#170 Don’t Scale Until You’ve Asked Yourself These Questions

In this episode, Ilonka dives into what it really takes to grow your business in a way that’s sustainable—without burning out or breaking everything in the process. She shares why having a clear growth plan matters, how to figure out what’s already working (so you can do more of that), and what kind of structure you actually need to support the growth you’re aiming for. You’ll walk away with five powerful questions to help you stress-test your business and start preparing for the next level—without adding more chaos.

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Transcript

Ilonka Ras (00:00.162)
This is episode number 170. And today we're talking about what your business needs in order for it to grow in a way that is sustainable and that won't break you or the business. Let's go. Welcome to the Effortless CEO podcast. The only show that teaches South African business owners how to improve their operations and design a business that can run without them.

If you're interested in leading your team more effectively, creating more operational efficiency, delivering with excellence while getting some of your life back, then you're in the right place. Here's your host, Strategic Intervention Coach and Operations Specialist, Ilonka Ras.

Now, every single business owner that I talk to wants to grow. Growth is sort of baked into our DNA as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as humans. We are motivated by momentum. We thrive on progress. And many of the business owners that I talk to want to grow. They have big dreams of growth for their business. And this is great.

But I also see many business owners who have this dream of rapid growth. Like it's not happening fast enough and they want it to happen faster. And so it really makes me think of this idea of like going viral. We want to grow quickly. We want to scale quickly, but we don't often sit down and really investigate, really ask ourselves whether the business has the infrastructure to sustain that growth.

to actually make it possible. But I'm going to share a few questions that I like to ask my clients, especially around the topic of growth, creating a clear plan for the growth and also making sure that the business has all of the structures and support inside of it to make the growth possible and to do it in a way that is sustainable so that we can actually carry the growth into the future. The first question that I want you to think about for yourself is,

Ilonka Ras (02:13.688)
whether you have a clear plan for what growth could or should look like in your business. So maybe you have a goal and you want to increase your revenue, you want to increase profits. You may even have a plan for how you're going to do that. But do you have a plan for the back end of the business? Have you thought about the things that need to be in place to support the growth? When we think about growth, we equate growth to more.

right, offering more things, doing more inside of the business. So we assume that growth would mean more stuff, more tools, more offers, being on more marketing channels or marketing ourselves on different channels that we, that we might be using right now, offering more services. And this isn't necessarily wrong, but what I want to invite you to really consider is whether it's necessary.

Is it really necessary for more or should we rather focus on doing things better, working smarter, focusing and deepening our effectiveness and efficiency? Before we add anything to our plates, before we add any more to the equation, we want to first look at what is already working and how can we double down on that?

I'm going to share these questions and I've already listed a few. If you are able to write these down, then definitely do that. If you're driving and maybe you're not in a space right now where you can actually take the time to answer these questions for yourself. I always suggest to my clients to take what we call a strategy hour inside of their business once a week, where they can sit down and really think about the strategic moves they want to make inside of their business. Right? So thinking.

about the future of the business, the vision for the business, and just strategically aligning themselves to it. And this is a great time to ask yourself these questions, right? Because this is what it means to be the CEO of the business. We want to look into the future and come up with some really good plans for how we are going to get there and what it would look like. When we do this, when we create this growth plan, before we add anything,

Ilonka Ras (04:39.938)
We want to focus on what is already working. So my next question would be, do you know what's already working? So often we're not, and this, this sounds and seems like such an obvious question, such an obvious thing to do, but it's not obvious. I see this so often with my clients. We are not aware of what is already working. We're so in the day to day. We're so focused on just getting

getting things done and sort of chasing the next goal or the next thing that, that, you know, has, come onto our plate, but we often make things more complicated. We add things unnecessarily because we think that the things that we're doing aren't working. want you to really consider your business and look at the moving pieces of your business and ask yourself what is working.

So in my private coaching program, one of the things that we do is we look at the business in four very distinct buckets. We look at how you attract clients into your world. We look at how you convert potential clients into paying customers or paying clients. Then we look at how you deliver to those clients. And then lastly, we look at how you manage the money inside of your business. And so if you think about those four buckets, do you know what is working?

and what isn't working in each of them, because this is going to give you an indication about where to put more of your focus, either to fix things or to double down on things. And so when we create or craft our growth plan for our business, specifically the back end of the business, the things that we need to be aware of, the things that we need to have in place in order for the business to grow smoothly, right?

These are the things we want to consider. want to double down on what is working already. And once you know what is working, that's going to have an effect on what that growth plan looks like. Whether you add things, whether you take things away. So knowing this is a crucial part of it. Also, I am a firm believer that we get what we prepare for. If we want to grow our businesses, we should prepare for growth.

Ilonka Ras (07:02.05)
We should make sure that we are ready when those opportunities come knocking. love how I think it is Abram Hicks that always says, you get ready to get ready, right? You're, you want to be ready to be ready once that thing comes knocking on your door. I also know that if we are ready, if we prepare the business as much as we possibly can from this vantage point that we are at right now.

we can actually see and spot opportunities so much faster. You want to prepare your business in a way that it will support the growth that you want. You want to prepare the business so that when growth happens, it's not going to break the business. You will be able to take on the growth and do it in a way that isn't going to make everyone lose their minds because now they have so much on their plate that they can't think. I always say that when we

have things inside of the business that isn't working, things that hurt right now. And inevitably every business has these things. When things hurt now, when we grow, those things won't hurt less, they'll hurt more. And it's because growth amplifies our inefficiencies. Growth makes the lack of structure, the lack of stability, it makes it worse when we grow.

When we prepare for growth, when we think about the growth that we want to achieve inside of this business and with the business, we want to make sure that we are fixing these little inefficiencies that can hurt the growth in the future. Right? So that's the work that we want to do now, because what you build now is what you will have to operate with when opportunity comes knocking. So the business that you build now is the business

that's going to either be ready for the growth or not. It's either going to be capable of sustaining the growth or not. So one question that you can ask yourself that will help you to distinguish and to zone in on the things that actually need your attention in order for your business to be able to take on the growth in the future is this. If your business doubled today, what would break?

Ilonka Ras (09:23.286)
What would cause a lot of stress? Where would things fall apart? Right? So if all of a sudden you had double the amount of clients, what would not work in the way that you're doing it now? Because this is going to be where you want to start. These are the things that you want to systematically start streamlining.

improving, automating, or doing less of, doing better, right? You want to focus in on these things so that when it does happen, when the business does grow and there is double the amount of income or clients, that the business can actually handle it. What I also often see happening is when we go through this exercise, when we take the time to actually answer these questions for ourselves,

We inevitably find the things inside of the business that isn't really working as well as we want it to. When we think about the things that we have in all of these components of the business, the things that we do to market the business, the way that we deliver to our clients. Like when we think about these different buckets inside of the business, we inevitably find things that we can really stop doing because it's almost like dead weight in the business. We are doing it, but it's not really.

delivering the value or the results that we want. Going through this exercise, streamlining the business so that it can actually support growth is going to help you to run a smoother business now as well, because it's going to show you all of the little inefficiencies, all of the things that you can improve on that will not only support the growth in the future, but also support the current business.

And once you know what is working, what isn't working, and once you've zoned in on what this one thing is that you can improve on, and I always suggest picking one thing, not 20 things, because you might go through this exercise and realize, my word, are so many things that I need to improve on. Just pick one thing, one system, one process, one area, one small component of the business that if you improved it today, if you put it in place,

Ilonka Ras (11:37.848)
today that it would make growth easier tomorrow. Preparing our business for growth is not about rebuilding the entire business. It's not about changing all of it at once because then we will also be breaking things that might be working perfectly fine. It's really about spotting that big domino. The one thing that if we improve it, it will unlock space for growth, ease and flow.

Answering these questions for yourself is going to help you to gain clarity and to identify the areas that need your attention as the CEO of the business, the areas that need your vision, that need your creativity in order for this business to run well, not just now, but into the future in order for you to step up and open up space for the growth that you know is possible and the growth that you want.

We often sabotage our own growth because consciously, unconsciously, we know that the business won't be able to deal with more. It won't be able to handle more without things falling apart. And the last thing that we want is to not grow because of something really simple, because of something that we can take control of, that we can fix, that we can improve on today.

So these are the types of conversations and exercises that I walk my clients through inside of my private coaching program. But I am actually doing a masterclass called the five steps to build a firm that can run without you. It's happening this Thursday, the 24th of April at 11 a.m. It's going to be live via Zoom. And we are going to talk about the five things.

that you want to focus on as a business owner to create the structure for future growth. The structure that your business needs, not only to grow and to create space for growth, but to also do it in a way that is sustainable. And when I say sustainable, it's growth that isn't dependent on you, the business owner, showing up 100 % of the time. So that's what we're going to discuss in this week's masterclass. You can head over to the show notes. The link is there.

Ilonka Ras (13:58.242)
You can also visit my website iloncaraz.com forward slash scale to register your free spot. And then I'll either see you in the masterclass on Thursday or I will chat to you again next week. I hope you have an amazing day. Bye.