"Embrace the idea of having less mass. Right now you’re the smallest, the leanest, and the fastest you’ll ever be. From here on out, you’ll start accumulating mass. And the more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction. It’s as true in the business world as it is in the physical world. Mass is increased by: long term contracts; excess staff; permanent decisions; meetings; thick process; inventory (physical or mental); hardware, software, and technology lock-ins; long-term road maps; and office politics. Avoid these things whenever you can. That way, you’ll be able to change direction easily. The more expensive it is to make a change, the less likely you are to make it. Huge organizations can take years to pivot. They talk instead of act. They meet instead of do. But if you keep your mass low, you can quickly change anything: your entire business model, product feature set, and/or marketing message. You can make mistakes and fix them quickly. You can change your priorities, product mix, or focus. And most important, you can change your mind." —From the book Rework, by Jason Fried and David Hansson
Growth sucks cash. At every significant level of growth in the trajectory of any business, one has to invest more than previously expected. For me, it usually had to do with hiring more team members, and as a result, a larger office space. At other times, it meant investing in doing more marketing or online advertising, technology upgrades, equipment, etc. Sometimes, it even had to do with getting some additional topic-specific coaching, mentorship or consulting to address a particular issue or get better in a particular area. The idea though, is that rarely if ever have I moved up significantly in the business without some additional (often significant) level of investment.
I remember a defining business conversation with my husband in 2009, less than a year after reaching that first Seven Figures and after which he quit his corporate job to come on board to help me run the business as CEO. We had set our sights on eventually doubling the business to two million, but we also knew it would require a lot more fully-committed help than the (albeit great) part-time team of virtual assistants we had in place.
At the time, we felt that we needed people who were full-time employees, 100 percent focused on our business and only our business, individuals who would turn things around quickly for us, rather than virtual, part-time team members who sometimes were forced to reluctantly say to us, “I’ll be happy to do that in a couple of weeks, after I finish two other big client projects.”
We talked at length around the much greater expense and commitment required to take on full-time employees and, after weighing the pros and cons (stay where we are vs. hustle-to-make-it-happen-even- though-it’s-expensive because there doesn’t seem to be a choice) we committed to doing whatever it would take to replace our entire virtual, part-time team with a handful of full-time employees. Real people, who would require real desks, in a real office, and who had real families.
Wow.
We quickly hired four employees and rented a six-bedroom house a one-minute walk from ours to house all of these new team members (the situation involving putting multiple desks in our living room at home was no longer going to work).
Could we really afford it all at first? Barely. It was definitely a stretch, but we understood that if we hustled to bring in a lot more new clients (which meant more marketing, sweat equity and longer hours than we were used to) while hurrying to bring the brand-new team members up to speed so they could quickly fulfill a role that would have them pay for themselves and more within about three months, that initial investment we would be worth it.
And we did it. But that growth really sucked cash, as did
hiring more full-time team members after that and moving into increasingly bigger offices, ones that carried a contract for a five-year lease (!)
All of these fixed monthly expenses and salaries (upward of one hundred thousand dollars a month) meant we went into an overdrive of workload just to keep up the pace, to fulfill the agreements, a pace we had never expected. Yes, the business continued to grow, but the expenses never lessened, and this lasted for years. It quickly began to feel that we were trapped and that our business owned us, rather than us owning it.
Was taking on all these “traditional business growth” expenses the right way to do it? Maybe. I’m still not sure.
If I had the chance to do it all over again with what I know now, would I find a way to achieve the same sort of steady growth without the hefty fixed salaries and business trappings with five-year contracts? Absolutely. I know now that I would find a way to do it without all the proverbial handcuffs and all for much less.
Why? Because it affected my freedom.
You see, as the business and personal expenses grew, my freedom lessened. I went from having lots of choice as to how I used my time to feeling like I needed to continually “feed the machine,” working more than I had in the beginning, just so I could pay the expenses.
And I’ve since seen that this (often predictably) happens to a lot of people who reach Seven Figures for the first time, where they fall into the trap of needing to feed the machine, rather than being focused on the quality of their life.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
My loving advice as you apply the Leveraged Business Activators that will take your business to Seven Figures and beyond is to keep things simple as you experience growth and begin investing in what will take your business to the next big level you seek.
Be very prepared for the fact that growth sucks cash. It’s a fact, and a rite of passage. Invest in your business, but choose flexibility whenever possible, rather than getting into permanent situations that end up running you and making you work harder to keep the train moving. Invest in growth, but just do so strategically, without sacrificing your lifestyle.
Ask yourself if there are alternatives to the traditional “successful business” trappings.
- It’s not because other people have a large office that you need one. Do you really need an office, or could you build a team that is hybrid, sometimes working from home, and sometimes meeting you at a co-working location?
- Do you really need all those full time team members, who require desks and computers and all the traditional things that come with employees? Or could you hire more freelancers and independent contractors, who work from home and “own their own stuff ”? What about having full time employees but no physical location, meaning, your staff works remotely?
- Do you really have to drive to your client meetings (and have a car to do so) or could you do things more virtually, including the delivery of your work, using video conferencing?
Remember, you have it within you to be bold enough to go against the grain and do only what fuels your ideal lifestyle. You deserve it.
Is it necessary, nice, or neither? We’ve established that it’s very easy to go overboard with the team, the expensive office, the splashy $50K rebrand, the employee bonuses, and anything else you start paying for that didn’t used to be part of the regular expenses within the business. It becomes an even more slippery slope if you’ve also added considerable new “bling” to the personal side of your life, such as the new much bigger house, the new car(s), the beautiful new things you feel you can now afford.
Here’s the thing, though. I’ve discovered that all businesses seem to go through “cycles” like that of nature, as one spiritual teacher once told me. And it’s not unusual to buy exciting “toys” or make large business investments in quick succession when you’re experiencing the “summer cycle.” What eventually seems to happen though, is that many businesses, at one point or another, also experience a “winter cycle.”
Nothing is always “rosy” 100 percent of the time. That’s life. And as with anything in life, there will be ups, and there will also be dips. The fact is, things sometimes change in the marketplace; sales dip, your marketing isn’t always going to work as well as it used to, your online advertising isn’t always going to generate the leads as zealously as it once had; team members sometimes leave with their expertise and you have to start all over again; as well as a host of other reasonable events you hadn’t expected.
How would you prepare for this if you were to experience a winter cycle in your business?
Make strategic decisions as you grow, so that you can stay nimble and not have the proverbial tail wag the dog, meaning, the business runs you, as opposed to you running it. Keep your eye on having a lifestyle business as you continue to grow, taking a hard and honest look at every aspect of your business and rethinking it.
Take some time to think about all of your business expenses (even personal ones, for that matter). Go through your credit card statements. Question everything. Is it necessary, is it nice, or is it neither? If it’s necessary, keep it. If it’s “nice,” make a strategic decision. If it’s “neither,” then it’s running you and you likely don’t need it.
In our own business, we now have a “hybrid” model of team: some full time employees in key areas (marketing, finance, operations), supplemented by many virtual, part-time team members, freelancers and independent contractors, but no physical office space to gather in person as we all currently work remotely, from home.
Why no office? We realized that we were acting in “old-school” ways of doing business. We questioned the practice of working in the same physical space or geographic area as the one in which your business is located. Did it really have to be so in this day and age? Could we not forgo this and live across the world from our team?
Well, we didn’t know at first. We decided to test the viability of “going virtual” for just one month and announced it to the team. We shared with them a long list of the benefits for them (with no more lengthy commutes, they would have more time with their families and friends, for pursuing hobbies, working out and for self care, etc.) It was so successful that it was actually the team’s request that we go virtual as a company going forward.
We have since fully released the idea that a physical office space is required for successfully running our business. And even if we had an office for our employees, we’ve released the idea that we (my husband and I) would need to be there physically on a daily basis. Using today’s technology and co-working spaces, you can (and we do) all work remotely and very successfully.
How does it work? Well, for example, while our program has members around the globe, it is headquartered in the United States. At the same time, my husband and I work and enjoy living in Paris, France with our three children. The way we’ve made this work is by heavily rely- ing on affordable technology (which I discuss below) and virtual conferencing, which has drastically reduced the need for having an actual office or doing in-person meetings. We’ve since become very adept at hosting truly engaging three-day live meetings online, using a proprietary methodology for making meetings a highly focused and engaging experience that attendees world wide love.
Doing so has allowed us to attract more English-speaking members from around the globe, whereby it wouldn’t have been either possible or convenient before. This is true leverage.
Obviously, your business will be different, but this is an example of how it can be done, so that you increase your quality of life in an afford- able way. In the end, the office was nice, but absolutely not necessary.
Perhaps there are things in the current iteration of your business that fall in the same category of “not necessary.” Would this be a good time to no longer have this be part of your business?
A caveat: the one thing I will always invest in significantly, and without question, is coaching and mentorship. These are priceless to business owners and quite the opposite of a “luxury,” falling more into the strategic “necessity.”
I have never been without a highly successful business coach (or part of a high-level business mastermind, or both simultaneously) to guide me in growing my own business strategically, and I never will be without one. I have spent as little as $5,000, $25,000 and even as much as $100,000 a year on working with a business coach, and these are some of the best investments I have ever made in myself and my business, as the return-on-investment was often tenfold.
Investing in the right coaching pays for itself in spades and I enthusiastically recommend you get coached or join a full support business growth program.
H2: Yes, you can (successfully) create a virtual business.
"I’ve embraced innovation and current technology to create a de-centralized collaborative structure. I have put to rest more traditional work norms such as working hours, geography, head- quarters, etc." —Tim Ferriss
You can run your business totally remotely with the right technology tools and automation. Years ago, I had a wonderful employee, an operations manager who by choice commuted three hours a day (sometimes more, depending on traffic ) to our offices in Connecticut each morning to help us run our company. I thought it was a crazy idea at first, but she insisted that she didn’t mind the drive and that she was willing to do it. We worked this way for five years and, with few hiccups, it went really well.
After a few years though, we agreed that it would make a lot of sense for her to work from home at least a few days here and there, to cut down on her time-consuming travel and relieve a persistent foot injury her doctor believed was due to the driving. Personally, I would never have been able to drive as many hours a day as she did. That said, I admired her for her willingness, dedication and perseverance in doing so.
We managed to set up some systems for her to work remotely when she could to oversee not only the operations of the business, but also the team. That way, she could manage everything virtually even while we were all physically in the office for a couple of days a week, while the other days, she would travel to be with us in person.
It seemed to work well at first, but a few months later, she began to have significantly more pain in her foot and her doctor advised her to stop the long commutes. I was absolutely fine with it, urging her to set up shop in a spare bedroom for good. I knew in my heart that, with today’s technology, we could make it work, and I so admired her work and loved her as a friend that I was willing to do whatever it took to make her happy.
Then, one day, she gave her notice. She came into my office and told me she was unable to work remotely and had taken another job close to her home. She believed at her core that she was unable to manage the team when she couldn’t be side-by-side with them. I tried to reason with her, showing her that she could indeed be a great virtual manager and run the operations remotely, that it could be done.
But I don’t believe that she was ready to wrap her mind around that. And so, after five years together, we sadly lost one of our most dedicated employees at that time. I wonder what would have been different if we could have imagined this company running smoothly (relatively!) with no one being in one single central location and all of us relying on technology and automation to work rather seamlessly together.
Today, there are many technology tools that can be used for the most important categories of your business. Here are some categories for which we use online tools or software:
FINANCE
- payroll and HR software
- bill payment and accounts payables
- bookkeeping and financial record keeping/reporting
- financial payments and receivables
- time tracking and invoicing for independent contractors
- data metrics and reporting
CUSTOMER SERVICE
- web-based communication service for real-time website visitors
- web-based phone and SMS
- virtual customer service/phone answering system with receptionists
- email-based ticketing system for support cases and troubleshooting
- web-based calendar scheduling system
OTHER
- web-based calendar, email, file sharing and word processor/ spreadsheet
- web-based surveys and online forms
- project management tool and task tracking
- team chat communication
- video conferencing and screen sharing for individuals and groups
- web-based team reporting and one-on-one feedback communication
- note tracking and journaling
- web-based conference calling
- web-based screen sharing and recording
- recording presentations
- recording videos and audios on your computer
MARKETING
- text messages via CRM automation software
- CRM, eCommerce, email marketing
- membership site with CRM automation software
- web platform for websites
- video hosting
- live video broadcasting
- live evergreen webinar broadcasting
- email delivery service (various IP addresses to ensure deliver- ability/not spam)
- Facebook Ads management and reporting
- connection application to link various tools, systems and applications
- web traffic data, reporting and metrics
- online chat tool for webinar/video broadcasts
- text messaging software
- web-based site review tool with editing
- video editing/production
- audio editing/production
- photo editing/production (and free online photo editing)
- captions for videos (Facebook, YouTube)
We’ve tried many versions for each category, and for now, we’ve settled on our favorites. Admittedly, you will likely never need all of these and technology changes very quickly, so perhaps by the time you read this, we may have already added new ones and stopped using old ones. These are listed as examples of resources to show you what’s out there in terms of resources for running your multiple seven-figure or eight-figure business remotely, from wherever you like, whether it’s a treehouse in your backyard, or across the globe, with the focus being a lifestyle you love.