Misdiagnosed, Not Failing: The Truth About Stalled Growth | 056

Profit isn't luck, it's clarity and structure. Let's dig in. Many businesses go around thinking that they're broken because they're not making money, they're not moving forward, they're not having the business that they thought that they would have. And so they they go

around thinking that they're broken. And what I'd like to propose today is that you're not broken, you're just misdiagnosed. What do I mean by that? Well, business owners are running around going, I need better marketing. It's what I'm doing in this area is just not working. Or they're saying, oh,

I need new offers. The new offers that I have right now just not quite landing. Let me go create something new. This is especially true with us creatives, right? And then it's maybe, oh no, this is that. I just need to pivot. I need to pivot. That's going to be the answer. Or simply, I'm bored. I

need to do something new. But here is the truth, the business isn't the problem, it's the stage. You simply can't innovate yourself out of a stage issue. So what do I mean by stages? Whenever I look at businesses, they're generally in three stages of development. Innovation is usually the one

that most people think that they're in when they start. They are totally creating and running around and doing cool things, building new stuff, and especially with creatives, we are typically in innovation mode all the time. Well, what if I told you that was actually the third stage of business, not the

first. The first stage of business is Foundation. We need to build that foundation. Whether you've been in business for one year or 10 years, if you haven't built that foundation, you're still in the foundational phase of your business. The second phase is is acceleration. And acceleration is when you

start, start building and growing and putting in new things that you've tried and traded in and traded out, that's that's acceleration. And then the third stage is, is innovation. And that innovation stage is when you got the foundation, you've put all of the things in that work, and now

you are building towards the next thing. When I set goals with my clients, I like them to have a reasonable goal, a goal that you can reach, that that normal, regular goal, and then the next goal I like them to have is the stretch goal. And that's like, what's really uncomfortable, but maybe you

could possibly do it. That's a stretch goal. And the third type of goal that I work with my clients on is the next level goal. That is, where are you going to be at the next level of your business, whether that's five years from now or 10 years from now? What is that next level that you want to reach in

your business? So it's kind of like that whenever you are building your business, you have those three stages as well. So the foundation goal is the foundation stage is something that you are going to go through no matter what you're going to be in that foundation stage until you complete your

foundational pieces. Every business goes through stages. They are not moods, they're not preferences, they're not broken cycles, they're not boredom cycles. They are stages, and each stage has different priorities. So what we're going to do today is dig into those stages a little bit, make it a

bit more clear, so you can actually figure out what stage you're in and how do you need to move in that stage that you can reach the next stage. Because most frustration comes from operating in a stage that you have not yet reached. In your business, when you are up, when you're in foundation phase, but

you're operating in innovation, that's when the chaos starts. The critical thing about the foundational stage is the illustration that I like to use of building a house. If you build a house with no foundation, you can build one story. You can have a one story house. However, that does not

necessarily mean that that house is stable. It doesn't mean that that house is going to withstand the weather and the storms and the hardships that are going to come around. It doesn't mean that it's going to stand and it also does not mean that you can build a second story or a third story. Whenever you don't have a

foundation in your business. You can build your you can build only to a certain point, and then you get stuck and you can't move the business forward. One more thing about the foundation stage is, if your income your revenue is still inconsistent, you are still in the foundation phase. Even if you've been in

business for 10 years, that's the marker that you need to look for. Now the second stage of your business is acceleration, and acceleration, even it know it denotes moving faster, it also means growing depth, making your business stable and reliable. Is the acceleration phase. It's not about survival,

it's about optimization. And what does that look like? Well, first of all, it looks like tightening those margins, knowing when what money is coming in, what money is going out. How do you need to move your money around in terms of paying yourself, putting maybe buying a new piece of equipment

or a new product or a new software, where are you making more money? How are you increasing your profit margins? So all of that is around that tightening your margins, you are increasing the lifetime value of your customer. How much more can they work with you? If they've come to you to solve problem A,

could they also come to you for problem B, C and D? Can we expand the offerings of never losing the center of what we're doing? But can we expand those offerings to have them interact and do business with us longer? You will probably be redefining marketing systems in this level, in in Foundation. We are

building that foundation. We're putting those pieces in place right whenever we are moving into acceleration phase, then we are adjusting and creating new ways of marketing that that are suiting those new things that we're coming up with. Right? You're going to be improving your team efficiency at

acceleration mode. You may have added team members, so you're going to be increasing that team efficiency. How do you work with your team? What are you doing? How are you creating those SOPs? And you will find that you are going to scale what's already working. So the things that you do, and you do really well, the

things that your clients are buying, we're going to do more of that, and we're going to scale that. And those are the places where you're really going to see acceleration in your business. And with this acceleration model, putting all of these things in place, what you're going to find is that

your systems are going to get stronger. A little thing about systems and stages, I probably should make this distinction. When you're in foundation acceleration or innovation stage, you are always going to have to come back and look at those systems and processes, your seven pillars of profit.

You're going to have to take a look at them as you scale, as you move into those different stages, because as you move into those different stages, then the needs of the business change a little bit. So you're always going to have to look back and check on those foundational pieces and make sure that now

that you're at acceleration, that those systems and processes have leveled up to meet you where you are. So your systems are going to get stronger. Your profit is going to improve because you have now created a path for your money to travel. It knows where to go in your business. Your employees know

what to do to make that money, travel through the business. You as the business owner, know what to do to make that money travel through the business, and your clients can step into that system that already exists and very easily give you the money that will now flow through that path, so that your money knows

where to go, and your capacity will expand. The capacity of what you can do expands during this phase because of all of the things that you've put in place, and the fact that you are now at a different level, a different scale, and the capacity to get things done will increase. Why? Because you put the systems in

place, if you don't have the foundational systems in place. Then when you start to grow, it will collapse. You have to have those foundational things in place. That's why we go through the foundational stage when you're in acceleration. Then you can actually have this expansion, if you skip this step

and go right to innovation. Then when you start to build, you will actually collapse the business you it's, it's will not sustain the innovation if you have failed to do Foundation, and the acceleration builds that depth that will make the innovation stage even more powerful.

People, and the next stage is innovation. This is where everybody wants to live. This is actually where people jump to immediately when they start their businesses. Sometimes, this is the fun place. We get to make new offers. We get to do new markets, new models, strategic partnerships, all the

cool things that we creatives love to do. This is where we can move and stretch. This is fun and creative and exciting. However, innovation stage can come with a warning, and that warning is that innovation magnifies everything underneath it. When you get when you are operating in innovation stage,

it will magnify everything underneath it. That means, if your foundation is cracked, the cracks will get bigger. If your acceleration weak systems are weak, innovation will overwhelm your business. Innovation is a privilege that is earned by creating the foundation, by going through acceleration. It

is the bonus of having stable systems. It's not an escape hatch. It's not the thing that we jump to first, even though we want to, and there are pieces of it that we will always have innovation in every stage, but the innovation stage of your business critically needs to have the foundation and

acceleration phases first in order for innovation to allow you to have that explosive growth that you want to open up another location, to do all of these things in your business that that you think of, that this is the business that I want to create. This is in the innovation stage. So where are

you actually? Where is your business? What stage is your business in, for real? Not where your ego says that it should be, not where Instagram says it should be, not where you want it to be, but where is your business right now, you are in foundation. If your revenue is inconsistent, if you still do

not have a system where you know what you're making every single month and you can make projections on that information, you're still in foundation. You rely on hustle instead of systems. If your business is only making money when you're out there running and gunning, if it's only making money when

you're pushing, then that means that you are still in foundation, and you're still in the foundation stage, if you're really unclear on how you make real profit in your business, that piece of learning about money and how to make the money work for you, how to have a sustainable business that's

making profit and that is supporting you and what you want to do in your business, that is Something that you figure out in your foundational stage. Now, if you are in acceleration phase, your revenue is stable. You can project out. You can say, here are the this is the sales that I'm going to get over this three

month period. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be right in this range, because my sales are stable. When you you your your margin might still be tight. You might not be in that like free flow profit yet, but you have control over that. You know where your money is coming, what it's doing in your business, how

it's going out, and how you're managing that money. And you're still in acceleration, if your growth continues to feel a little bit heavy instead of clean, that's okay. That's building the depth, that's putting the pieces in place that are going to move your business into something that you can

innovate with, right? So your acceleration phase is your your uncomfortable, growth spurty kind of things, where you're building that depth, you're putting the systems that you've created, you're now upgrading them into a growth mindset. Your systems don't have a mindset, but you have a mindset about

your your growth systems. So that's where you are when you're in acceleration. And you are have reached the innovation stage. If your revenue is predictable, if you can say with confidence, this is how much money I'm going to make, this is how much I'm going to increase my sales by during this period.

If you can get a real handle on the money and how it's coming and going. That's when you're in innovation stage, when your margins are healthy, when you know how how much money it costs to produce something, how much money you're charging and what you're doing with that overage, how much of it goes to

operations and how much of it is profit. Possible. That's profit. That's whenever you know that you're in innovation stage and your complete business runs on systems and processes that are consistent, that are predictable, and that you know what you're doing from day to day, so that you are running

your business from reaction into actually moving into purpose. You know what's going to happen. You are moving with purpose. You are making decisions that are going to move the business for further and longer and really establish that legacy that you're trying to establish. That's the innovation stage. And

just know that your business isn't the problem. The the stage that you're in will determine what's going on in your business. And I on another podcast, I talked about what you do in each stage, so go check out that podcast as well. Whenever you are in foundation stage, and you're doing

innovation tactics and strategies that doesn't work, you have to line up those things with the stage that you're in. Today we talked about what is the stage, and how you identify it, and how you move through those stages. So think about where you are right now. Be really, really, really honest

about the stage that you're in in your business. And if you'd like a tool that can help you identify that I have the profit growth audit. The profit growth audit is a free tool that I will gift to you. You can go online and take the audit. It's a self it's a self paced thing. You just answer some questions, and

it will actually give you a report back on how you have, how you're measuring up in different areas of your business. And that's the foundational piece that we use when we work with our clients, to see which pillars of profit are really strong and which ones need a little bit more work. Where are

those gaps? Where are those weaknesses? So that's the tool that we use, and it is my gift to you. You can find it in the profit connectors dot Club website that is our community. It is profit connectors dot club connect doors, because you're the one doing the connecting. So profit connectors dot c, l, u,

B, you can go into the profit connectors club and you can find the profit growth audit there. You can also find there all of our other podcasts, the guests that have been here, the gifts that they have given out. So that is an amazing community to get into. And you can find all the goodies there from the

profit connections podcast. Remember that it is important that you build with clarity, grow with intention, and know that the stronger your business becomes, the more impact you make in the world. See you next time.