There’s always an easy way to scale and a hard way to scale. Unfortunately, by default, we resort to the hard way.
Here are 3 issues I am actively thinking about these days:
Issue #1: Make Your Business UNSHUTTABLE When Your Credit Card Declines
I am interested in this issue because it is one of the top things that keep you thinking about ‘work’ 24/7/365.
Credit cards decline for all sorts of weird reasons.
The last thing I want you to worry about is your business shutting down because any ONE of your Funnel Platform, LMS, CRM, Order Forms, Integration, or anything in between didn’t renew automatically.
My hope is that over the next 3-5 years, as I continue to explore more, I’ll be able to publish my findings in my newsletter.
Issue #2: Scale ‘Profits’ and NOT ‘Costs’
I first got interested in this issue a few months ago when a client of mine with 25k contacts in their Ontraport CRM told me they are actively deleting even slightly inactive contacts from their CRM because, beyond 25k contacts, Ontraport costs double.
They were practically holding themselves back subconsciously from scaling because they knew the cost increase is out of proportion to their business income.
I’ve experienced this issue myself. Worse, I mostly ignored it because I thought there was something wrong with me and this was an isolated case.
But I was wrong. When I saw my client (with a business 10X the size of mine) struggle with it too, I knew this is a significant problem.
Issue #3: Eliminate Business Slavery
Your business without 100% of your ownership is someone else’s business. You’re a volunteer.
Ownership of your data, content, and profits as you scale comes down to this – eliminate SaaS tools from your tech stack ASAP.
This truly is an entrepreneurial emergency.
The last thing I ever want to happen to you is that some other business holds your funnels, courses, videos, customers, or data hostage on their whims.
Whether this is due to your credit card declining, your SaaS provider changing their terms, or even them going out of business.
As long as you’re using SaaS, you’re parking your car in someone else’s house who holds the keys.
Imagine having to pay Kajabi $300 a month for the rest of your life because the first time you sold your course to thousands of students was on Kajabi.
Now you no longer use Kajabi for new courses in business because you have a better in-house LMS.
But you have to pay Kajabi because transferring those students, courses, their course progress, etc. out of Kajabi is a nightmare.
It’s much easier to just pay them $300 per month.
This is not an imaginary scenario. This is one of many occurances that I see happening all around.
In my opinion, this creates a situation best described as “Business Slavery.”
In short, any partnership where your business partner gets a slice from your revenues, but only you get the slices of losses, is “Business Slavery.”
Sure, taxes work that way too. But you can’t avoid taxes. Better avoid your SaaS tools from becoming your tax collectors.
There are plenty of non-SaaS versions of CRMs, LMS, and everything in between that actually work better than the popular SaaS ones.
It’s one of those fun rabbit holes I find myself exploring simply because I enjoy it.
It would be great to connect with other people who are interested in these same issues—so if any of the above resonates, feel free to reach out!
NOTE: This is part 2 of my ongoing 30-day writing challenge series. You can read part 1 here.