AJV (00:00): All right y’all. So I was having a recent conversation about growth and scale and which one do you need when, and I had kind of like teed up this conversation as growth is about growing revenue, but scale is about growing profits. And so when should you turn your focus from growth to scale? And in this really helpful conversation, that whole idea just kind of imploded in a really healthy way. And so I thought it was worth sharing is that don’t think about growth versus scale. We as business owners personal brands, entrepreneurs, all the same thing. We need both. We need growth and we need to be paying attention to scale when it comes to profits early on. But don’t confuse the two, right? Healthy growth means that you are not going to go out of business, you’re not gonna run outta steam, you’re not gonna experience burnout. AJV (01:04): You’re not trying to do it in some expeditious manner where you’re spending all this money before you’re making it. But you can grow and have a focus on profits too. And this kind of, this concept of you should always have a focus on profits even in the midst of growth or scale, even when you’re doing capital investments with personnel hiring or technology or real estate. It’s like that doesn’t mean you don’t have a focus on profits. You always have a focus on profits, even in the midst of growth phases. And scale does not always mean that there is a revenue growth and a scale growth. And scale means you’re growing profits. That’s not really the right way to think about it. And it was such a healthy conversation for me to come back and go, whoa, okay, I need to realign my thinking here. AJV (01:56): It’s like I always need to be focused on profits, even in heavy growth seasons. And it’s not that you can grow or scale, it’s like, oh, they happen together, they can happen together, but you gotta have a good plan. So that’s what the rest of this conversation’s about is how do you have a plan for healthy growth while also keeping keeping your eyes on profits, which should always just happen synchronistically, right? It’s not one or the other. So here’s a couple of things that came outta this conversation is that typically there are two phases of business. Phase one, get customers, phase two, improve operations, and they go in that order, . So I just know that it is easy to sometimes oftentimes get distracted by going, we need to create better services. We need to have better marketing, we need better this, we need more of this. We need to da, da da da da. And we take our eye off the ball, which is actually what keeps us in business, which is we need to get more customers AJV (02:59): And we need to keep the ones that we have. And that is a part of improving operations and improving systems. But you can improve on what you have if you don’t have customers coming in. So this is in order one, get customers, two, get more customers, three, improve operations. That’s in order, right? And often we spend all of our money doing the ladder too soon. And that doesn’t mean you don’t still have a heart and a desire and a passion for your customers, but in order to do all the other things, you have to have customers, you have to have revenue to then have expenses to do those things. So get customers, get more customers, improve operations. That’s the order that it goes in. Always keep a focus on profits. Even when you start, you don’t, don’t sell yourself on the bad idea that you’re in startup mode. AJV (03:46): So there are no profits. That’s bad business, that’s bad mindset, that’s a bad thinking. It’s like no, you can have a startup and still have profits. That just takes discipline. That takes patience. And those are things that are required for good, healthy growth. Good. It was a good reminder for me. It’s not growth versus scale. It’s growth and scale. And the reason that people don’t like to talk about growth often is because growth sounds like work and scale sounds like automation. . So like, but growth is work, but that’s what works, right? It, it does take effort and it takes investment of time, money and resources. Yeah, growth is work, but it’s also what works. The other thing is just this importance, like the radical importance of your mindset as an entrepreneur. That’s, and not just an entrepreneur, but just as a human being. AJV (04:44): The mindset is really important. And so these were some of like the key takeaways from this conversation around growth and scale, but more important of well, how do you get there? And the conversation naturally led lended itself to this important conversation on attitude and mindsets. And these are a few of the takeaways that really resonated with me. So I hope they resonate with you is number one, you need people. So don’t take advantage of them and don’t take ’em for granted. You need them. Do you need people as clients? Do you need people as team members? You need people as your friends. You need people and people are not a burden, they’re a privilege. And it’s not your burden to lead people. It’s your privilege to lead people. And that’s a radical mindset, right? I hear this term a lot. Like, I got people problems. No, you don’t not you have people responsibilities, right? And that’s just a slight mindset change. Now, I don’t have people problems. I have people responsibilities cuz it’s my privilege that I get the chance to lead a team of people who are committed to me and my company and my mission. AJV (05:57): That is a privilege that I get and it’s my responsibility to help lead these people. It’s not a burden to, to take care of problems. So, so powerful. Just really helpful of going the way that we allow ourselves to talk to ourselves and the way that we allow things to populate in our vernacular and our vocabulary, in our conversations. It actually does one of two things. It incredibly helps, is incredibly helpful or it’s incredibly detrimental and it’s completely the thoughts and the words that you allow into your mind that put you on a certain trajectory. You are rather gonna go down the path of I have all these problems, all these people, all these issues. And then you’re just, it’s Debbie Downer mode, right? It’s like I got all these things to go. It’s so crazy. Or it’s, I get the privilege of leading a group of people that have, are committing 40 hours of their life to me every week and they’re committed to seeing through a vision that they’re buying into. AJV (07:04): Like that’s a privilege. What a different even physical feeling that comes upon me of going, it’s my privilege, not my burden, right? It’s my responsibility, not my problem. Just those little things make a radical difference in how you view growth and revenue and customer acquisition and customer retention and profits and scale. Just those two slight things, majorly just in a 45 minute conversation can shift the way that you approach the rest of your day, if not your month or even your life. So your mindset matters when it comes to how you wanna grow your business, how you, how you wanna actually keep people, keep clients and retain profits. Your mindset matters. And then the last thing I was gonna share from this conversation is I asked a question. I said, if there was one common denominator of success of like when you see this and people are companies if there was one thing that you said, I know when I see this, that success is inevitable. AJV (08:08): It may not be around the corner, but it’s inevitable for this person in this company. What would that one thing be? What would that common denominator be? And I love the answer to this question. You said I know for a fact when people can actually see in themselves and their own companies the mistakes that they’ve made and they have the courage to change them, I know that at some point they’re gonna win it. Whatever they’re doing, it’s going to turn successful, it’s going to grow, it’s gonna have profits, it’s gonna make a difference. But when you’re able to look yourself and your company in the mirror and go, that’s not working, that was a mistake. And that’s okay cuz we can change it. And when you have the courage to do that and you actually do the, have the discipline AJV (08:55): To do the work that it takes to make those changes at some point down the line, it it could be quickly, it may not be quickly, but at some point you’re going to be successful. That was really humbling and enlightening of going. All it takes is for me to be honest with myself about what I’m doing in my own business, in my, with my own time. And that is the indicator of success of can I be honest enough and then have the courage to do the work that’s required to make the change so helpful. I was like this philosophical dream that happened in this conversation with so many nuggets in such a good way. So I took away so much. I hope that you grabbed at least something from my downloads and hopefully it helps you and your business and on your day and if it, if enough not today, that it helps you at some day in the future. So I’ll catch you next time. Until then, I’ll see you later.