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. Today, we're diving into a topic that is crucial for small business owners striving to build to enough, which for us is intentional growth. We want to talk about practical strategies to foster growth without losing sight of your unique vision of enough. Now let's start with [00:01:00] what enough means. It's going to be different for everybody, and it is going to change across the board. What enough means for me is that if I got to this point, whether that is revenue wise, how much time I'm spending in my business, the size of my team, if I got to this place and I got nothing more, I would be good. For some people. That's a financial goal. I got to get to seven figures and once I get there, if I didn't make 2 million, I would still be good. For some people, that's a team [00:01:30] size goal. That's one of ours is I really don't want us to have more than about ten people on the team.

Keila Hill-Trawick: That feels small enough for me that there is overlap in the roles that everybody can be doing something, but not so big that it feels out of hand to manage. But enough is individual. The point of this is that you have a plan, an intentional plan to get somewhere that you are willing to say if it cost one more person or added one more dollar, I'd be willing to give that up because I'm good where we are right now. [00:02:00] So what are we thinking about when we're talking about personal and business goals? Those are what are actually going to shape you enough if you have, um, a bunch of kids at home or you are a caretaker for someone, you're enough is going to look different from somebody who may be single, younger, older, without children. There are just so many things in our lives that influence those goals. So it isn't just about your business. Your idea of what you want out of your business [00:02:30] starts with what you want out of your life. And so when we're thinking about enough, keep that in mind. Understand that, like your idea of how much I am willing to do or interested in doing is partly based on the other responsibilities and desires for your life that your responsibilities and other desires for your life are being woven through with your business. After all, we want our business to fit into our life and not our life.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Have to just take the crumbs of what's left over after our entrepreneurship gets done. So [00:03:00] a couple of things that I want to talk about today. Let's start with mindful planning and goal setting. Now we have probably heard of Smart goals that they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. I am not great at setting goals. I don't know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow half the time, let alone five years in the future. But I do think it's important to have an end step. Where are you headed? At least have a direction. So yeah, maybe you've got these Smart goals down. You know exactly [00:03:30] what you want to do and you're measuring it throughout, like KPIs. Or maybe you're more like me and you just have a direction that you're aiming towards. Either way, you need to set something that has meaningfulness to you that feels achievable, that you can get to and say, I know that I have actually achieved the goal that I set forward, because these are the things that I was expecting. As a result, you've also got to balance ambition with practicality. So a lot of us in our industry [00:04:00] and just professional service providers as a whole have ambition on lock. We are searching for. I am trying to reach this point. I am trying to hit this apex of what I think that my job or my business will do for me, but the reality is there's only so much bandwidth to go around.

Keila Hill-Trawick: No matter the size of your team. We're human beings, we're not robots, and there's only so much that we can do. So you want to explore strategies to balance those growth aspirations with the practical limitations of having a [00:04:30] micro business. Now, let me just aside to a micro business, I wouldn't say that this is a technical Tum. It's one that a lot of us use in different ways. But for me, micro businesses are generally with small headcounts small is relative, but I would say less than 20 people on staff, between employees and contractors. And usually in my experience, it's less than ten. So little fish is considered a micro business by my definition. So are the majority of our clients. And maybe that [00:05:00] includes you and your business too. The next thing that I want to talk. About is efficient resource allocation. Now, Micro-businesses only have so many resources and that can be limited by people. So how many people are supporting you? Money. Uh, when you have a very small team, there is likely going to be a cap of how much you can achieve financially. And so what can you do to maximize the use of limited resources? I think the first thing is cutting unnecessary expenses. [00:05:30] There's a lot of dreams about what entrepreneurship should include and what you should be paying for and investing in, but you're the best person to understand what your business needs to run, lean.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Get everything that it requires in order to serve your customers in the ways that you want to, without a whole lot of extra fluff. Now, that's not to mean that you have to do down to the penny, only the things that are required. But you should be doing a regular [00:06:00] audit of what you're paying for, and whether it's really getting you closer to your goal of enough. For example, if you're spending a ton of money on a coach that isn't providing the ROI that you need to get you closer to taking more time off in your business, are you in the right tier for them? Do you even need that coach right now? Think about where you're headed and what you're investing in to get you closer to that. Also outsourcing. Listen, of course, as an accountant, I'm going to say that you need to outsource your [00:06:30] accounting function. It is paramount. Uh, cheat code. I outsourced our accounting so that I didn't have to do it. So I know that it is a big deal, but outsource anything that is non-core to what you do. In this past year, little fish has outsourced HR. We've outsourced it. We've gotten better legal help. All of these things kind of come together to say, if our focus is to provide excellence in accounting and tax service for our clients, there's a lot of stuff that we can't spend our time doing. What [00:07:00] are the things in your business that you're spending hours or weeks on that really need to be taken over by an expert, so that you can focus on the things that only you can do.

Keila Hill-Trawick: Outsourcing leads to efficiency and growth, and it helps to not overwhelm the business owner. When you're a micro business, you are doing a lot of jobs, and we want to make sure that you are compressing your time to again, only focus on the things that only you can do, but also leaning in to the reasons that you went into business in the first place. You did not [00:07:30] do this so that you could spend your days chasing down rabbit holes on taxes, right? Like you're a designer, you're a maker, you're a consulting partner, you're doing all kinds of things that are not this. So how can you get that off of your place investing well so that you can spend time making money for your business, doing the thing that you were meant to do. Finally, we want to talk about adaptability for continuous evolution. And that means embracing change. The markets, the [00:08:00] algorithms, the everything are constantly moving. And so there's not a way for you to just pick one thing and set it and forget it. As a business owner, and especially as a tiny business owner, you need to be ready for those fluctuations that are going to happen in the environment that ultimately affect your business. This means being financially prepared so that when there are dips, you can cover what that will mean for your money.

Keila Hill-Trawick: This also means looking ahead in your industry. What do you see as [00:08:30] trends that you should be aware of that either you need to be compensating for in your business, or at least being prepared for how that's going to change, or make you pivot from what you do. There are so many successful micro businesses that we're doing one thing pivoted and decided to do something else. And while there will be some dips and some adjustments while you figure out what your new business looks like, you've also got the ability to make these smaller tweaks to make your current business better, but they are all going to involve some [00:09:00] kind of change. Finally, investing in knowledge continuous learning is so important. And that's not just the technical skills of the thing that you do. It is also all of the other things that are happening in business, in the world, in your country, in your community that are going to affect how you show up. And when you show up for your clients and the people that you serve. So what does this have to do with intentional growth? For me, intentional growth means that you are taking steps along the way to stop, [00:09:30] pause, and make sure that this is even the business you want before you try to go bigger, better, greater, stronger, right? So before you get to 12 employees, how are you treating the people, the two people that work for you right now? How are you making sure that before you hit that seven figure goal, that you're doing well with the six figures that you're already earning, both with how you're bringing money in and whether that's scalable and how you're spending, and [00:10:00] whether that is going to be something that you can consistently do well.

Keila Hill-Trawick: When we talk about setting goals that intentional growth does, start from checking in with yourself at regular intervals to say, is this still my goal? Do I even still want that for myself? And if not, should I stop, think about what I want for the business and then make new changes. Overall, we want to make sure that when we're talking about intentional growth, we are building in this time for reflection and pause. As small businesses it's important, but as micro businesses, it's especially [00:10:30] important. We have the ability to be flexible, to move when we need to, as fast or as slow as we want to, but it means that we've got to stop and be intentional along the way. I hope that this is helpful in getting you on your path to enough. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Build to Enough. If you enjoyed 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 [00:11:00] as we continue to redefine success one intentional step at a time.