This is a machine generated transcript – so there are bound to be mistakes 🙂

 

## Introduction ##

 

Have you heard the saying, You have to slow down to speed up? Well, I don’t know about you, but perhaps you don’t like this phrase. You might be thinking, I don’t have time to slow down. I’m in a hurry. I want to reach my goal now because I don’t want to fall behind. I just want to be there already. This was me. Then I had an epiphany about the whole idea behind slowing down, and it changed how I do business forever, in a good way. I’m going to reveal just how valuable this simple change can be as you grow your business the right way.

 

Welcome to our special Ten X Grow Your Business series, where I’m sharing the aha moments that come up when you’re ready to make a significant leap in your business. You want to build sustainable growth without compromising your health, happiness, or freedom. I hope to make you stop and say, Wait a minute, I don’t have to do life or business that way anymore. I have the power to change, to rethink the next phase, and move around the obstacles. This series will challenge your thinking in a good way to show you that owning a business isn’t just about going hard or bust. Growth is about more than just the money, and you can create wealth beyond practices from the 1950s or some syndicated funnel formula that pulls you in like a vortex. It’s time to energize your creativity and do things your way.

 

## The Concept of Slowing Down ##

 

Before I share how you can approach this idea of slowing down to speed up differently, let’s put some context around it—this concept of time. There are many reasons why you may not want to slow down. For instance, if you’re in a hurry to exit your business, meaning to sell it so you can relax on a beach somewhere because you’re exhausted and done, you might feel there’s no choice but to keep going. You might think you have to go all out so you can finally be done and allow yourself, once you’ve become independently wealthy from the sale of a business, to finally do work that makes you happy.

 

People have different reasons for wanting to leave their business, but for me, it was personal. Maybe you want to capitalize on the current momentum and not lose the wave, or you’re afraid you’ll fall further behind and are already in catch-up mode. You could have been stalled for a while and are so ready to move forward that you just can’t wait any longer. It’s time to start moving fast, to press your foot on the gas.

 

For some people, they don’t know what to do in that period of slowing down. You’re so used to flying by the seat of your pants, you wonder, What does it even mean exactly? What would you be planning for if you did slow down? Then logic creeps in: Do we really need a plan? I want to be agile, a small business with flexibility, marked by decision-making, influence, and authority.

 

## Lessons Learned ##

 

### Lesson 1: Slowing Down to Speed Up ###

 

The epiphany I had about the whole idea of slowing down can be summed up in three lessons or changes I needed to make in my mindset. Number one, slowing down to speed up doesn’t mean going slow. What? Yes, I’m talking to you. If you think that slowing down means you’re going to be moving at a turtle’s pace, that’s not what it means. It simply means taking a step back to make choices and decisions about your business.

 

There are decisions you’re making as an owner in your business every single day, but these decisions are about the future trajectory or the path you’re going to take. If you’re slowing down because you want to reach another goal that’s bigger or faster, or to jump from one plateau in your business to the next, sometimes it takes a little time to get there. The idea may not be in your head right away. You might need that inspiration, and you can’t rush inspiration. Believe me, I’ve tried.

 

What happens if you’re looking for that next genesis of an idea and you’re not quite sure what it is? Or you’re facing a crossroads and you’re not sure which path to take? That can be a pivotal moment that signals you to slow down a bit, to allow creativity to bloom, to let inspiration hit you.

 

We think of slowing down with typical business planning that can take a week, where you do your initial plan, discuss it with your leadership team, plan a little more, then assign tasks to your division leads. Okay, here’s where we’re trying to go. Here’s that mark, the line in the sand, that new revenue goal we want to reach. Now come up with your strategic plans in each division to reach that. How are you going to make that happen? That’s a typical strategic planning process with a corporation, even what I call a mini-corporation, which is a small business that acts like a corporation.

 

The planning process can seem like a normal part of the rhythm of annual planning. But sometimes slowing down means recalibrating how you’re thinking about the vision of your company. This is a pivotal moment, whether that spark driving you to grow is based on something truly inspirational or just a feeling you have. Those are the moments when you want to ensure you’re going in the right direction. The right direction means that when you get to the end, when you reach that goal, you’ll look around and love where you are. This is critically important.

 

I remember a time when I was pushing and pushing to grow my business. Why? Because that’s what you do. You get to one point, then you get to the next point. It’s logical; you’re in business to continue to grow. However, that’s not always wise. I was growing, but I was growing for the sake of growing, and I was burning myself out. I was burning my team out, and I was out of ideas, quite frankly. My vision was simply based on a number. It was an ego-driven goal. I had to take time to slow down and really think about why I was going forward, why I was pushing. Because I couldn’t push any further. I was literally at my end. I was burning the midnight oil, and I had no inspiration to give my team. They couldn’t think of the strategic plan to get us to the next level because it was simply doing more of the same, only in greater capacity.

 

So, slowing down to speed up doesn’t mean going slow. It means going intentionally, going on purpose, going to a destination that makes sense, that is truly inspirational. So you can inspire the people that are helping you get there. That vision can sometimes take a little bit to come to you and formulate what it takes to lead your team into the future. Once you have that plan, once it’s clear, the momentum pushes behind you. You can’t help but go faster because you’re so enthusiastic about where you’re going. You know that when you get there, you’re not going to look around and hate where you’ve ended up because you’ve been purposeful in exactly what you’re doing, where you’re going, and why you’re getting there. That is a beautiful combination.

 

### Lesson 2: Focusing on the Wrong Future ###

 

Lesson number two is focusing on the wrong future. The future end state is important. I think we can all agree on that one. For that to matter, to be in the right place, the right future, you have to get the vision right. I like to say that we’re really getting the direction right because when you’re headed in the wrong direction, you could reach your goal, climb that mountain, be at the pinnacle, and look around and hate where you ended up or regret sacrificing so much while your kids were young. Now you have the freedom for your time, but they’re too busy with lives of their own to spend it with you. Instead, you can build that in while growing your business at the same time. That takes planning and intentionality, and that’s the slowdown piece.

 

This is the slowdown to stop wearing busyness as a badge of honor. Where you’re always on the go, you may mistake that for drive and ambition, but it’s actually what can run you into the ground. When you give yourself the space and time to be intentional about how you spend your time, purposeful in the actions you take and the projects you prioritize, you create the life you’ve always wanted to live as you are living it. Instead of waiting until you hit it big or retire and then look back and regret all the time being consumed by your business. We call that the business beast.

 

In this example of slowing down to speed up, the speed up is represented by your lack of having to unwind what you’ve just built and having to build it all over again in a new direction and playing a game of catch-up to get to the end that you desire. This whole idea is focused on an end state of material things and time management or how you spend your time. Instead, you could be headed in the right direction all the time, taking setbacks and micro-adjustments in stride, no monumental backtracking needed.

 

When you’re headed in this right direction, it simply means that you’re incorporating all the things you want to live or experience as you are building your business. So here’s how you can think a little bit differently about the balance of time. Because really, what we’re talking about here, when you’re moving in the right direction, isn’t just the end goal; it’s the life you’re creating along the way and enjoying that process as it unfolds.

 

I created a quick visual worksheet that you can use for this exercise. I pulled it directly from a workbook that I give to participants in one of my in-person workshops. You can download it for free at toryboats.com/balance. Picture a balance scale with two plates on either side. In our example, we’re going to look at a slight tweak to the age-old work-life balance scenario. You’ll label one side happiness and the other side work.

 

In a typical balance equation, you’re putting things on each side until you reach a balance or an evenness between the plates. As you arrange choices on either side, you’re making trade-offs where one side will win, and then you trade off to the other side. You’ll put things on the other side, and then that one will start to win. You’re creating this teeter-totter effect that can feel quite unmanageable when they swing too far in either direction. Usually, at least in my past, they often swung too far in the work category. At worst, you just give up trying to achieve any sort of balance and stop paying attention. Before you know it, you’re leaning way too far to one side for too long, and you can’t even recognize what balance would look or feel like, much less climb back up to reclaim your time, energy, or even your sense of self.

 

Here’s how I look at this idea of balance differently. Imagine instead that you could pull up the plates by a string tied to the center point. Instead of wondering which side to compromise or feeling like you always have to sacrifice by choosing between either or, you could ask this question instead: How can I have both? How can I create happiness and work or work and life? How can I have both? is my most magical question of all. It is my favorite thing to do because even though there will be give and take, the goal is now focused on the possibility of having or achieving both at the same time. That shifts your mind into coming up with entirely new solutions to achieve a very different outcome. Instead of managing trade-offs and loss, you’re solving for an equation that can incorporate both things.

 

### Lesson 3: You Don’t Have to Do It All Right Now ###

 

Lesson number three is you don’t have to do it all right now. When you’re so busy juggling all the projects with everything you have going on as you grow your business, suddenly everything becomes a priority. How do you know where to spend your time?

 

I have this customer, we’ll call him George, and he was in this same situation where he felt like he was running around his company like a chicken with his head cut off. He said to me, I don’t know where to spend my time. How much time do I spend on each thing? I feel like I’m constantly switching my focus, constantly switching gears, and I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to do everything I want to do. You see, he was trying to maintain his current customer base and grow that customer base while adding an entirely new set of customers. Some people will tell you, Just focus on one thing, focus on one core offer. But that wasn’t the appropriate thing for this company at this stage of growth. Not only were they growing their current software and their current base of customers into the space they were in and into new spaces, but he had also just purchased another company and was managing a merger.

 

When you buy another company, it’s not just the act of buying them and now you have a new asset. It’s integrating the people, the processes, the offers, and everything else within that company into your original company without blowing either one up. You want to protect that investment you just made, and you want to protect your base. So he had all of these things he was juggling.

 

Let me give you context on the things on the plate. We’ve got the organic growth of the current software base. That means the people buying the software, keeping them happy, so you have retention in that foundational area. Then you have growth. What new customers can I add, and how can I increase my current customers, what they’re purchasing from me, or upgrading their plan? When you have software, you’re not only maintaining the software that you’ve already got running, so that’s responding to customer requests or bug fixes or just doing maintenance on the systems underneath, but there’s also responding to new feature requests by your existing clientele. They’re going to find things that they wish they could do with your software and request you add more features. So that’s organically growing the software itself, maintaining that customer base, and attracting new customers from that existing set or referrals.

 

Then there’s branching out into a new set of customers. Let’s say your software services the healthcare industry, and you want to go into a new vertical or a new market. Let’s say you’re going into the defense market. When you’re taking existing software and an existing capability and bringing it into a new customer set, that’s the same offer, but you’re positioning it into new use cases or new scenarios for how this customer envisions themselves using this particular offer or, in this case, software.

 

Then you have the new offer. This is an expansion. Aside from the merger, he was looking at expanding what he offered. Aside from the software, he was running hackathons. Running a hackathon is a completely different thing than selling software. The purpose of the hackathon was to bring in more people and more expertise into his company as a recruiting mechanism. It was also to train people on the software that he was developing. So he’s extending the marketing of that current software base and bringing it to new customers, bringing it to an entirely different set of people. You might think that’s the same as expanding from healthcare into defense, but it really is a new offering.

 

Then he had the merger and acquisition that he was balancing or juggling. How was he going to take what they were doing and bring it into his current offer suite, which happened to be in the hackathon area? Which is a fabulous idea because now you’ve got a bigger base of employees to deal with. You have an established reputation that’s part of that three-legged stool when you’re going after new work: the technology or the differentiators of the solution that you bring to the table, the people, the staff, the management, the structure, the SOPs and processes of your internal pieces of the company, and then the customer base and your reputation, your past performance.

 

He was wondering, I don’t know where to spend my time. There’s so much going on. By the way, his staff was small. He was making millions of dollars in his business, but on a slim staff because they were rapidly growing. He was also a technologist, so his skill in the business area was still growing. He was five years into his business, and George still had things to learn. When you’re juggling everything going on, it all looks like the first priority.

 

This is what we did, and this is what I recommend. If you have a lot of projects that you’re juggling and you think, Oh, I’ve got to do them all right now because they’re all equally important, I invite you to stretch it out on a timeline and add in increments, or I would say buckets of things like things. For him, he didn’t have a clear picture at first of each of the pieces he was juggling. It was all just work. It was all in a to-do list. It was all this big, long mass of work he had to get done. He was tired, so tired of working every weekend and working at night.

 

When he first came in, he told me, Well, I work typical nine to five hours. I’m like, Well, are you sure? Is that all you’re working? Then he thought about it. Actually, I do take a dinner break, but then I go right back to work, and I really am working each weekend, even though I don’t want to work the weekends. In his mind, he was thinking, I’m still working nine to five, Monday through Friday. I’m not working weekends, and I don’t work in the evenings. But when I pushed him a little bit to ask the detailed question, What did you do last week and the week before? he realized, Oh, I am working all the time because I don’t know where to focus. He didn’t feel like anything was moving forward.

 

We stretched that timeline out, made those buckets so we could see the things. Even if you take a piece of paper and put little circles, like put five circles on it, I don’t know, five feels right. It was right for him. Label those circles with the big rocks, the big things that you’re moving. You can see them, then they’re out of your head, and they’re visual in front of you. Then just move them around.

 

Stretching the timeline might look like increasing the speed at which you’re executing something so that you can get out of the way of doing something else. That may not have made sense, so let me give you an example. I had a different client, we’ll call her Jane. Can you tell I like the Jetsons? Jane, George, Judy. Anyway, Jane was doing the same thing as George, juggling everything going on, multiple projects. Both George and Jane were still working with the customer, even though they had employees and were building little mini-corporations.

 

Jane had a plan of getting out of her one-on-one customer service in 18 months, but that didn’t allow her to grow the other parts of her company. She was adding a completely new product line. So what we did is look at her timeline, which was very fuzzy. There were no concrete actions in there, no milestones or metrics to track. It was all just work, similar to George. We took that off the table. We took the 18 months out, and instead, we went a little bit further, envisioning what she would really like to do. Her answer was, I would love to not be in my customer space in six months, but I don’t even know how that’s possible.

 

When you’re having thoughts like that, I would love to, don’t add the part, but I don’t know, because this is where you can switch your brain and say, And I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to see if six months is possible. What would it look like if I left in six months? If I left the customer space and I came in solely to my company to focus on building that company, being more strategic, taking on the chief strategic officer role, taking on the chief employee engagement role, and taking on this new product and doing product development and business development?

 

When you look at that six-month timeline, you start to put in milestones because you’re asking yourself, What would it take to make this happen? What has to happen in order for that to be realized? It’s a simple exercise you already know how to do, but sometimes when you’re juggling all the things all at once and it feels confusing, it can start to be overwhelming. Then you set these goals and these guidelines of when you’re going to be done, and it becomes 18 months. In reality, it took her six months because we made a timeline, we put in metrics, we talked with the CFO about how we could afford this kind of change, what needs to happen, what actions need to happen, and then we tracked those actions together. They became the increments, and all the projects she had to do got their own little bucket, just like George.

 

If we move back to George and think about this timeline idea, he now had ways to think about his focus, almost like pots of money or buckets of time. He could move them around, which is similar to, you might think, time blocking or another kind of productivity, but we’re not really talking about productivity because he didn’t stack those things up and say, These three hours, I’m going to do this bucket. In these three hours, I’m going to do that one. On Wednesdays, I’m only going to focus on this. It became a way to think about the result of each of those activities, and this is magic.

 

We started assigning those to different teams within the company. What he wasn’t doing with that merger and acquisition is he wasn’t thinking about all the new staff he had available to help him in his current existing business because some people have the skills that can bridge between both, especially since there were overhead staff in that new business that he didn’t have in his existing business. Suddenly, he had a whole extra workforce that he could bring in and give responsibility to, executing on all the different priorities within the two companies as a combined single company.

 

## Conclusion ##

 

Once you have your big picture in mind and your timeline, it’s time to stop focusing on that future end state because that can cause everything to be muddy. The timeline is a tool, but if you never get started on it, how is it useful? When you act from that place of feeling frazzled and not quite clear on which tasks actually move the needle, you can end up being really busy and questioning, What did I even do all day? You could be looking at the end of your week feeling extremely exhausted, in need of a break, and start to think, I wonder what it is that I did. What did I do this week? I know I did stuff. I know I was busy. I know it’s all important, but was it the right thing? Was I actually contributing? Gosh, I wish I knew what that was.

 

Here’s a pro tip, and it’s an easy way to counteract this scenario with a simple question. If you’re so busy thinking about the future end state of all the projects you have going on, of course, it’s not going to be clear. Of course, you’re not going to know which way to go because you’re so busy thinking about the end, which is a culmination of 50 million things that you’re doing. If all of your goals are going at once and they all happen in your future, then that was a lot of work. Especially if you have organic growth and exponential growth or expansion growth, that’s a lot of work. So don’t be inundated with the future end state of, Oh my gosh, there’s so much to do. Bring that back. Bring it back to the present. When you make that timeline, it helps you to prioritize the projects you need to do right now.

 

If you take all the other projects off your plate just for the purpose of thinking about how to spend your time to move the needle today, bring that one project into focus, and then ask yourself this magical question: What is the very next step I need to do in this hour on this project? Not What is the next project I need to finish in this area? but What’s the very next step? The micro-incremental tiny step. Remember, you don’t have to do it all right now. In fact, all the baby steps, all those incremental steps, no matter how tiny, they add up. They add up to give you the result you’re seeking.

 

This fourth lesson is a bit of a departure from what we’ve already discussed. For some, the thought of growing too fast is scary. The worry that comes to mind is, What if I grow too fast and fail? Often this question is followed by wondering, What the heck are the warning signs that my business is on this out-of-control track? There are many signs, and we’ll cover one that’s relevant to the conversation here. I actually walk you through the five myth-busting growth strategies in a free guide. You can get it at toryboats.com/igrow. It’s a preview of the visionary advantage system that serves as the foundation of the important work I do with my clients. You can get your copy right now at toryboats.com/igrow, then head back here to this episode.

 

You may hear some influencers say, Slow down to blow up instead of Slow down to speed up. Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of blowing up a business I painstakingly built doesn’t exactly get me excited to go. That’s for two reasons.

 

Reason number one: I know the intent is to get your phone ringing off the hook with new customers and sales. That’s the whole idea of blowing up. But if you’re on the backside of a growth spurt, the majority of you who are building your business based on the way it’s always been done are likely feeling exhausted. The last thing you need is another high-volume problem to deal with. That reaction right there should tell you something. Your systems need to catch up, including your team. Do you have the right team? Do you trust your team? Is your team delivering on the growth of your business or just doing the daily tasks they need to get done? These are all important things to be asking.

 

Reason number two: There is a healthy fear, which I call caution, about growing too fast, that you might fail. Now, this is awfully similar to the idea of blowing up. When it looks like you’re on that path to blowing up, I’d advise taking a short step back to reconsider your position, your actions, your thoughts, and your plans so you can correct course. I call these micro-adjustments. Instead of failing fast, which is a noble cause to getting the answers you need quicker than going way down the rabbit hole and burning through all of your resources, I like to think of micro-adjustments because it helps me have the courage to take a step toward a risk.

 

This could produce several options to choose from when you’re taking that step back. Do you persevere? Do you kill it off? Or do you pivot? Choices are always better to make in preparation than in reaction to avoid a dire situation. I’m more of a fan of speeding up than blowing up.

 

Speaking of blowing up your business, here’s a pro tip. If you want to rapidly grow and you’re afraid that growing too fast might mean something bad, rest assured if you’re planning for growth, investing in your own growth and development as an evolving human, as an evolving leader and business owner, and you’re investing in your team and your systems plus paying close attention to your finances, then you’re in the right mindset of growing responsibly. If you’re even wondering, thinking the thought, I don’t want to grow so fast, that’s the start. That’s the start to being aware and bringing that awareness into the actions you take by paying attention and being intentional in what you do and what you invest in.

Now, if you’re abdicating the money stuff to your bookkeeper, then you might be paying attention to your technical side of your professional skills and ignoring the business side and your leadership skills. You need to know your revenue, your expenses, your profit, and your cash flow forecast. This concept of failing is mostly related to money or poor customer experiences that can cause you to lose customers, which is also related to money, which puts you in a cash flow forecast problem. Poorly managing cash flow or spending itself, knowing when to spend, when to save, when to cut, and when to invest at specific times, or wasting money on research and development that wasn’t well vetted with actual customers who are actively buying. Now, that’s key. If you follow customer-driven design and jobs to be done, lean startup, you need to have proof that your customers are already paying customers and investing in that R&D with you.

I invite you to consider how slowing down might benefit your business journey.

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