Why scaling feels so hard (and the step most makers skip) | Episode 4

[00:00:00] Hi besties. Welcome back to the Midwest Makers Podcast. I am Kenna and I am the co-founder of Midwest Fragrance Company, and this is where we have real honest conversations about building a maker business that lasts. I recently asked in our community what you guys wanted to hear me talk about next on the podcast.

And the question I saw the most was, how do I scale my business? So I really wanted to dive into this topic a little bit more and actually share with you an important step that I think that a lot of makers skip. If you are in the early or even the middle stages of your maker business, chances are you're doing a lot of things by yourself.

Maybe you're wearing all of the hats. You're probably tired - hi, same- maybe you're wondering when it's supposed to start feeling easier, potentially all you can think about is how to grow your business more, how to scale. At least that has been my experience. I started really thinking about how to talk about this topic in a broad way that could really meet everyone where they were at.

But my first instinct was to ask, what does scaling mean to you? Because ultimately, the definition of what it means to you [00:01:00] is most likely gonna be different than what it means to me. And so getting clear here really is the first step. So let's start by defining, scaling is one of those words that we throw around a lot in business.

It's a buzzword, and I've really started to notice that we use words like scaling or growth or marketing or strategy. And we say them like they mean something super specific, but most of the time they don't. They're really just words and they're super vague words, and so when we don't slow down to define them, I think that that's when they can really trip us up.

Because we really just start to chase these ideas without ever deciding what they actually look like in our lives and in our businesses, and then we end up feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. I don't know if you can see yourself in that, but I totally resonate. So our first step on this journey is to slow down and take some serious time to identify that question.

What does scaling mean to me? And I actually want you to literally pause this episode right now and do a little journaling on that exact question and just see what comes up for you. Okay. Did you do it? Okay. Seriously, pause me and do it. Okay, good. Because [00:02:00] this is gonna be our starting point from here, we're gonna really be able to gain clarity on what our next best steps are.

And once you know your definition of scaling and where you're wanting to take things, everything else starts to make more sense. In case you're needing a little bit of inspiration, I thought I would share with you a few popular ways that a lot of makers think about goals for scaling. And maybe you can see yourself in one or more of these.

Maybe you wanna replace your full-time income, get consistent sales. Maybe you wanna hire your first employee or open up a retail location or even start a website. Maybe you just want more time and less chaos. Absolutely every single one of these are valid, and all of them are also completely different goals.

So that's why we really need to get clear on what it means for you, so then we can get clear on your direction and then therefore a plan of action that you can put into place to get there. I thought before we moved on any further, I really wanted to take time to talk to you about my experience in scaling our candle company for a minute, because I really think this will resonate with you.

When I was first trying to scale our candle company, I was super caught up in this idea that [00:03:00] it was gonna be this very clear destination.

Like one day I would just wake up and be like, okay, I've scaled now. There it is, but that's not how it works. And I just couldn't see it then. Not because I was doing anything wrong, but because I really just didn't have the perspective that experience gives you. So today I'm sharing this with you as your biz bestie, who might be a couple steps ahead, and I just wanna zoom out and say that there is this whole part of this journey that I don't feel like it's talked about as much, and I really feel that it matters more than you think.

So if scaling is feeling really hard, it might be because you're missing a step. So this episode is part one of scaling and part one is not about growth tactics. It's not about doing more. It's not about blowing up overnight, it's about stabilizing. It's about the foundations, and I wanna really talk about the reality of scaling and what it actually is and what it's not, so that you can really shape your expectations realistically. Because maybe you'll listen to this and you'll think, yep, I have done all this already.

I am ready to scale. Or maybe you'll think, oh, I'm in the foundation [00:04:00] phase. Or maybe you see a little bit of both of these happening for you at the same time. And for us, that's where we are at right now a little bit too, is we are definitely in the middle of solidifying while scaling at the same time.

And that can be a lot. But all of these are okay. One isn't better than the other. All are hard in their own ways, and they're all part of the process. And I always say this, but early on in business, I thought that the further I got along, the easier that it would get. And that just has not been true. And I laugh at myself when I think back at how goofy that is because there really are problems to solve at every single level.

And I had to learn to become a new version of myself at every single level. And you can't jump ahead to scale without going through all of the lessons and things that you'll learn in the foundation phase. And actually a mentor of mine once helped me to really see this by comparing it to a video game.

She said that if you jump from level one straight to level 10, without playing through levels two through nine, you're not gonna have the skills to beat level 10. And I was absolutely mind blown by thinking about it this way, because business and honestly, life [00:05:00] works this exact way. You have to go through all of the levels to level up your skills.

But here's the thing. Somewhere along the way, so many of us absorbed this idea that if we're doing business right, things just click and be easy, just like I thought. But here's the real truth, is that the work that actually supports scaling in the early and middle stages of business is really freaking boring.

And I say that with so much love, and I wish it wasn't true, but it is. So if you're in there doing the boring work, my friend, I see you. I see you so much right now because I am you. I'm doing the same things. I wanna start to really talk and get clear about what this means when I'm talking about foundations work.

And I really just don't want it to stay this vague term. And so I thought it would kind of start to define what a few of these things might look like in your business. When I'm talking about this foundation's work or the stabilizing work, I'm talking about things like creating a product that people actually want. Super great quality, super great packaging. People actually want it. It's a super, super awesome product, and maybe it means [00:06:00] simplifying your product line or even understanding your numbers even when they're messy, creating repeatable processes instead of winging it, or maybe it's fixing the same problems that you keep running into, or building systems so that everything isn't stuck in your head.

Building trust with your customers, showing up consistently. Maybe it's even creating marketing or customer service or production systems that you can really build on. This is the work that doesn't look like progress, but it's the reason that progress becomes possible later on. It's the phase where you get clear on what you're actually trying to build, where this business is going and what matters, and also what doesn't.

Because once you have that direction, decisions start to get easier. For example, if you never wanna hire employees, this is gonna really shape your decisions. Or if you know that your goal is that you wanna replace your income, that's also going to shape your decisions. My mentor taught me to think of this phase of business like a tree's roots.

Without them, a tree cannot stand on its own and it's just gonna topple right over. Something that I really wanna slow down on and talk about is that if your business is feeling chaotic [00:07:00] right now, scaling won't fix that. It will just make the chaos louder. More orders aren't gonna fix messy systems. More sales aren't gonna fix clear offerings.

And more growth is not gonna fix burnout and most makers actually don't need to scale yet. They need to stabilize and stabilizing is not a step back and it's not failure. It's how you build something that can really grow without costing you your sanity. Going back to talking about when we started to scale our candle company, we intentionally entered a season that we called focusing on the foundations, is where we slowed down and asked what's actually driving this business forward.

What are we doing that isn't moving the needle? What no longer makes sense for where we're going and what are we truly passionate about? And these are questions that you could ask as well. started to focus our time on where we saw the biggest return. We got really clear on what our priorities were and we created systems to make processes easier and repeatable so that we, when we were ready to grow, we were prepared.

We started to cut what wasn't moving things forward, and this is super hard. But also a hundred percent necessary. [00:08:00] And I think I learned through this process that the things that get you to one level are not always the things that get you to the next level.

And it's a really hard lesson to learn, but it really taught me the importance of refinement and doubling down on what was working. And all of that work was not super exciting, but sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. Before we wrap up, I wanna talk about the cost of skipping this foundations phase and why sometimes scaling feels so hard if you're trying to scale before you've done this.

When you try to scale before things are stabilized, it usually doesn't show up as a business problem first. It shows up as burnout, as constant overwhelm, as decision fatigue, starting to resent your business, feeling behind, no matter how hard you're working

or starting to question yourself. Maybe you see yourself in some of these. Maybe you see yourself in all of these. It's okay if you do. I even see myself in these as well, and you might start thinking that the problem is you, that you are not cut out for this, that you are doing something wrong. But most of the time the problem isn't effort or ability, it's that the business just doesn't have the structure yet to support growth. So if you've been feeling [00:09:00] exhausted or frustrated, or emotionally drained by your business, I just really want you to know that it's usually a sign that something needs to be stabilized, not scaled.

You don't need to go and fix absolutely everything overnight. I just wanted to talk to you about this topic so that you could really slow down for a minute and ask yourself some important questions. Identify what season of business you're in and gain some clarity. Maybe you're truly ready to scale maybe you're in the foundation phase.

Wherever you are, it's exactly where you need to be right now. There's no right or wrong answers here. In a future episode, I wanna talk more about what scaling can look like after you have the foundation in place with some real examples. If you have any specific questions about scaling your business or from your specific situation, please leave them in the comments and I'm going to pick a few and talk about them and maybe just give you some thoughts and ideas.

That's it for today, besties. If anything in this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear about it in the comments, and if it didn't apply, let it fly. You're not behind your building. Thanks for spending time with me. We're cheering you on every single step of your maker journey. Okay, love you. Bye.