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. Hey, and welcome back. All right, so I want to talk about what it means to be full, because I think it's a myth, or at least our understanding of it is a myth, because a lot of times we represent full as at 100% capacity. [00:01:00] Uh, let me give you an example. So let's say you're a business owner, any business owner, and you're like, I got a tight ship. There's no room for improvement. Like we are working at 100%. And that's how I know that we're successful. The thing is, if you're working at 100% all the time, you probably do not have flexibility, adaptability or the ability to make continuous improvement. So when you're rigidly adhering to like 100%, [00:01:30] that's how I know that we're full. We are maxed out. It overlooks the need for you to remain agile and responsive to lots of things, whether that is external market conditions, customer preferences, technological advances, or even losing a team member. Uh, if you want more about that, you can go back and listen to episode 118, where we talked about all of the impacts that having somebody leave your team can have.

Keila Hill-Trawick: But what I really want to talk about today [00:02:00] is how it's a misconception that operating at maximum capacity, meaning you are using all of the hours that you have available to work, is synonymous with optimal performance, meaning that you're doing your very best work. And it's counterintuitive that being full can actually hinder your company's ability to innovate and adapt and thrive because so many things are changing. So let's dig into what [00:02:30] full does and doesn't mean, and how you can use those definitions for your own businesses. Success. All right. So the first thing is when people say full and they're like, it's because I am at capacity. It's because it's a traditional mindset, right? We always think that I am doing my very best, and I am my most productive when I'm using all of the time allotted to me. I mean, yes, efficiency is important. You are filling the time, but it is absolutely [00:03:00] not the sole determinant of success. And when you are just so focused on being full, you're so focused on making sure, making sure that you and your team are hitting all of your hours numbers, you overlook that there's other stuff that you need to be thinking about. You don't have room for like errors and the correction of those errors. You don't have room for growth or unforeseen challenges like the market changing or like I said, somebody [00:03:30] not being on your team anymore.

Keila Hill-Trawick: When you're operating at capacity, any time those changes jump in, you have no space to address them. You have no way of being like, hey, now that this has changed, I need to be able to make some movements on this side because you're already up here, right? You're already using all of the hours that you have just to do the work. This means that you need to have a more dynamic approach to organizational management, or how you're managing your team and your [00:04:00] clients. So when we think about being full and that being max capacity, it should be known that that's really about rigidity and inflexibility. Whereas really if you want to be a successful business, you got to have room for fluidity and you have to be open to change. So why do I say all of this and what is this fallacy mean? Let's think about you and your team. Right? And you have four people that work with [00:04:30] you. And all of you work hard. You're not working any overtime, but you're working all of the hours, let's say 40. This is not so random, but let's say 40 hours. You are working each week and everything is getting done right. Everybody's work is getting finished. We are on target. So here's the thing. If everybody's working at 100%, then there is no room for change. When you have a brand new client that you would love to take on, y'all are too [00:05:00] full to take care of them.

Keila Hill-Trawick: If a team member gets sick or takes a sabbatical, there's no room to align that work across other people that are working with you because they're full with the jobs that they already have. Not to mention just regular life interruptions like construction on your house, or a kids spring break, or even just a vacation that you might want to take. If everybody's already at the top of their levels, there is no room. And then that doesn't even take into account things [00:05:30] like improvements. So when you want to make your processes better or more efficient, or you want to look into new technology of how you might be able to serve your clients better, when is their time to do that? If everybody is working at their max capacity. So not only does it not allow you to really grow in a multitude of ways, it also can lead to decreased productivity because everybody is doing everything at the top. There isn't any room or space for them to be able to take breaks, take rest, [00:06:00] take breaths. When you have decreased productivity and you're pushing everybody to their limits, it's automatically going to lead to increased errors and potentially a compromised quality of work. It's really hard to check yourself to make sure that everything is good and is excellent. If you are always operating at the height because it's stressful, you don't really have any room to go back and look at those things, to review it, to see how it could be better because it's taking all of your time [00:06:30] just to do it.

Keila Hill-Trawick: You also notice that organizations who are stretched thin because they're full may struggle to pivot or innovate. So when there's market changes, it gets really difficult to adjust your business to align with those changes because you don't have the time to make those adjustments. The thing is, when you're pursuing efficiency at all costs, you stifle creativity and innovation within your organization. And in the meantime, you basically burn your team out. The other thing [00:07:00] is your ability to grow. Your desire to want to do new things is stopped. So when we say that you are stifling creativity, it's not just on the business like internally, it is also hurting your ability to externally show up differently. Because when do you have time to think about that? So what I'll say about this is we really want to rethink success metrics when we're thinking about, hey, what is full? I would encourage you to think [00:07:30] of a lower number. So that's going to change for everybody. But think about what it looks like for you all to be 75 to 80% full. That gives room for people to take proper lunch breaks, for people to have bad days, for you to be able to take a break when you need to go do a speaking engagement, or go hang out with your kids, or walk your dog for a little bit longer today. It gives room for the idea that that full number of hours for the week doesn't [00:08:00] mean that all of that is going to be work.

Keila Hill-Trawick: You want to make sure that you've got some ebb and flow built into everybody's schedule, so that when you're thinking about the metrics that make your business successful, they are not just based on hours put in. So what are we thinking about there? We really want to embrace a holistic approach. Right. So how easily would we be able to take on a new client if you're putting in all this money into marketing and advertising and trying to get more people to come to you, [00:08:30] what is reasonable for you to be able to onboard and still do the work that you're already doing for current clients, remember that takes time too. And if what you're doing works and you're bringing on a multitude of additional clients, who is going to do that work to bring them on with ease and excellence and care if everybody is always full? Similarly, if a client that you're already working with has a new project or a new opportunity for you, how will you have time to take that on and adjust for [00:09:00] all of the work that you're already doing? If there is no gap in how much time you have and how much time you're using, you also just want to make sure your overall having a positive work environment. To be honest, nobody wants to work to their capacity, and if it constantly feels like you're being stretched to your capacity, it can be hard for team members to start thinking about how they can grow in their careers year, and whether or not they even want to do more.

Keila Hill-Trawick: It can be difficult to encourage people to take on another position [00:09:30] if they always feel like they're going to be maxed out. So you want to make sure, as a business owner, that you're supporting work life balance in whatever ways that that means to you to make sure that you're treating your team members as human beings and not just as workers in your warehouse. Make sure that you're building systems, processes, and cultures that can withstand shocks and adapt to changing circumstances. What kind of processes and workflows do you have in place that give your team space to be able to think of new [00:10:00] ways to do what you're doing? What kinds of, um, resources can you be leaning on so that your team isn't responsible for everything that has to be done in your business? One example is that we outsourced legal HR and IT in the past year. Why? Because one of us was doing it, and our team of six didn't really have the time to dedicate towards that. Instead, we got experts to come in and take that off of our plate, which left us time to do what we really [00:10:30] want to take care of, which is treat our clients like VIPs. Everything that we are doing that is not that is taking time away from achieving that promise. We also want to stay ahead of the curve, like your ability to meet your clients needs and differentiate yourself from competitors starts by having the space to even talk about it.

Keila Hill-Trawick: So whether that is social media, if that is talking to your clients about getting feedback of how you could do better, all of those [00:11:00] things are dependent on you having. The space to be able to address that. So when you are full with client work, your ability to be able to innovate, to do things differently, to think about things differently is hampered by the bandwidth that you have left over. At the end of the day, I want you to stop thinking about being full as being at max, and instead think about being full as being enough. What will it take for you to be able to have the right [00:11:30] team behind you, with the right number of clients, with some room left over to make things better? And when I say make things better, as many of the, um, examples that I've given are about the business, I'm also talking about you your ability to take vacations, to rethink what you want your business to be, to rethink what your team should be made up of, and what kinds of work you're be doing. And just to be creative about what you want your life to look like outside of work [00:12:00] first starts from a place of your business, not taking all of your time. Because the reality is, if you're full at max capacity, you're actually over. Like there's rarely a time where you've gotten that 100% just right.

Keila Hill-Trawick: If you're working at 100% capacity, you're actually probably working at 120%. And eventually that's going to lead to burnout for you and your team. So what does this mean for you as a business owner? Well, as you might imagine, this really leads back to building [00:12:30] to enough. When we are thinking about what full means, we have to start with what do you want your life and business to look like? We also want to think about what do your ideal days look like for you and the people who are working with you? Is it a full ten hour day? Is it six hours with two hours to come up with new ideas? Do you spend 50% of your time on client work, and another 50% of your time on internal ways of making things [00:13:00] look differently? At the end of the day, we just want to make sure that you're not so full with the thing that you sell, that you don't have the ability to build the thing that you wanted to build. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this was helpful for you. 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 [00:13:30] as we continue to redefine success one intentional step at a time.