When Business Growth is BAD

All business growth is good, right?

Or, is it?

Today’s profit loving’ truth bomb is that not all growth is going to help you reach your goals. In fact, if you’re growing without being strategic your business will soon (if it hasn’t already) morph into a profit sucking headache with little return for your hard work. 

So if you’re working hard than ever, sales are growing, new customers and clients are finding you but you’re not enjoying a fat pot of profit today’s episode is essential listening. 

Today’s episode is either a reality check or a glimpse into a possible poorly chosen future. If you’re experiencing these issues right now then let’s get you re-focused and if you’re not facing these issues let’s make sure you never do by avoiding poor growth choices.

Links + resources mentioned:
How to Stop Acting Like an Employee
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Transcript

00:00
Business Growth is good, right? Or is it today is profit loving truth bomb is that not all growth is going to help you reach your goals. In fact, if you're growing without being strategic in your business, you will soon if it hasn't happened already, morph your business into a profit sucking headache with little return for your hard work. 

00:23
So if you're working harder than ever, your sales are growing your customers and clients are finding you, but you're not enjoying a third pot of profit, then today's episode is absolutely essential listening. 

00:37
Welcome back to the profit lovers podcast. So today's episode is either going to be a reality check for you or a glimpse into a possibly poorly chosen future. If you're experiencing these issues right now, then let's get you refocused. And if you're not facing these issues, then let's make sure that you never do by avoiding these poor growth choices. Now, a few episodes ago, I spoke about the difference between growing and scaling. 

01:06
Growth being where you increase expenses and costs alongside of your sales, as opposed to scaling where you design your business growth to increase sales, while also increasing your profit margin. Now with growth, it doesn't matter. If you make, say a million dollars or $100,000, you'll spend about the same percentage on costs and expenses. 

01:30
When you scale, the aim is to keep your expenses and costs low, while continually increasing the amount of profit that you get to keep. I'll link that episode in the show notes. So if you haven't listened, you can go back and listen to it. It is possible to grow in a really unhealthy way. Just like a bush that requires pruning or it gets old like big and ugly, and like spindly and scraggly, your business can grow in the same way. There are more of Melanie's totally odd analogies coming your way. The bad Bush analogy is what we're going to use today amongst some other bad analogies. Now, you may have experienced this kind of growth without even realizing it. Because it isn't strategy because you didn't plan for it. And it can happen without you actually noticing. Your only real indicator is that you're not enjoying more profits as you grow. And your business just isn't it right now. Right? It's tiring, you just not loving it. 

02:32
In today's episode, I'll give you some red flags to look out for. That would tell me as a coach that you had been growing without a plan, that you have a bad Bush

02:44
instead of a profitable, livable, and lovable business.

02:49
Bad Bush, nobody wants a bad bush. Okay, Red flag number one, your client or customer base hasn't improved. The specifics here are your client or customer base is still price sensitive, not respectful of your trading terms, things like late payments, maybe making product returns outside your returns window, being disrespectful of your time demanding, demanding, I was gonna say needy, needy and demanding. 

03:18
They're the customers you were so happy to have when you started out. They helped you get your business off the ground. But you're still attracting that level of customer or client, despite the fact that your product or office have increased in value, outcomes quality presentation, all of the above. I'm not the coach that I was 10 years ago, I'm not even the coach that I was two or three years ago, because I'm focused on always improving my offers right learning more growing your offers, whether it be a product or a service, I've likely improved as well. And that means that the customer or client who came to you, for likely a cheaper and less impactful offer isn't who you should be attracting. 

04:00
Now, if your business is reliant on people searching you out referrals, maybe from less desirable clients or customers, or my least favorite, you're getting customers and clients from Facebook groups, then now's the time to think about your visibility and attraction strategies. I know you're probably thinking Hang on isn't people coming to me? Isn't people finding me and purchasing from me what I want? And yes, of course it is. The difference is we want you to place your offers where your most desirable client or customer bases, and we want you to make your offers this stupidly most choosable offer. What's the alternative? The alternative is instead of going and finding the people that you want to purchase your products or services your offers. You're just gonna take anyone who comes to you now I needed a noise and alarm or something that's letting you all know what I'm about to pull out another weird random analogy, but think of it this way you can throw a fishing line into it rivering catch yourself some dirty old mullet. 

05:02
No planning no researching no preparing your Louis. You just turn up and take whatever half dead gross fish ends up on your fishing line. Or you could do a little research a little planning. You could make your Lua the most attractive to fancier, tastier fish, like a bear on Monday, perhaps. And then you could turn up where the barramundi are most likely to hang out. Do you want to eat old sand willing? Dirty? mallets? Or do you want to eat tasty barramundi you get to choose. If you're not in Australia, I'm sure you figured out mullet is gross. barramundi is delicious. But no doubt somebody will email me saying I'm wrong and I probably am because I don't even like fish. I do fancy a lobster though. Despite my fish choices, you get the idea right? You can fish where you get the best catch. Or you can chuck a line in somewhere with no preparation and hope for the best. I feel like I've missed a big opportunity to use a cat fish analogy

06:04
that one seems to fit here. Are they going to be amazing customers or clients or are they just can't fishing you that's probably a podcast for another day. Red flag number two you Frankenstein offers together. Now you know who Frankenstein is right? If you have a mental picture of that like big scary looking monster man in black and white now with like the bolts coming out of his forehead. That is Frankenstein's creation. Frankenstein was actually the mad scientists name. And here's a little known fact for you. The monster he created didn't have a name. It was called creature thing, themed and other random monikers, but it never had an actual name. So stick that in your back pocket and take it all the way to your next trivia night. If you're creating random offers and bits of this or bits of that for customers or clients, instead of having a fixed offering, that you've priced accordingly, it's likely that you're growing in a way that isn't going to serve you long term. 

07:05
Once again, this can happen when you're taking any client or any customer who comes to you, instead of actively pursuing who you want to attract the customer or client who find you but doesn't really know who you are, what your expertise is, what the amazing quality of your product or services what the benefits are. And then asks you to do random bits of this or that who wants to choose from some parts of your offers. They're not the customer or client that's going to help you scale your business. You might also be doing this because you love to keep everybody happy. And you want to make sure that you don't miss out on the sale. Not a great idea, non profitable way to grow or scale. Now, you might also find that you're always creating new offers to sell to existing customers or clients. Once again, this is a terrible idea. Because you end up with a product offering that solves way too many problems. And you become an expert or a master of no one specific thing. Which means that you can never charge a premium, you can never attract people based on that really outstanding transformation. And you confuse your customers and clients, it becomes awfully difficult for them to help themselves to your buffet of offers. Because the choices now become really overwhelming for them. 

08:32
So despite the fact that you feel like you've created a solution for every possible breathing human out there, all you've really done is confused and overwhelmed them. And a confused and over overwhelmed mind will always say no. Red flag number three. I touched on this in my last podcast about behaving like an employee in your business. If you're outsourcing tasks with no overarching strategy, above all of those tasks, then you're just dumping ineffective tasks onto someone else. And worse, you're paying them. You might as well do nothing. 

09:12
If you're investing money into outsourcing, you need to have a clear objective of what the outcome is that you're expecting. What's the benefit of investing that money? What outcome does it have and how does it contribute to your profitability? Otherwise, you're spending money for spending money sake, social media, bottomless pit of ineffective activity, business owners paying social media managers to post random stuff on their social media accounts, just so their accounts have activity, like presence is not a good idea. A better idea is to take your money outside, attach it to a helium balloon with a super sweet little note that says whoever finds this will do something more useful with it than I was then let that helium balloon go. It's wasting your resources. 

10:05
People get themselves into this wasteful state because they're working at the employee level in their business. And they're feeling the burden of everything that needs to be done. So just want to pay themselves back some time, right? You want to buy back time and headspace I get it. So social media is that thing that they hand off first, instead of just handing off tasks with no overarching strategy, invest in someone to help you at the strategy level first. So you can set up a plan, you can set your goals and your intentions, and then you can outsource, you will get much better results out of the money that you're investing in your outsourcing. 

10:47
One of the first things that I do when I work with clients is I asked for their profit and loss report. And then I check out what they're spending money on. And this is never a case of I'm going to go through and you know, crush down their expenses, because I want to increase their profits by reducing their expenses, because actually, profit lovers, a generally, I would say, 95% of the time, extremely careful with where they spend their money, they're not overspending, they're just not spending it in the most effective places. If they have big chunks of money going to consultants, which is where most people will stick the expense of anybody that they use for outsourcing their marketing, their social media, VAs and all that, then I'm going to want to know what those consultants do. What return do you get? How do they impact your profit. Now, not every person you outsource to is going to directly impact your profit. They're not all sales generating activities, and some are just a buy you back time and headspace. But you should still be able to tell me what having them allows you to do. 

11:57
Having support in my business like my podcast being edited, uploaded, and all of those things means that I can focus on creating better scripts because I've got more time, instead of a podcast taking four hours from script through to going live. It takes me maybe one one and a half. And then I can create more content. In theory. I'm also able to track downloads. So even though I'm investing in someone to edit my podcast, and all of that good stuff, and they're not directly impacting my profit, what they are doing is impacting my ability to grow my listeners, right. And then I'm able to track those downloads, and I'm able to track my newsletter growth, and I can attribute the investment to a tangible goal. 

12:47
Red flag number four, are we up to number four, I feel like those numbers didn't go in order. No, they did. Red flag number four. If your sales have grown, you're doing more and more each year, but your profit hasn't grown, then your business is a bad bush. Or if your sales have let's say doubled, but your profit has only grown by a few percent, then you're in bad Bush territory. If your sales haven't grown at all, no increase in sales, no increase in profit, then big red flag, a business without a strategy that takes whomever comes their way instead of marketing to their ideal customer or client who's constantly creating new offers to sell to the same audience and frankensteining offers when customers or clients ask will absolutely struggle to scale both their sales and their profit. 

13:46
As you bring in more and more sales, you need to pay more and more attention to where your sales are coming from. And by that I mean, what products or services are making up your sales income. If you've slept a few random offers into a pays customers or clients, or you weren't sure what to do next. So you just threw together some ideas to sell you thought current or past customers or clients would be into them, then you likely have created a very non profitable, profitable product profile so that fast three times non profitable product profile. Product profile is how each of your offers each of the things that you sell, contributes to your sales goals and your profit goals. If you've got 30 offers and people are constantly taking the least profitable of those offers, then you're going to be working really really hard to make very little profit. It often makes sense to have less profitable offers right to have what we call loss leaders or mini offers that entice people to try your business out. 

15:00
Your job isn't then to sell them more last lien is own mini offers, it's to step them up to a bigger, more profitable offer. A loss leader by the way, if you're unsure if that term is a product or an offer you have that isn't very profitable, it might actually lose you money. But what it does is it brings people to your business. So the best example of this is supermarkets, the end cap specials that they have, you know, the end, cap that into the oil kind of right near the registers, where they've got all their special offers. That crap that I always buy, but I never need and God help me when I get to the cleaning aisle specials because you know, I'm filling maturely with that. They are loss leaders, they're super cheap offers to lower you in. But the last the supermarket makes on that product is offset by all the other stuff you stick into your trolley. 

15:53
That's at a much higher profit margin. We see this now with online businesses as well. So tripwires, you may have ended up listening to my podcast because I lured you in with a tripwire, I have the plan and track ultimate. It's not necessarily designed to be profit creating, I'm happy to say that it is. But sometimes when I'm running ads to it, it's not the ad will cost more than the sale. But it is a way for me to introduce you to my business with something of huge value, even if I do lose money on it or I don't make money on it. Businesses that I work with are often very, very heavy on low profit offers, with no customer journey map or no marketing funnel, to introduce customers or clients or to step them closer to those more profitable offers. If you've got low profit offers, we need to balance those out with high profit offers. And we need to structure your marketing in a way that steps your customer or client, from the low profit to the higher profit offers. 

17:02
Red flag number five, you're working harder than ever. And you're still not making a good weekly income plus profit. Yes, we want you to pay yourself a good weekly income. And you should be enjoying some profit from your business. I feel like no deeper explanation is needed for this one. Especially if you listen to last week's episode. Here's what all of these nonconscious non strategic moves are doing to your business. All of these red flags. 

17:36
What they're doing is they're growing the space that your business takes up in your life in your head without growing the value your business brings to your life. Another analogy warning. Have you ever been to someone's home and you've been you've been looking at property and you've not been able to make sense of the floorplan? I know I have I am on a property hunt right now. And I have seen some wrecks. If you've even watched a season of any kind of home Reno show, you would have seen this. The kind of base home is built right but the family grows. So they start adding on rooms and spaces with no plants. The house ends up like this weird rabbits, Warren, where the front door takes you directly through the bathroom or the only way to access the kitchen is via the main bedroom. It's a home that has grown with no real plan. It's just bits being tacked on. And not only does it not function well. It's done on the cheap. It's ugly. Nobody wants it. So let's not build your business that way. No bad bushes. No fishing for mullet, no building an eyesore of a home. 

18:52
I have managed to shove three very odd analogies into this episode. If you want to grow strategically, and of course you do. After everything I've said I mean, can I do anything more to convince you? What I want you to do next is head to the profit lovers.com And check out member's club. There's a big fat red bar on the top of every page on my website that is going to take you directly to the members club sales page where you can see everything that's included. 

19:24
And I want you to check out the incredible offer. And yes, I'm very confident in saying it is an incredible offer. I feel like my team and I this was definitely a joint effort. Huge shout out to Nat on my team who gave me just some genius ideas. I have we have my team and I have nailed this offer and I mean nailed it. So there is a waitlist you can see all the details. I'm not being shy about putting the price out there it's all there. You know profit lovers is no BS no luring you in with, you know, not telling you prices and then daily At the last minute, it's all damn jump on the waitlist. If this is something that you can invest in, and you want real change real shift in your business get on the waitlist. Were opening the cart in early May. 

20:14
But if you're on the waitlist, you'll get first offer, which will be in late April. And if you're really wanting first offer, you should most definitely email me directly, Melanie M formula, Melanie M at the profit lovers.com. And I will personally let you know when pre launches when we're opening the cart for a few days to let in those people who are on the waitlist and who have emailed me directly. I'm going to be taking a limited number of WARM BODIES, because I want to work more directly with everybody for this first round, because this is obviously a new iteration of member's club, and I've pulled out some pretty, pretty cool different ways of approaching business and I want to make sure that I can guide everyone through that effectively. That's it happy profit loving everyone. I hope that you either jump on the waitlist or you email me directly and I'll talk to you in the next episode.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai