Why 8-Figure Entrepreneurs Often Hate Their Business

What true scale really means is for your energy or money output to get a disproportionately higher return than what you did before that scale. Most people grow their businesses. Now, you can grow your mindset. You can grow your leadership ability, however, you want to be very careful about growing your business. You want to scale a business. And if you’re growing your business, then you may have seen businesses that are out there that grow, grow, grow, and then they’re gone. This is a dangerous time so you really need to dial it in and make sure you’re on point.

Every eight-figure business that we’ve ever worked with hated their business. Every single one! They were making more profit when they were seven-figures and having way more fun. They were usually, at this stage, between 80K to 350K. Most of the ones that say, “We are the most profitable, had the most fun,” was when they were here. They’re on this scale phase somewhere between 80K to 350K. Most of them around 350K a month. When they’re hitting that runway, they have it sweet. And if you wanted to call it a lifestyle business, they’ve got a lifestyle business. There’s one problem though, there’s still some friction. And that is, everyone’s still coming to them, they’re still the lead salesperson, they’re still the person who’s the major figurehead of the business and they have what we call, in this phase, octopus syndrome. Not that anyone here would know what that’s like. But octopus syndrome is really, really simple. And that is there’s one brain, there’s lots of tentacles, and everything sucks because it still relies on you. And you don’t need to do that. You can build a business that can move past it. Now, the interesting thing, if we come to this ‘herding’ phase. You’re starting to get a following. You’re starting to get a group of people that go, “Actually, we really like what these people are doing. We really like what that looks like. We’re loving the feeling that’s coming from this.” It’s cool. You probably won’t have a very saleable asset at this point though. Here, you could argue you’re on the borderline depending on whether you’re closer to the 80K or the 350K of just having a high-paid job.

The shift though, and this is the key, is moving into the next level. This is what I really like to encourage everyone to be thinking right now. If you’re in this phase, get excited! One of the things that you know is to look back in the past and look back when you’re in this startup and survival phase. Now, the funny thing is, if you’re in the hunt, the survival and startup phase, have a talk to someone who’s in this stability and scale phase. Because the interesting thing is, when you get into this phase here, especially at 80K to 350K, you look back on these days here and you know you used to say, “Geez, I’m busy.” It’s not till you get up here and you go, “Oh my God, I wasted so much time down here. I was not really busy. Now I’m busy. Now I’m seriously at a bottleneck and I’ve seriously got some friction even though I’m making good cash.”

Watch the full webinar replay at https://learning.benwalker.com/courses/how-to-navigate-2021