about the sweet spot and it's kind of the same thing. It's like people are like, I want to make $100,000 a month, but I don't want to hire any employees. I'm like, all right, well, good luck with that. You know what I mean? It's like our vision is mismatched with the path and the reality it is to get there. So the next time you say, hey, I want to grow, I want to scale, I want to be more productive, all that kind of stuff, keep in mind that that dream is awesome. That dream will create more demand for those things as you produce. It will raise your minimum viable systems and processes, and you will have to do the work to create the system to work on, team management, communication style, system and process and all of those things to be able to support the vision that you want to get to. That should ultimately be exciting news. It doesn't have to be Pandora's box, right? Because if you're prepared for it and you're ready to really look at those things, learn how to make investments back into people, all that kind of stuff, it can be absolutely amazing. And you can buy your time back as you build that infrastructure. But if you're more concerned with, you know, being the rock star or just, you know, only having to work a few hours a week, or you're really annoyed by, like having to manage people and you just don't like any of that stuff, I would suggest that you realign your vision of what your business looks like with what you actually want from like a back end business operations standpoint, because it will just save you unbelievable amounts of heartache. So I hope that's helpful for you guys. Have a great day. Appreciate you as always. Talk soon. If you're ready to create, grow, scale your online business, you can go to createyourlaptoplife.com podcast and get a free plan on how you can get started today.