Hey there, visionaries! Now that we’ve spent some time going behind the scenes of our rebrand from Madeline Wyke Silva to Hello 7-Figure Freedom, I want to talk about what we invested in when we realized it was time to make a change.

So, what do you invest in when you are looking to start scaling your business to that next level of growth? Here’s a hint: it’s not the same stuff that you invested in when you were in the startup stage of business.

Startup vs. Scale-Up

In the startup stage, you needed to invest heavily in messaging, in marketing, and in figuring out the sales process. You were most likely testing a lot of different tactics out, doing it over and over again until you get your message, your audience, your niches, etcetera, all dialed in.

Once you really start getting it dialed in and you’re starting to see solid results in your program, that is the moment when you’re ready to step into the scale-up stage. At this stage, you’re ready to take a closer look at how you can begin scaling your business to the next level.

Now, most entrepreneurs miss this moment. I call it the Freedom Switch moment, because it’s the moment where most entrepreneurs continue to apply the same strategies that got them success when they were in the startup business model.

If they continue to apply this strategy while scaling their business, it actually keeps them stuck in the startup business model, because there are completely different things you need to invest your time, money, and energy into in order to start scaling your business.

Scaling your business, when done right, should bring you all the abundance of seven-figure growth without the constant hustle and the cookie-cutter lackluster solutions. It should bring you all the consistency of a self-managing team without the fear of your key employees resigning and having to start over, as well as all the free time you can handle without sacrificing income or momentum. And all you have to do is build it the right way the first time to reap the benefits for years to come.

The Not-So-Sexy Side of Investing

So, what do you actually invest in when scaling your business? Listen…it’s not the sexy stuff, all right? It’s easy to get caught up in looking for that next shiny object or solution to help us make that growth leap that we’re looking for in our business; usually, this looks like focusing on marketing and sales tactics.

But when it’s time for scaling your business, the most likely reason you’re not seeing the growth you want is not because you’re not doing enough marketing and sales. It’s most likely not because you don’t have enough leads.

That’s a very common misconception, but in reality, the reason you’re not leaping to that next level is because of other things in your business. Let me tell you what to look at instead…

Business Model

Let’s start by looking at the business model. You have to invest in your business model to make sure that things are working properly and that you are able to start scaling your business model that you have.

Is your business model currently scalable? Or, if you start scaling your business and growing it, are you just going to have to spend more money to make more money, and in the end you end up making the same amount of money at the end of the day? Because if you do all this work just to end up exactly where you started, what’s the point?

Therefore, we really want to look at the business model: what needs to be tweaked, what needs to be amplified, and what needs to be eliminated completely for you to really be able to start scaling your business to that next level.

Now, for those of you who have gotten to the 250K mark in your business, there are a lot of things that you are doing right in your business already. So at this point, it’s not about throwing everything out and starting over; it’s about fine-tuning what you already have going on and leveraging the success that you’ve built so far to springboard you into that next level.

Operations

So number one, you need to invest in your business model: assess what’s working, what’s not working, and then fine-tune so that it’s scalable and profitable. Number two, you need to invest in your operations.

This means taking a look at the delivery side of things and figuring out how you can begin to streamline delivery and get it off of your own shoulders.

As CEOs, we often think that we are irreplaceable. We think that nobody else can deliver the kind of service or the kind of results that we can; that’s a common misconception that usually comes from you not having invested enough time and energy in your operations to make them reproducible so somebody else can actually create those same results for your clients.

If you really want to work on scaling your business to that next level, you need to be able to take a backseat and let other people on your team shine. You also have to get really particular about the exact mechanism and the exact workflow for delivering the services that you offer. And once you do that, you then need to automate all of the delivery and all the operations in your business so they’re extremely reproducible.

You want it to be easy to delegate. You want it to be easy to have a brand-new team member step in and learn what needs to get done just by following the systems and the procedures you already worked out.

If you don’t invest in your operations, you’re coming up with clunky, cumbersome capacity blocks that literally are going to stop you from growing and scaling your business. No matter how much marketing money or ad dollars you spend, you can’t grow if you’re bumping up against capacity blocks inside your operations. It’s an impossibility.

The Team

The next thing that you really need to invest in as you’re scaling your business is your team. You need to have the right team members in the right places.

Now, when it comes to the team, you usually have to invest ahead of time. You want to bring enough people in that you can support the growth you want to see as you start scaling your business.

One of the common questions I ask myself all the time, and I also ask my clients a lot: “What would break if you grew your business by ten times overnight?” Whatever would break, whatever would fall apart, those are the things to fix. And if the answer is you, the CEO, would be the thing to break, you need to find a way to shift things so you are leading the way with a capable team running the day-to-day. This way, you can step into the one role you cannot delegate: the role of the visionary.

You cannot delegate creating the vision. Without the vision, the business will fade. It will die. It will be done. You need to treat that as gold rather than a nicety that you get to when you have enough time.

Leadership

The fourth thing to invest in while scaling your business is leadership. When you have a bigger team, a bigger operation, and you’re scaling your business, there are a lot more moving pieces to manage.

Things can get a little chaotic if you haven’t simplified before you scale up. I always say you have to simplify before you multiply, or you’ll end up only multiplying chaos.

Leadership is a really big part of this simplification piece, because your team and your community and your audience and your clients are all going to look at you. They’re going to rely on you to lead the way, to tell them what to do next and to tell them where everything is heading.

You are the energy that is running the business. Now, that doesn’t mean that we have to do it all, but our vibration, our energy, and how we show up as leaders has a really big impact on what happens with the team and how the services get delivered to the clients, as well as how the clients feel treated and how the community feels heard.

Invest Carefully!

So, when it comes to scaling your business, you need to invest in your business models. You have to have a model that can actually scale and still remain profitable. You need to invest in your operations and automate and streamline everything. You need to invest in your team and get the right people in the right seats so that you can delegate and get a lot of the day-to-day things off your plate. And lastly, you need to invest in yourself as a leader and protect your place as the visionary CEO.

These are the things that are really going to help you with scaling your business to the next level. And if you ever need our support, good news—that’s what we are here for!

If you want to make sure you never miss an episode, come follow the 7 Figure Freedom Podcast on Spotify, subscribe on Google, or head over to Apple Podcasts. In the meantime, I’d love to connect with you over on Instagram or in the 7 Figure Freedom Club Facebook group so we can chat about what you got out of this episode!

Are you wondering if you’re ready to take the next step in your business? Curious about whether you’re a good fit for our services? Take the free business assessment quiz to find out! And if you want to learn more, you can visit my website or schedule a call with me today. I can’t wait to hear from you!