Growing Beyond DIY: The Pain of Actually Figuring It Out

I have officially hit the place in my coaching and speaking business that many of my esteemed colleagues have run into (and sometimes barely navigated through) on their way to scalability.

I have outgrown my Business of One.

Despite my thrifty Herculean efforts to manage all aspects of my scrappy thought leadership practice above and beyond the actual Crystallization services I deliver -- website development, bookkeeping, graphic design, social media, content marketing, business development, to name a few -- I have hit the ceiling.

While I pride myself in my ambitious, ambidextrous, Jill-of-all-trades resourcefulness, I am at the point of surrender. I can’t do it anymore. Thanks to some big wins and increased amplification opportunities, the inbound energy is coming too fast and furious for me to manage alone. And my 50-something year old brain simply can't keep track of all the details much less execute against them.

There's no mistaking it -- It's time to grow.

Yet, growth can be a scary thing.

Many times the growth spurts we’ve experienced in our professional and personal lives came with painful faceplants which preceded them. (We only change when the pain becomes too great to stay the same.) Some of those “growth opportunities” were traumatizing, heartbreaking, and downright expensive. It's easy to see why staying small can be appealing.

So how do we grow once we get to that point where we’re physically and mentally unable to keep DIYing it?

As I enter into that space of deliberately growing my team, I am thankful for the fact that I have implemented, adopted, and standardized the necessary systems, processes, and technical tools to support my business. I’ve ditched the spreadsheets, notebooks, and crossed fingers in favor of a CRM suite, or what I call my Co-Creator Relationship Management system. (Thanks SpeakerFlow!) It’s my digital brain, and I'd be lost without it.

As I go through my day from now until the foreseeable future, I will be focusing on two separate objectives. The first is to do the work that’s in front of me, and second, to capture and streamline each process so that others can eventually do them for me.

Crafting standard operating procedures and investing in the infrastructure to support them are essential tools to scalable, joyful, profitable growth.

My job now is to make the commitment to document all that I do outside of my expertise so that others can easily perform it, capture what I need in the form of job descriptions and compensation plans, and then go about finding the resources to serve those roles. All while not losing my mind, of course.

Entrepreneurism isn't for the faint of heart.

If you are like me and ready to grow beyond DIY thought leadership, ask yourself if you have crystallized your business to the degree that will enable you to swiftly, (relatively) painlessly hand off to another. Are you ready to spread your wings, or are you stuck under the wave?