3 Red Flags You Need to Scale Your Operations ASAP

Between growing your audience, marketing, and delivering your work to your clients, how do you know when it’s time for you to prioritize your operations?

It’s easy to pass over your operations because, well, growth is more fun and you get to create.

But so many entrepreneurs come to me when the time to proactively build their ops foundation has passed.

They come to me AFTER they’re burnt out trying to juggle everything on their own.

Or AFTER a growth spurt has knocked their business off balance and they learned the hard way that they don’t have the foundation to manage their growth.

Or AFTER they’ve invested all the “right” things that all the male business gurus talk about (*CoughTractionCough*) only to find their business ISN’T running any smoother and they’re more bogged down than ever.

Or they are a magical mix of all 3.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with focusing on your operations after a major issue or challenge has come up in your business, but it’s a matter of how EASY you want to build that foundation and get back to growth.

Would you rather wait until you’re at the edge of burnout or in the middle of a major issue to build your operations foundation or do you want to build it when you have clarity, flexibility, and time on your side?

I’ll bet that you want to go with option 2, but probably don’t know what signs to look out for that tell you that you need to prioritize your operations.

So what are the signs that it’s time for you to scale your ops?

🚩When you’re embarrassed of your ops
Have you ever been flustered when someone praises you and how amazing and together your business seems to be…

…but in reality, you’re embarrassed and feel like a bit of a fraud because behind the scenes, you’re making it up on the fly, you’re doing everything manually, and you’re working overtime to keep up with the image you’ve built.

If this sounds (painfully) familiar, then you are not alone. This is where a lot of my clients are when they come to me.

For example, one of my clients was so embarrassed by her backend. People praised how seamless her client process was…but in reality, she was manually sending and following up with them each step of the way.

She had a ton of reminders on her calendar of every follow-up, every next step, for a roster of 20+ clients and could barely keep up.

We needed to fill in major gaps in her core tech, define her processes and create automations that actually made her process seamless.

🚩When you want to grow
Do you want to add 3 new clients, launch a course or group program this year…

…but you already have your hands full with your team and ongoing business?

You can’t welcome clients or launch new offers when your hands are already full with your business and this is a sign that it’s time to prioritize your ops foundation so that you can bring in new clients or put out a new offer without feeling stressed about whether you can handle it.

One of my clients was in this position when she had a solid coaching business. She and her team were tight-knit to a fault, actually, because she was always around to pick up the slack.

She wanted to launch a membership and digital products, but she did not have the bandwidth to do it.

In actuality, she painted herself into a corner with her team because she never fully let go of the work or trusted her team to do it without her putting all the finishing touches on herself.

Her business growth was tied directly to her capacity and she couldn’t grow any further.

We had to rebuild her processes to include her “finishing touches”, and create review and revision processes so that she could lean on her team without stepping in to do the work for them.

🚩When you want to take back time
When was the last time you went on vacation? Took a day or weekend totally off and unplugged? When was the last time you went to yoga, got a massage, or grabbed lunch with friends without thinking about your VA, your team, or your To-Dos…?

…If you can’t remember the last time you were totally unplugged from your business, that’s another sign that it’s time to prioritize our operations.

A client told me they hadn’t been on a vacation they didn’t work on in over 2.5 years…which was a little ironic considering they started their business to be able to take maximum time off.

They were living the life on paper – traveling the world nomadically, but they never really unplugged.

Every city they moved to and every vacation they documented for social centered around whether they had strong wifi and converting the timezones for their meetings.

They worked overnight while in Thailand and slept the days away.

They went sailing in Croatia and were stressed about the lack of cell phone coverage.

I honestly see this pretty frequently when the digital nomad lifestyle isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

We had to create a combination of systems, team support, and tech for collaboration so that they could hire, train, build trust, and finally unplug with a Greek vacation.

The exact formula to get you to scaling your business with ease while maintaining maximum freedom and flexibility is what I help my clients do through my Effortless Expansion program.

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Scaling your business can be so confusing.

But it doesn't have to be!

Take the Business Ops Assessment and in less than 5 minutes I’ll tell you what’s standing in the way of your next $100k and what to do about it. Sound good?