This is episode number five in a mini-series of 11, focusing on the mistakes women make that prevent us from generating $1 million-plus in annual revenue. Today’s focus is on the scalability mistake.
We’ve talked about the fact that a business that’s making less than a million dollars a year is still considered a startup. That phase of business is the most cumbersome phase I would say because it’s constant validation, constant pivoting, constant questioning, and growth both in the business as well as in us professionally. So the faster we can get out of it and scale our business, the easier life will be so to speak. To do that, we have to know which horse to bet on.
Think about a well-known business. Nike. Apple. One of the large companies. Think about how they function in today’s world. The problem when you think about them is that the way that they work today is not the way in which they started to operate. That’s really important to understand. Many times we will look at businesses that we admire, or that we want to mimic or copy in some capacity, and we see them in a different phase of business. We don’t see them as the startup they used to be, we see them as the evolving machine that they are. But because we see them as successful, we want to be like them. But we can’t jump to where they are today, we have to start where they started.
We can’t sell shoes, and clothes, and sporting equipment, and bags, and accessories like Nike does today. No, we have to start like they did, with just the shoes. Said differently, we may have 10 great ideas. But we can’t work on all 10 great ideas. We have to pick the one that is going to generate the most revenue, that is scalable, and we have to run with that one.
The mistake that many women make is either they try to create too many products and too many offers, so their capital is spread too thin and they can’t scale any of those ideas. Or, they pick the wrong offer to start with; they pick a short-term revenue generator instead of a long-term scalable revenue generator. We can’t let our “fixer” mentality take over and push us to solve 10 problems at once. Nor can we let the inner villain of self-doubt creep in and convince ourselves that we should pursue the lesser product out of the gate in order to “play it safe.”
If you look in the mirror and this sounds like you, you have acknowledged it. Then you need to accept the truth, you need one product and one offer that, after doing the proper market research, is the scalable product you want to establish your company around.
If you are trying to chase too many revenue lines or are thinking about starting small with a few little projects, shift gears. Don’t make the scalability mistake.
Be Legendary!