Build to Enough

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Keila Hill-Trawick: Hello. You're listening to Build to Enough, a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to scale at their own pace. I'm your host, Keyla Hill Traywick, and I'll be your chief storyteller and cheerleader in a world that glorifies endless expansion, we're tuning out the noise and discussing the beauty of enough. Each episode will dive into inspiring stories, practical insights, and strategies to cultivate sustainable success on your [00:00:30] own terms. So whether you're a solopreneur, small business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur, get ready for a refreshing take on the entrepreneurial journey. This is build to enough. Hello and welcome back! I'm your host, Keyla Hill Traywick and today we are talking about the need to constantly evolve, innovate and adapt. Because as the saying goes, what got you here won't get you to the next level. I mean, it doesn't go exactly like that, but you know what I mean. So we're going to talk about the comparison [00:01:00] trap that many business owners fall into because you can get too comfortable. You build a thing, you finally feel like it's leveled out, and you think that you can set it and forget it. But the reality is those habits can hinder your process. If you don't start thinking about the differences between where you were when you started to the business that you're building or maintaining right now, you end up in a trap that gets hard to break free from. And we want to help you with that, because we want you to continue to grow in the ways that make sense for you.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So [00:01:30] let's jump in. So let's start with the comparison trap. I mean, we live in an age of social media. It is pretty much inevitable that you are going to see something or someone similar to you and what you do, and automatically start comparing yourself to other people. It's often the highlight reel, which we always talk about, where the success stories of other entrepreneurs are being shown, and so it can be easy to feel like you're falling behind. But here's the thing you're not. You're not them. They're not [00:02:00] you. You start feeling inadequate and you get distracted from your own path. But everybody's journey is unique, and I, as an accountant, have seen so many tax returns and so many background processes and so many internal organs of businesses to tell you that even the ones that look shiny, new and fantastic on the outside may not really be doing well internally. And that's not a reason to compare yourself. I'm not saying that like [00:02:30] they're not doing as good as you that you think they are, so you should feel better about yourself. What I am saying is that we're all going through similar journeys of ups and downs, and just because you're only seeing the UPS doesn't mean that the downs don't exist. At the end of the day, you have to focus on your own progress and milestones.

Keila Hill-Trawick: The success that you see in other people takes time. Hard work, failures, learning curves, all of these pieces that we are going to run into to. But there isn't a fast track beyond [00:03:00] the work. The work is the work. And so once you learn that, and once you're really intentional about keeping your eyes on your own paper, it gets much easier for you to be able to build the business to your enough. It gets easier to build to a place that you actually want to be instead of growing, scaling, and maturing a business that you didn't want in the first place. So I had to think about this recently when I was thinking about creating content. I've only been doing this for a couple of years, and it is easy to look online and see all the [00:03:30] people who are killing it with the followers and the partnerships and the insert whatever here that I just don't have yet. And one of the things that I had to remind myself is one, content creation is a full time job for other people. I run a firm and I make content for this firm, but it's not my job. My job is to be the CEO of an accounting and tax firm. And so my time, my availability, my access, my insert, all of these things here is going to be different because [00:04:00] it's not my only role. The other thing is they didn't necessarily get there alone, whether that is partnerships or groups, tools or resources, or even financial backing behind marketing and advertising that supported them, we often assume that everything that is happening is organic when that's not necessarily true.

Keila Hill-Trawick: And so have I taken advantage of those same things? Not necessarily. But I do know that they're available and could potentially push me in ways that doing it myself can. This is also something to think about when [00:04:30] we talk to our clients, right? So when we are hearing their profit margins and their, you know, desire to build a team and all of these pieces that they're doing to grow their businesses, one of the first questions that we ask is, what do you want? What are your goals? Not just for your business, but for you personally. For example, if you see big firms and agencies that have 30 people and that becomes your goal, you have to realize that you now have to manage 30 people, or at least a [00:05:00] level of leadership that is then managing the remainder of those people. Is that actually how you want to spend your time? And if it is, let's put a plan in place to make sure that you can do that. But if it's not, let's get clear on the business that you want to run so that we can talk about the financials and the KPIs and the team that is necessary to bring that to fruition. Remember, we all have to run our own race.

Keila Hill-Trawick: We can learn and we can pull from the experiences of others. But we're all different, and we have different goals and [00:05:30] varying levels of access and resources. And that's what makes up our special sauce, and is also why we have to start relying more on ourselves than the comparison to other people. That may seem like us, but really be really different. Plus, there's a danger in getting too comfortable. It's human nature to find a routine and stick with it. I think a lot of us, given the chaos of the past few years, are living in a place where we would like things to be a little more boring. But when you're running a business, what got you to your current level [00:06:00] of success won't necessarily get you to the next. So I think about, for example, people who are diying their financing or their marketing or whatever those business departments are, you may be able to bootstrap that. You may be able to take it on for the first one two years, first 1 to 5 employees, and it's no big deal to you. But then as you expand, as you hire more of a team, as you make different service offerings, more expansive service offerings, as you raise your prices, [00:06:30] all of the things that you did to begin are not necessarily things that you're going to do now. So one of the things that I think about for this are things like technology or software.

Keila Hill-Trawick: There are very simple ways for you to build a business on a pretty small tech stack when you start. And this is not to say that companies can't continue with really small tech stacks, but what I found is when you want to improve a client experience, when you want to make sure that you're getting the best out of each system, [00:07:00] your tech stack grows a little bit and that comes with learning opportunities. It comes with training opportunities for your team, and you realize that when you were just using two things at the beginning, it turns out that maybe five softwares does this better, and you have to be aware of what that's going to look like as a transition for your team. Maybe that is a different way that your clients interact with you. Like when we instituted a portal for people to upload documents and retrieve documents as needed, [00:07:30] that was much different than going to a drive folder or something like that. So keep that in mind. Keep in mind the idea that, like what you did at the very beginning might have gotten you to a level of success that it can't take you beyond. And so a reminder that complacency is the enemy of growth. So you want to regularly challenge yourself and your team to think outside the box. Start asking yourself on a consistent basis, what can we do better? What are the emerging trends in our industry and how [00:08:00] can we improve our products or services? There may be periods that for weeks, months, even quarters at a time.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Nothing changes. And you say that we are good, but continuously ask yourself that. Because when it's time for you to pivot or make changes, or just make small tweaks or adjustments, you want to be ready for those and not so stuck in. This is the way that we've always done it, that you don't have the opportunity for change. Alongside that, you're always going to be reassessing and innovating. And I [00:08:30] will say that we have had to do this several times, that little fish at varying degrees. So at one point we completely revamped our services. We had a team retreat where we talked through all of it, and it felt like I was building the business from scratch. A couple years later, we went in and we revamped our project management system to join the internal and external components into one system. And they were big and they were hairy and they were scary, and they took a lot of time and sometimes a lot of money, but it helped [00:09:00] us to move in the direction of the business that I actually wanted to run. And without that constant stopping and saying, hey, are we where we want to be? Are we serving who we meant to serve? Are we doing the level of work that we promised? In order to be able to answer those questions, we had to be willing to stop at different points and reassess what we were doing and whether it was working and what were some innovations that we could implement.

Keila Hill-Trawick: We all talk about AI. How could we use that in a [00:09:30] way that really supported what we do? We looked at software that we had been using for years, and realized that there were some ways that we were doing work manually that would have been much more accurate, faster had we had a system to be able to help with that. It doesn't always have to be a complete overhaul. Sometimes it's the small changes. You want to listen to your clients, get feedback, hear those little hey, it would be nice if I could have one more call. Or I [00:10:00] noticed that I wasn't getting a response as fast as I needed. Okay, you can institute things to correct that going forward, but know that adapting to change is crucial when you can pivot quickly. When there are market shifts, those are typically the businesses that are going to stay afloat when those market shifts pass. So think about being proactive versus reactive. You want to anticipate those changes and prepare for them, rather than waiting until you're forced to have to adapt, at which point it is generally too late. All [00:10:30] of that leads to really building a culture within your firm of continuous improvement.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Now I will put an asterisk next to this because I don't believe in the you are never good enough culture that we have built in a lot of facets of our life, right? The goal of this is not to constantly think I'm never good enough, and I always have to be getting better. But you do need to know that continuous improvement is necessary. You want to make sure that you are doing what you mean to [00:11:00] be doing, and you're doing it intentionally. So encourage your team to embrace change and innovation so that when it is necessary, everybody can be on board to make sure that it's executed with care. Create an environment where new ideas are welcome and experimentation is supported. Give your team the opportunity to try some things out, to figure out how they work, and maybe determine that they're not going to be a good fit for your business. But you got to have that trial and error spirit to be able to do things better and faster than you may have been able to do [00:11:30] them in the past. In other news, there are going to be failures. It is a part of entrepreneurship that has been one of the hardest for me to accept. But we have to make sure that alongside celebrating our success, we are learning from our failures. Every setback is an opportunity to grow and improve. And when you are fostering a culture of collaboration and learning and adaptation, you position your business to thrive in a constantly changing landscape.

Keila Hill-Trawick: But you also have to realize that some mistakes are going to be made [00:12:00] along the way. So one of the things that we do every year at our Team retreat when we come together is we have a brainstorming session to assess our processes, systems and tools so we can identify areas of improvement and prioritize the ones that need to be touched first. And then throughout the year, I encourage the team to share their ideas on a regular basis with team calls. This is because we want to make sure they're not siloed. It's not just your idea, it is the idea that can propel little fish differently. I'm really open to change, probably [00:12:30] more so than most of my team was probably ready for when they started. And what that means is I'm not afraid to shake things up. I'm not afraid to introduce something new into the business. See how it works, try it out, make the tweaks, and then launch it. But I want to be mindful of how it affects our clients and our team members. Our ongoing statement here is that we want it to be easy to work with and for us. So we got to balance how much change we're doing at various times. That being said, when [00:13:00] our clients changed, when our market changed, when our team structure changed, I had to be willing to throw away some old ideas about what I thought it meant to build this business in order to build the new version of this business as was needed.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So being flexible and open to pivots has served me really well and growing this business. And it's something that I'll continue to embrace. So remember, you got to avoid the comparison trap and the comfort of complacency. [00:13:30] Like we said, what got you here might not get you to the goal that you're trying to get to, and you have to focus on your own journey and embrace innovation. There are so many ways that you can do exactly what you're doing, just a little bit differently, in order to make it better for you and your customers. And when you do so, you set yourself up for sustained growth and success, and you set yourself apart from others that are in your industry. Thank you so much for joining us this week. I hope this insights helped you on your journey to the next level. [00:14:00] And remember that growth is a continuous process, so stay proactive and adaptable. Until next time, keep pushing forward towards your version of enough. Enjoy today's episode! Don't forget to subscribe, rate and share the love with your fellow entrepreneur friends and make sure to sign up for the Build to Enough newsletter. The link is in the show notes. Stay tuned for more episodes as we continue to redefine success one intentional step at a time.