Why is my Business not scaling up? That's one of the most frequent questions I get asked and the reason most of my clients sign up with me at Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence™. The fact is Businesses are meant to scale-up and if they aren't, it is because we come in the way. The only way a sustainable business can be built is to lead it to its highest potential; otherwise it meanders along the Path of Mediocrity in the company of Struggle, Burnt-out and Purposelessness.

Here are 5 different types of Entrepreneurs who will not be able to scale-up their business and one type who definitely will. If you are committed to grow your business, identify which one of these limiting entrepreneurial patterns you come close to and build a conscious growth strategy to not fall in the trap of these default patterns by inculcating a recommended set of habits, routines and practices.

1. The Embarrassed Entrepreneur: Scaling-up requires a deep-down authentically spiritual belief in one's product / service that it is meant to make a dent in the Universe. Without that kind of belief, founders are unable to do whatever it takes to scale-up. They feel embarrassed, uncomfortable and overwhelmed to take the audacious actions needed to grow their business. They feel embarrassed, uncomfortable and overwhelmed to talk about their most expensive and highest value-delivering offering because in their words, 'it feels uncomfortably salesy', and end up spending 80% of their customer creation time creating and selling low-end products. Then, they wonder why their revenues and profits are not growing inspite of all the hard-work they end up doing. They want to walk on the path which feels in sync with who they feel they are, which is avoiding anything that puts them out of their Comfort Zone.  

Growth Strategy: Sara Blakely, youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world, makes it a daily practise to embarrass herself to ensure she gets off her fear of embarrassment on a daily basis, which is what she credits her growth as an entrepreneur to. She shared how one day she started singing in the elevator full of people. That requires massive guts. No wonder from being a chipmunk at Disney World welcoming people for 3 months and a door-to-door fax-machine sales person for 7 straight years, she has been able to bootstrap a global billion dollar business without any external funds.  You need guts to build a business of that scale and therefore, build a daily practise to embarrass yourself. You will learn to be comfortable with the uncomfortable, giving you inner power and strength to build a great business.

The feeling of overwhelm is the reaction of the body to what is uncomfortable to the mind. The mind dislikes being embarrassed because our fear-sourced survival-seeking reptilian brain considers it as dangerous, having been trained over million of years of our evolutionary process to consider 'fitting in' as safe. 

We need to change the hard-wiring of this reptilian part of our brain for us to really take the powerful, bold, 'something that others will laugh at', 'different from what everyone else is doing' kind of actions to scale our business. 

2. The Do-Gooder Entrepreneur: These entrepreneurs are usually found in the helping professions. They run their business for the good of others and are unable to monetise the enormous work that they do because they miss to look at their business through the lens of a Business Model and fail to apply the rigour of the science of entrepreneurship. They end up getting burnt out, not feeling good about themselves, drained of energy and passion which is why they started their business in the first place. They end up picking up a job or doing something else to generate income for them to survive and miss the opportunity to make an enormous difference, contribution, impact and financial freedom through the work they are passionate about. They also usually resist structures and discipling themselves. They are continually seeking to feel good and focus their energies on completing smaller, less value-adding, tactical activities which will give them instant gratification. What would serve them is to focus their energies and efforts on strengthening themselves on the inside such that the neediness to feel good doesn't drive their actions; and are instead able to create the willpower to do the strategic work to scale their business.

Growth Strategy: Daily do one thing that you resist, don't want to do, fear doing to get off seeking 'feeling good'. Create daily, weekly, monthly growth structures and follow them. Consciously choose to spend 80% of your time on the strategy side of your business. Write it in your soul that without monetising your do-good efforts in a structured fashion, you will limit your and your business' ability to scale, reach the highest potential and make a massive difference. 

Challenge yourself to raise the price of your product / service beyond what feels comfortable; and then go ahead and give 10 times the value of this price.

3. The Needy Entrepreneur: Prospects end up running away from you as soon as possible because needy is creepy. You want customers, not so much to make a difference to their lives but because you are needy for their money as you need money to survive. You are running your business because you need money. A business scales and grows when it is focussed on making massive difference to its customer communities, instead of being focussed on generating money for you. 

In the words of Steve Jobs, "Being an entrepreneur is not about money or fame. It's about solving problems for society and the passion for creating opportunities where people only see problems."

Growth Strategy: Like one of my coaches used to say, have two kinds of projects - the sexy project and the cash project. The sexy project is your business through which you are doing the work that you love. Leading it to its highest potential requires legendary patience and super-human perseverance. If you haven't committed to building your business and serving your customer community for atleast 20 years, you may just miss to experience the joy of seeing your dreams realised.

The cash project gives you the money to survive from one day to the next and gives you the space to work on your sexy project. Yes, you need to have a day job to manage your family expenses and your business that you are passionate about is the night job that you are working on. You can quit your day job when your night job begins to generate income equal to your day job.

This will ensure you are not needy for your customer's money; and are selling to solve your customer's problems or helping them realise their dreams through your product / service. This way you will have customers chase you, instead of you chasing your customers and begging them to buy from you.

4. The Uninspired Entrepreneur: You don't know why you are doing the work you are doing. You don't feel the connection with your business. You are passionate about your craft but don't understand its purpose. You feel listless, uninspired and lost around your work. You are cutting stones instead of building cathedrals through your business and the emptiness in your heart keeps you unfulfilled. Good money comes in whenever you make yourself get up and go about the business of running your business and yet there isn't inspiration to scale it, grow it to its highest potential, to its greatest version. You wonder if you are in the right business, whether you should explore doing something else that would fulfil you more. Funny enough, the hollow emptiness follows you in your personal life as well and you remain unfulfilled there as well. Whatever you do, nothing seems to fill the hole in your heart, stitch the tear in your soul, bring peace and harmony in your mind and deep restfulness to your body.

You are missing the connection with your purpose of life which is the source of all inspiration. We live our purpose of life through the work we do, through the businesses we run. Your purpose is the Big Why of your Business. Without the Big Why, there doesn't seem to be any point in doing anything. You are an acknowledged expert in your domain and yet you don't feel the joyous exultation of running your business

Growth Strategy: Drop everything to figure the purpose of your life, and create a visceral connection between your purpose and your business. You will suddenly rediscover the stars in your eyes, a song on your lips, a dance to your feet, love in your heart for what you do and who you are. You will find the energy to effortlessly do all the hard work you used to avoid before to build a great business.

5. The Know-It-All Entrepreneur: I have deep compassion for this kind of an entrepreneur, though this is the type I cannot coach because they are uncoachable. They are in a rut and they can't even see it. They have all the answers, keep working and yet never seem to grow, professionally or personally. They are always arriving but never arrive. They pretend to others but what is even more debilitating is that they pretend to themselves and don't even know it. Their business is going to fall off from a cliff to a certain death unless they wake up.

Growth Strategy: Make deep self-inquiry and reflection a habit. Practise vulnerability, though it is the hardest for you. Be authentic about your own inauthenticity. Recognise your fear of not being good enough and that your 'Know-it-all' is a mask that you are wearing to hide this shameful secret in the basement of your psyche from others and from your own self. Know that we all have that shameful secret hiding inside of us; and part of our human journey to live in the expression of our highest self is to arrive at a point where 'I am me and that's enough.' rings true and loud. Learn to be coachable and take support. We all can do with support. Infact, without support of our mastermind group and our coach, it's rarely possible to hit the genius level work in our lives.

What type of Entrepreneur should we be then? The Peaceful Warrior Entrepreneur, who knows in his heart and as much as in his soul, that he is here on Earth to make a dent in the Universe through his business which is an expression of his work and his mission this lifetime. The Peaceful Warrior knows that scaling up the business is an inside-out job, that work is needed to be done on the inside for her to grow her business on the outside. Therefore, she neither feels helpless nor wastes her energy fighting the world. She works on transforming within instead of complaining about what's on the outside. She focuses her energy to learn massively to be the best in the world in her industry, instead of chasing customers. She connects with people with vulnerable authenticity instead of networking. He learns to balance the feminine and masculine aspects of his Being, instead of negating one aspect. Today, most of the businesses are an extreme expression of the masculine aspect - the war approach, the aggression, the need to dominate. The Peaceful Warrior learns to access her feminine aspect to balance the masculine and feminine energies in her to run her business by relying on her intuition, being empathetic and vulnerable, knowing how to talk to the Universe to take support to scale her business; while being assertive, having crystal clear clarity on what she wants and going after it with confidence to create it, having methods, processes and structures to quantify the process of business building and being determined to scale-up her business, integrating the feminine energy of growing in Leadership Depth with the masculine energy of Business Excellence and creating harmony between the two aspects through Craft Mastery.

Wishing you the joy of the journey of the Peaceful Warrior Entrepreneur (PWE) because it is only the PWE who believes in having it all and creates it for himself; instead of focussing on one area of his life at the cost of other areas:  

i. Deeply fulfilling, successful, profitable business supporting him to live his purpose of life; gifting him with impact, contribution and financial freedom
and
ii. Loving, harmonious relationships at work and at home
and
iii. Happy, healthy, responsible kids with their genius joyfully expressed
and
iv. Nourishing, nurturing himself to the highest level of fitness and well-being (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually)
and
v. Making a massive difference through the work he does

Love,
​Jyoti.

Its simpler, less stressful and more return on hours invested to run a professionally managed large organization, than to run a small or a medium-sized business. Inspite of this, nearly all small and medium-sized business owners choose to remain small, consciously or unconsciously. Here's why:
1. The purpose is missing.
2. The business reflects the limitations of the business owner's personality.
3. The business owner is too busy working in the business than on the business.

The Purpose is Missing
Being an entrepreneur is not about money, or fame. Its about solving problems for the society and the passion of creating opportunities where people only see problems.
- Steve Jobs. Co-Founder, Apple. Net worth in 2011 at the time of his death: USD 10.2 Billion.

Being purpose driven provides a company the competitive edge, staff confidence and strong innovation. Recent research at Harvard shows that companies with a ‘higher purpose’ are more than three times as likely to retain their employees. Deloitte found that companies with a strong sense of purpose were almost twice as likely to be confident about business growth in both the short and long term. 
- Richard Branson. Founder, Virgin Group through which he started and controls more than 400 companies. Net worth: USD 5.1 Billion.

Most businesses are started with the objective of making the founder financially free. Though this is a sound objective, it doesn't have the horse-power to lead the founder too far. As long as the passion is more for making money than for making a difference through solving a problem; the business meanders along the path of mediocrity without any definite direction.

Business is a beautiful opportunity to live your purpose of life. Most business owners are not aware of their purpose of life, leave alone have that be connected to the business that they run. As long as that disconnect remains; the businesses that they run will never deeply fulfil them nor create unimaginable wealth. The business owner will continue to dance to the tune of mediocrity, chasing their customers rather than experience the joy of customers chasing them.

The Business Reflects the Limitations of the Business Owner's Personality
Ask yourself: What are your strengths? What makes you different from everyone else? What are you terrible at? This introspection is important because it will offer an almost exact preview of how your company will operate down the line. Founders have demonstrated time and time again that the essence of your grown-up company is going to reflect your own key traits.
- Inc. (US Business Magazine)

This makes the business owners the biggest barrier to their own business' growth. Most of the time, the business owners are so busy being busy, rushing around, doing ten things at a time that there is no time for self-reflection to discover their own blind spots, their own limitations that impede the success of their business. There is no understanding of the importance of focusing on their leadership depth, which is the biggest block holding their business back. The business will scale to the extent the business owner scales up as a leader.

Some of the leadership skills that the business owners need to learn to grow their businesses with greater velocity - self-awareness of their limitations / blind spots and courage to go beyond; emotional intelligence to increase performance and productivity in the organization, starting with one's own self; effective delegation; creating a learning organization to provide thought leadership transforming the industry itself and inside of that the community that it is a part of; creating an organizational culture of personal accountability and excellence; creating a blue ocean to be a monopoly, leaving the competition far behind to fight bloody wars in the red ocean; inspiring (not motivating) employees, customers, suppliers and other stake-holders through leading, coaching and nurturing to give not only their mind but their hearts and souls to the Higher Purpose of the organization for the organization to cut-over from good to great.

The Business Owner is too Busy Working in the Business than on the Business
If you are a part of the painting, how can you see the whole picture to figure out if it is what you wanted in the first place or if the painting needs to look different? You need to step out of the painting to become the painter.

If you are engaged in operations day-in day-out; fire-fighting all the time; you won't have the clarity and the big-picture understanding to lead your business to greater heights of success and profitability. 

To be able to manage this transition, you will have to unlearn a lot of old habits and learn new ones which require you to keep stepping out of your comfort zone. To begin the journey to work on the business,
1. The first thing you want to do is set the Standards for everything because you don't want your business to buckle down as soon as you begin to step away.
2. The second step is to define, plan and implement the Standards through Systems, Procedures and Tools.
3. The next step is to Hire Right - giving greater importance to the mindset than the skillset because it is easier to coach people on skills than on the right mindset.
4. Train, train and train. Remember if there is a problem, it is always because either the process isn't there, or isn't implemented correctly or people are not trained to effectively follow through. Getting upset and angry is the shortest route to cutting out your connection to innovation and process excellence.
5. Delegation not by running away from what you don't want to do but by careful planning, coaching and measures based review to support your people to be successful in whatever task you delegate them with; which means they actually do the job better than you.

In Conclusion
Just as our responsibility to our infant is to support her growth till she stands independently on her own feet; it is our responsibility to support the growth of our business till it grows to become an extraordinary business, running independently of us. Any limitation that we place on business growth is more a function of our own personal limitations than anything else. To ensure business growth;
1. The business owner would begin with a deeper understanding of his own higher purpose and have that be lived through his business; so that his people have the experience of building a cathedral rather than merely cutting stones.
2. Be passionate about the personal transformation that the journey of leading your organization from good to great will require by nourishing, growing and transforming all the four bodies that we human beings possess - intellectual / mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.
3. Be clear right in the beginning about the intent to lead the business to greatness; and move towards working on the business than in the business at the right time.

If you follow the right approach and methodology, you will own not just one small struggling organization but many great organizations growing with velocity. 

​Wishing you many deeply fulfilling, successful, profitable, purpose-driven businesses that transform you and the world around you. 

Love, Jyoti.

I don't know of a better definition of a start-up than how Steve Blank puts it - A start-up is a temporary organization in search of a profitable, repeatable, scalable business model.

Start-ups are temporary organizations because you are not going to be forever in the search mode. You have to keep pivoting to find your sweet spot fast enough before your cash, passion and energy runs out. When you iteratively find your profitable, repeatable, scalable business model through a series of experiments with each feeding the next; you transition out of being a start-up to a company which scales-up on known parameters as the equation for growth has been discovered. In the final stage; you become an enterprise, hopefully keeping the start-up consciousness still alive for continuous innovation to deliver greater and greater value to your target community and be the best in your industry.

The entire business modeling exercise during the search phase starts with answering three basic questions:
1. Who is your customer?
2. What problem is he facing?
3. Is the problem critical enough for him to solve such that he is willing to pay you more than your cost of acquiring the customer and delivering the promised goods / service to him?

You run experiments, collect metrics to validate assumptions and keep pivoting to reach your profitable, repeatable, scalable business model. Here are 8 ways in which you can pivot to iterate forward to build a business that makes a huge difference to its target community, which is the only way to laugh all the way to the bank:
1. Customer Problem
2. Market Segment
3. Technology
4. Product Feature
5. Revenue Model
6. Sales Channel
7. Product vs Services
8. Pivoting to differentiate from Competition

A word of caution of here - pivoting too fast or too slow - can both lead to painful death of the start-up. Ensure you are connected strongly with your customers, entrepreneur communities and mentors; so that you have them holding the mirror to you all the time for you to keep course-correcting at the right time, at the right pace.

Most small businesses spray and pray, blindfolded; hoping something that they do will give them the profitability that they are seeking. Time to take off the cover from your eyes, learn and implement the science of business-building that gives you deeply fulfilling super success.

Love,
Jyoti.

Further Reading: ​https://www.forbes.com/sites/martinzwilling/2012/01/21/a-smart-business-knows-8-ways-to-pivot-their-vision/#1563b2717f96

In a study done in the US of high growth start-ups, more than 80% of these companies were financed through the founders' personal savings, credit cards and second mortgages. The founders of these start-ups essentially relied on debt or retained earnings to grow. 

Businesses nourished with customer's money follow the shortest route to success as you will be forced to think of ways to make the biggest difference to the customers by focussing on solving their problems rather than spending time wooing investors. More often than not, entrepreneurs confuse raising money with building a sustainable business. These two not only require two completely different mind-sets but also completely different skill-sets.

Time and brain-power spent by founders; in churning out business plans with 5-year projections to attract venture capital in an environment that is rapidly changing and uncertain by its very nature; is sheer wastage as this does not contribute towards strengthening the fundamentals of the business.

The only reason to raise money should be to scale your business, after you have hard data that proves you have a business model that is not only profitable, but repeatable and scalable. Without this, the investor money is too much too soon with the founders not having the entrepreneurial wisdom and maturity to lead their businesses towards contribution and sustainability. All that is left then are bubbles bursting all over the place. 

Here's what Arthur Rock; America's legendary venture capitalist who helped finance Fairchild Semiconductor, Teledyne, Apple and other companies; has to say - "I usually can tell the difference between people who have that fire in their stomachs and those who see their ideas primarily as a way to get rich. Far too many people are interested in building a financial empire instead of a great company. I want to build great companies. ... I look for people who want the same thing."

So, whether you are a founder or an investor, make it your business to build great companies that evolves humanity to the next level. Chase money, you may or may not end up anywhere. Chase making a difference and you are likely to create unimaginable wealth besides leaving a legacy behind. 

The relationship between investor and founder should be that of coach and coachee, mentor and mentee; with the investor committed to support the founder to create success even it means the original business model has to be trashed along with many others to follow because building a great business is an iterative process and you are not likely to hit gold with the first business idea.

Leave footprints in the sand of time; instead of dead dreams, lost hopes and a lot of heartburn. You can do this if you invest in the fundamental principles of business building, increasing your leadership depth and commit to be the world's best in what you do. Then, the entrepreneurial journey becomes the path to your highest self and your business mirrors that.

Love,
Jyoti.

My golf coach always says stop trying to hit the ball, focus on the perfect swing. In the beautiful dance of the body, mind, emotions and the being; the body swings, the ball just comes in the way and ever so gently reaches the farthest point when the ball, the club, body, mind, emotions and the being all become one.

And, so it is with business. If you are trying to hit profit, you will struggle more and become a two-left feet dancer chasing customers day in, day out. Stop.

Instead; bring your passion, inspiration & commitment to become the world's best in your domain and solve the real problem your customer is facing better than anyone else. In that graceful dance; you, the customer, the problem and the solution will become one. Joyful effective action will effortlessly flow out. Wealth creation will then be fun and deeply fulfilling. Customers will queue outside your door. You will experience mastery of life itself.

Enjoy the beautiful journey of making a difference to the world and winning over yourself through your business.

Love,
Jyoti.

The entrepreneur needs to focus on mastering three skills to ensure deeply fulfilling, sustainable success:

1. Entrepreneurial Excellence
2. Leadership Depth
3. Craft Mastery 

1. Entrepreneurial Excellence means understanding the basic science of building a great business and using it every step along the way, keeping impatience under lock and key. Here is the path:

a. Pick up a business idea that is linked to your passion, purpose of life. Picking up something just because it seems to have greater wealth creation opportunity is a sure road to boredom and the inability to keep the energy & enthusiasm going to grow the business. After a point, you no longer would be excited and the hard-work of raising a start-up would seem like an unnecessary struggle. Do yourself a favour; pick up something that fills you up with inspiration and brings the shine in your eyes as you think about it.

b. This business idea now needs to be married to what's missing in the world. Which target community does the business idea serve? What is the pain faced by that target community that fills you up with passion to solve for? Is the pain critical enough for them to pay for solving it? This stage is where you find your blue ocean, your value proposition.

Building a business is an iterative process. It is likely that you may find at this stage that your business idea does not solve a problem that your target community really cares about. In that case, you pivot back to the first step.

If you find willing customers for your business idea transformed into a minimum viable product, its time to move forward.

c. At this stage; you build for profitability, repeatability and scalability.

Profitability - Is the cost of customer creation and product / service development & delivery substantially less than what she is willing to pay for?

Repeatability - Can you repeat the entire value creation cycle (from customer creation to post-sales service) following the same steps every time, delighting the customer the same way each time?

Scalability - Can the entire process run without you?

d. If you are able to build your business to solve for the above, you are ready to press the accelerator to scale-up. This is where you should really seek funding, if at all.

e. If you built your business right, you should now be able to hand-over the management of your enterprise to a professional team and truly become a business owner where wealth creation is no longer a function of your time.

2. Leadership Depth - This journey is about growing inwards to connect with your highest self; to bring stillness in your mind, body, emotions and spirit.

Its only in deepening of your leadership muscles of Agility of Mind, Being of Service, Communicating in the World of Others, Integrity and Excellence that you inspire partnership from people in your life (family, employees, investors, peer group, business partners, customers, suppliers) to support you to transform your vision into reality.

With leadership depth, you run your business with effortless ease experiencing fun, fulfilment, freedom along the way and you have it all - deeply fulfilling successful, profitable business; joyful 
relationships, happy responsible kids and lots of nourishing me-time.

3. Craft Mastery - Many a times, the entrepreneur gets so much sucked into the business of running the business because the fundamental principles are not followed that there is no time for investing into the domain that was the original reason for the entrepreneur to start the business. 

Your craft is your domain, the area of your business. You probably started the business because you are passionate about this domain. I call it Craft because the entrepreneur is really an Artist and her product or service - a masterpiece, a work of art. 

Therefore, forgetting to learn and build mastery in the Craft with every step of building the business; an entrepreneur would lose the purpose of being in the game. The purpose is to transform the world through serving the target community by being the world's best in your chosen craft.

Wishing you entrepreneurial excellence, leadership depth and craft mastery so that you leave footprints in the sand of time and fulfil your destiny.

Love,
​Jyoti.