Build it, Nail it, Scale it.

Are you working more hours than you were two years ago without seeing meaningful gains? In this episode, I break down the difference between growth and scale, two words founders often use interchangeably, even though they require completely different strategies. Drawing from my early experience building a million-dollar popcorn sales region and my current journey developing a franchise system, I share how to recognize when you’re growing a business versus creating a complicated job that depends entirely on you.

I also walk you through three questions that will help you determine whether you’re ready to scale, from what happens when you step away to whether your results can be replicated by someone else. This episode is your reminder that staying in growth mode isn’t a failure, it may simply be the right sequence for your business. Build the thing, nail the thing, and then scale the thing. Tune in now, subscribe to the Found-HER newsletter, and share this episode with a business bestie who’s ready to stop being the ceiling of her business.

Links:
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Website: https://found-her.ca
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberley.hiebert
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberleyhiebert
Door Gurus: https://doorgurusfranchise.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:03

Let me ask you something. Are you working more hours than you were two years ago and making roughly the same? Maybe even a little bit more, maybe not. Maybe your profits are going. But it doesn't, it doesn't feel like you're actually making any gains. And you feel like you need to hustle more. But here's the thing: it's not a hustle problem. This is a growth versus scale problem. And today we're going to talk about exactly what that means and how to define growth versus scale and how to decide when you need what. Hey besties, I'm Kimberly Hebert. This is the Founder Podcast for founders who are done guessing and ready to build something real. I'm the co-founder of Door Gurus. I'm a coach and a mentor, and I spent more than 35 years building businesses, some of them well, some of them badly, and all of them honestly. In this episode today, we're going to talk about the difference between growth and scale. These are two words people use interchangeably, two completely different problems, and confusing them is costing you. I see this all the time. I see the frustration when people are trying to build the lifestyle that they dream of by growing their business, not scaling their business. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start off but back back in the 90s. Yeah, we're going all the way back. Some of you weren't even born then, but back in the 90s to what would have been some of the original quote unquote networking or MLMs, if you will, home parties, the home party system. And I was selling popcorn of all things. I had built it from zero to 75 women across my province selling a million dollars of popcorn a year. And I thought, and I and I was uh independent rep for the the people like I didn't own the actual snack, if you will, but I was an independent, I would be like a it would have been like a network marketer, I guess. And for them, they were scaling, but for me, I was growing and I was growing the business. It happened so fast. It was like a couple of years of just like no pun intended, exploding. However, where I found myself is like every problem had to come back to me. Every every new rep needed me to onboard them. I onboarded everybody. I coached them, trained them how to engage and sell and present the product and enhance sales and create an experience that had other women desperate and craving to be part of and to uh join. Uh, but it was me. It was me doing all of that. And in fact, it became so successful that the original owners of the snack company they started using me to franchise to scale. So they started using me to scale. But for me, I was still just growing my region. I could not scale it. And this is how you know if you're a growing or scaling. One of the things to know is the moment you stop doing it, stop pushing. So the moment I stopped recruiting, I stopped training, I stopped uh um problem solving, everything in the business slowed down. Everything. And that's how you know that it's a growth, that there's more of you in it. So in this case, there was more of me in more of the places doing more of the things. And it didn't work. What I wish I'd known then, that I now know 35 years later, as I'm building a franchise, which is scaling, is that I wasn't really building a business in that respect. I was building a very complicated job. And so much so that when I left that, the whole thing fell apart. It didn't continue to produce, um, which would tell you that the growth was really driven by me and not the actual product or the brand or the system. So let me give you the clearest definition that I have ever found, and I've tested this with other founders. Growth adds scale multiplies. Growth is doing more of what already works. So let's start there. I'm gonna start with where we are, where I am today in building a franchise because this is such a perfect example. So growth is doing more of what already works. So a number of years ago, we found ourselves, you know, in this space where we saw this gap in the industry within the door industry. And we found ourselves in this space because I was sick. I had cancer, we had everything slowed down. And my husband soon discovered that there was this huge gap in the industry, and he spent a year in it before, and then and then both of us were like, wait a sec, there's a big demand here. What is happening? So then we started growing it because we started to be really intentional about the services, about where we're finding clients, where customers were finding us. We started growing it to see is this really, is this just a one-off, uh doing some market fit, that kind of stuff. And so that's what we started to do. We started to get more clients, more hustle, and it required more of him at this point at every single stage because he was the only one like trained to do the work. And so while I was busy in the background putting the business strategy together, because we already knew this can grow fast, but what we'll do, it was it will tap him out. We knew that we need to scale, but before you scale, before you create systems and multiply, you have to have something that you want to multiply. And this is really the foundation of any kind of franchising, which is why you hear a lot of times people say you should build your business like you would a franchise. And it's not, it's not to make it an impersonal entity, it's it's in order to create a business that actually fuels the lifestyle and the impact that's probably got you in uh as an entrepreneur in the first place. So you so remember, you cannot scale what you haven't grown. So if you've already grown something, you're in growth mode. You now the question, oh, I'll get to the question. So I'm getting ahead of myself. Um, scale is something different than just growing. So growing is doing more of, right? So, like I said, we're going back to the door business, stumbled across this gap. Let's do more of it and see if it's a real thing or is it just a one-off thing? But scale is is when you build a system, a team, process, and a repeatable machine. Uh, and it produces results without you in every single part of it. So scale will empty your calendar, whereas growth adds to your calendar. And it's not because you're working less, but because the work is happening without you having to be in every single part of it every single time. So I want to ask you this question: are you the product or do you have a product? Now, I know if you are the product, like every single founder is the product, here's your ceiling. I can tell you right now, without even having a conversation with you. I know it sounds boldly, but here's the ceiling. Nobody will do it like you. Hold on to that. We're gonna come back to that. But if every client is buying access to you specifically, and you're probably feeling this already, your time, your brain, your presence, you are the product. You can grow that, but you cannot scale that. And it's not, there's no good, bad, or or indifferent here. This is really just about having the understanding and the intention to align what you're doing with what you want, your vision, what you see, how you how you plan on having your business fulfill your life and or legacy or impact or whatever it is. So if you've built something can be that can be delivered, taught, or replicated, you have a product. And now we can talk about scale. If you are still the one delivering every single, I call it fulfillment, like it's like the fulfillment of the service, your time, your brain, your presence, then there is a way that you can stop growing that and scale it, but there's some things that have to happen in between. So, how do you know which one you need? This is really where we're at, right? Because not everybody wants to scale, not everybody needs to scale, not everybody, you know, just because you might want to scale doesn't mean you want to franchise. So um just think about scaling as having the business run without you having to fulfill what I call fulfillment, be the fulfillment center. I always think of like Amazon. So, question number one get your pen and paper if you're driving. I'll come back to this. But question number one if you took two weeks completely off, no phone, no email, no you. What happens to your revenue? If the honest answer is it stops or it panics, you're in growth mode. You are the system. And again, that's not a failure, that's your starting point, right? Because you have to have something, you have to have something to grow something to scale something. Those three things need to be there. So, question that's question number one. Question number two Do you have a process that somebody else could follow to produce the same result you produce? A sales script, an onboarding flow, a delivery framework. If the answer is no, you're still growing, which again, no judgment, it's fine, but you need to build the process before you try to scale it. And I'm it sounds super easy building the process. Building the process is where every founder gets stuck. As a side note, this is what I'm really good at building the process. Question three Do you have the margin, financial and personal? Because margin equals bandwidth. Do you have the profit margin and the personal margin bandwidth to invest in building infrastructure? Because scaling requires infrastructure. Scaling requires some investment before it returns to you. If you're running on empty, scale is the wrong priority. Growth is. So those are some of the things most founders, like in the zero to one million range, are in growth mode. And you should be. Again, growth mode is super important. We can't go just from like concept to scale. It's your growth mode creates some validation. It creates, uh, it helps you kind of iterate the product or service, uh, kind of tweak it, if you will. That's what I mean by iteration. The mistake is trying to scale it before you've nailed what's actually working. So I'm not suggesting that you just go straight to scale. But if you're producing, and I always say I can typically tell if a found solo founder is producing between three and five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, they're tapped out. You may have one person helping you with some back-end stuff or uh, you know, executive stuff, but you're probably, you're probably running uh, what are they burning the burning the candle at both ends and you'll tap out? And so the question is if you're in that space, if you're consistently doing three to five hundred thousand dollars in revenue, the question you want to ask yourself is do you want growth? Do you want to stay the same? Do you want growth or do you want scale? I do, I do actually have uh a newsletter. It's called the Found Her Newsletter, just as a side note, that also will like I I produce it monthly, and it also continues to build on growing and scaling and uh you know all of those things in and building your business. So you can sign up for the newsletter. I think it the link should be in the show notes. It is in the show notes, or you can email or whatever. But here's what I want to leave you with today. The goal isn't to scale fast, the goal is to build something that works without you being the ceiling of it so that it can continue to work for you once you've invested the infrastructure. For instance, we've spent, so we've been franchising at the time of this recording, we're in our fourth year. We spent the first, so it's actually been six years in total. We spent two years in growing and then we went straight to scale. We did that because we had the financial and personal margin to do that. And so we were able to bring in some key players to help us scale. So we actually started to scale. We have now built the infrastructure that we could hold easily our infrastructure, our systems, infrastructure equals systems, can hold about 20 to 25 franchise partners before we need to then improve and uh expand. So go into growth mode, right? So we can we've built that whole engine already. So sometimes it takes longer than we want it to, and I'm gonna I'm gonna actually say it always takes longer than we want it to. Uh, and sometimes it means you need to stay in growth mode for another year or so so that you have the foundation and the margins to scale. And those are really good indicators to look. And again, if you're looking to, if you're curious about this for you and your business, again, shameless plug, feel free to reach out. But if it's taking longer and you need to stay in growth mode longer, that's okay. It's not a failure, it's just the sequencing. The founders who burn out, the ones who I talk to who are exhausted and resentful and wondering why they started, they tried to scale before they were ready, or they have spent too much time in growth mode thinking they are scaling and feeling frustrated because they don't see the scaling results. So remember, we don't want to build bigger before we build better. We don't want to do that. Build the thing. Here it is, like sum it up. Build the thing, nail the thing, then scale the thing in that order. That those are the three orders or the three orders. Those are the three things, the order of events. Build the thing, nail the thing, then scale the thing. If this hits home, and I hope it did or helps clarify, two things, two things I need from you. Subscribe to the founder newsletter. Uh every, well, I'm sending it out every month. I don't send it out weekly, so don't worry, I won't bombard your inbox. But I send out a framework, a founder truth, and some things that you can actually use, no fluff, uh, just just bold truth. I also share stories of other founders and the messy middle that they go through. And also, if you know a founder who needed to hear this today, send them this episode. And don't forget to subscribe and please, please, please leave uh review and rate me. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.