Welcome to the brand new Scale Your Vision podcast! I am delighted to finally be doing this and to get this project out into the world. For years, I’ve watched entrepreneurs spin their wheels chasing things they’re simply not ready for — burning time, money, and energy in the process. The truth is that business growth happens in phases, and scaling is not the same thing as building or growing.
And yet, I see this over and over and over again. A founder will tell me, I want to scale my business. But when I ask what they’re doing, they’re still trying to figure out how to make their first sale or how to create consistent revenue. That is not scaling. That is building.
This podcast is designed to put language and structure to those stages so you know exactly where you are, what to prioritize, and what to ignore for now. Because here’s the reality: you cannot scale what does not exist. Anything times zero is still zero. Even anything times one doesn’t move you forward from where you already are.
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Let’s get into it. Here’s what’s inside the episode:
- The 70% rule that quietly accelerates momentum and how it forces your work hours to actually support your business growth
- All my frameworks: my 5 phases of growth that supports you through $1m+/year, the 4S’s of growth, and the 7 pillars of scaling
- The input/output test that sorts whether you’re actually scaling or if you’re in a phase of growth
- How to know when it’s time for more market presence or if it’s time to pivot into true market differentiation… or to just stay in your lane and focus on sales
- The operational “house” analogy that reinforces your foundation before you add the next “story” (and why skipping this usually costs big headaches)
- When “scale” finally becomes the right goal (hint: it’s might be further away than you think) — and what readiness actually looks like behind the scenes
Why I Needed to Start a New Business Podcast
I’ve been in the podcasting space for a long time. My first show, The Visionary Files, has more than 120 episodes and is ranked in the global top 10. I’m proud of that body of work. But after pushing out 100 consistent episodes, I hit a crossroads.
I considered going into business with someone else. That partnership ended up falling apart — not dramatically, just a slow drift until it was clear it wasn’t going to happen. But that person had been woven into the direction of the show, and when it dissolved, I was left asking myself: Now what? What am I going to do with this platform?
The Visionary Files was always meant to be about case studies. I asked entrepreneurs: Did you ever see a business that did something incredible and wonder, how did they do that? Me too. So let’s ask them. That format worked, but it didn’t give me a place to share my own strategies, lessons, and operational insights.
So, Scale Your Vision was born. This is my space for solo episodes — hitting record and giving you strategy, frameworks, and real talk about business growth.
Why Free, Accessible Business Strategy Matters
There’s another reason I wanted this show to exist. I get asked for strategic advice constantly. And while I love giving it, it doesn’t feel good to dole out full strategies for free when other people are paying me for my time and expertise.
This podcast solves that. I can share insights freely, knowing everyone has equal access. If you want me to go deep on your specific situation, you can even send me a voice note. I’ll play it on the show, give your business a shout-out, and walk through a strategy tailored to your context.
The more information you share, the better my answer will be. Because for any question, there are a thousand possible directions I could take. With your context, I can narrow that down and make it actionable.
This is the heart of why Scale Your Vision exists: to normalize the messy, nonlinear path of entrepreneurship while giving you real tools and frameworks to move forward.
The Biggest Misconception About Scaling a Business
If there’s one phrase I hear more than anything else, it’s this: I want to scale my business. Founders say it with confidence, like it’s the natural next step after opening their laptop and filing an LLC. But the reality is very different.
When I ask what they’re actually doing to “scale,” the answers usually reveal something else. They’re still trying to figure out how to make their very first sale. Or they’ve made a few, but their revenue is inconsistent. Or they’re hovering around $2,000 or $3,000 a month and think scale is the answer.
Here’s the thing: if you’re still trying to prove your concept, you are not scaling. You’re building.
Why Scaling Too Early Slows You Down
Trying to scale before you’re ready isn’t necessarily bad — but it will actively slow you down. You’re stretching your operations too far, chasing strategies meant for companies at a completely different stage. From an operational standpoint — and I love operational strategy — it makes zero sense to pile on complexity when you haven’t yet mastered the basics of marketing, sales, and delivery.
It’s not that you’re wrong for wanting scale. It’s that you’re not ready 😉
Going after something big and lofty sounds great, and sometimes there’s a reason to stretch yourself. But most of the time, doing so will bottleneck your business and slow down the very growth you’re craving.
Growth vs. Scale: A Crucial Distinction
This is also where we need to separate growth from scale. Growth is when both your input and output increase. You bring in more leads, you make more money — but you also spend more time, energy, and resources to deliver on it.
Scale is different. Scale is when your input increases while your output decreases. You’re making more money, serving more clients, and reaching more people with less effort, less time, and less strain on your team.
That’s why scale is so elusive. It requires systems, infrastructure, and operational maturity that only come later. Chasing it at $5K months is like trying to run a marathon while you’re still learning to walk.
The Five Phases of Business Growth
Every business evolves through stages. You don’t leap from idea to scale overnight. There are distinct phases, each with its own priorities, challenges, and opportunities. I break these into five: Development, Startup, Growth, Expansion, and Maturity.
These phases show up in the numbers, in the bottlenecks you experience, and in the operational demands on your time and energy. Knowing which phase you’re in helps you focus on what matters right now — instead of chasing strategies that don’t fit your stage.
Phase 1: Development Stage
Development is the earliest stage of business. You might be pre-revenue, or you might have made a few sales here and there, but nothing is consistent yet.
At this stage, your only job is proof of concept. You need to answer two questions:
- Does the market want what I’m selling?
- Can I reliably get people to buy it?
That’s it. Everything else is a distraction.
And yet, this is where I see entrepreneurs lose themselves in busywork. They build endless Google Docs, fiddle in Canva for days, or obsess over the perfect website copy. It feels productive, but it doesn’t generate revenue.
Here’s what actually matters in development:
- Learn to market. How do you put your offer in front of the right people?
- Learn to sell. How do you convert interest into paying customers?
- Get your brain on board with being able to do both. If you’ve never sold before, or you’re selling yourself as a coach or consultant, it feels personal and vulnerable. You have to build resilience to handle the discomfort of selling.
Think about your time investment, too. If you’re working 40 hours per week with no team, 30 of those hours should go into marketing and sales activities. (Are you shocked?! I’m telling you something a lot of people won’t!) Proof of concept doesn’t come from tinkering. It comes from putting offers in front of people until something sticks.
Your market presence objective in development is simple: figure out how your concept fills a market need. That’s it. Don’t worry about visibility, branding, or differentiation yet. Until you can prove your offer works, those things won’t help you.
Phase 2: Startup Stage
Once you’re consistently making sales — but typically under $100K per year — you’ve moved into the startup stage.
Startup is about building a stronger foundation. Your revenue is more reliable, but you’re still proving yourself month over month. You’re focused on creating consistent cash flow, generating clients, and solidifying your ability to attract and retain customers.
Here’s what matters in startup:
- Lead acquisition → client acquisition. You need a system to capture interest and turn it into paying relationships.
- Establishing visibility channels. This is where you begin building market presence.
But let’s be clear: you don’t need a fancy website to be in startup. You don’t need perfectly curated social feeds. What you need is to reliably sell.
To guide visibility, I use the Four B’s:
- Borrow it
- Buy it
- Build it
- Bedazzle it (my fun way of saying: retention and referrals from happy clients)
Startup is about experimenting with these channels and figuring out which ones bring you consistent clients. Once you’re generating somewhere between $6K and $8K per month, you’re on track toward six figures — and you’re ready to move toward growth.
Phase 3: Growth Stage
The growth stage typically starts when you’ve hit consistent six-figure revenue — around $100K per year — and extends to about $300K. At this point, you’ve proven your concept, your offers are selling, and you’re no longer worried about whether you can make money. The question becomes: how do I make more money without burning out?
This is where things start to get fun — and also where things start to break 😵💫
What Growth Really Means
Growth is about increasing both input and output. You’re bringing in more leads, more sales, and more money. But you’re also expending more resources to do it. More hours. More team support. More operational complexity.
Think of growth as “more in, more out.” To get more revenue, you spend more energy and cash. That’s why so many entrepreneurs in this stage start to feel overwhelmed: they’ve built momentum, but the machine isn’t yet efficient.
Bottlenecks at the Growth Stage
If you’ve ever felt like everything was working until suddenly it wasn’t, you’ve hit a growth bottleneck. These bottlenecks almost always show up at predictable revenue milestones: around $100K, again at $300K, later at $500K, and once more near $1M.
Here’s why: each new revenue level requires new systems, structures, and mindsets. The foundation that carried you to $100K won’t carry you to $300K. Just like you’d never add a second story to a house without reinforcing the foundation, you can’t add more revenue without shoring up your operations.
Market Differentiation Becomes Essential
In the development and startup phases, your priority is simply to sell. But once you reach growth, your market presence has to shift.
This is where differentiation becomes critical. Without it, you’ll feel like you’re shouting into a void — saying the same things as everyone else in your industry, hoping your ideal client notices you.
Differentiation is about carving out your unique message, perspective, and position in the market. It’s not just about being louder. It’s about being unmistakable. This is how you start capturing a larger share of your industry and standing out from the noise.
Operational Priorities in Growth
Operationally, growth means you can’t wing it anymore. Systems matter. Cash flow management matters. Client delivery matters. You need to start designing processes that can handle an increased load — because if you don’t, growth will expose every weak spot in your business.
This is also where mindset shifts are necessary. You go from hustling solo to thinking like a CEO. You start to see your time as the most valuable asset in your business and make decisions accordingly.
Market Presence Objective in Growth
Your focus in the growth phase is market differentiation. Ask yourself:
- What makes my brand unique?
- How do I articulate my value in a way competitors can’t copy?
- How do I build loyalty and recognition so people seek me out instead of just comparing me to others?
Getting clear on these questions helps you rise above the noise and set the stage for expansion.
Phase 4: Expansion Stage
Expansion is where your business pushes beyond the mid six figures — usually between $300K and $1M in annual revenue. This stage is both exciting and demanding. You’re no longer proving that your business works. You already know it does. The focus now shifts to building the infrastructure that will allow you to reach seven figures and beyond.
This is also the first stage where scaling becomes a legitimate conversation. (Yes, not until now!) Up until now, you’ve been building and growing. But once you cross about $500K in revenue, the conditions are getting into place where you can start thinking about true scale — meaning more revenue with less output.
The Seven Pillars of Scaling
To move successfully through expansion, you need to strengthen what I call the seven pillars of scaling:
- Marketing — Generating demand at a larger scale and across more channels.
- Sales — Converting that demand efficiently without relying solely on you.
- Mindset — Evolving into the leader your business now requires.
- Team — Building a structure of people who can support delivery, operations, and growth.
- Operations — Systematizing the back end so growth doesn’t break you.
- Finance — Managing cash flow, profitability, and planning for bigger investments.
- Delivery — Serving more clients at once without sacrificing quality.
Delivery is often the biggest challenge in this stage. Serving 20 clients is one thing. Serving 200 requires a completely different system. Expansion is about creating delivery mechanisms that feel personal, even when they’re operating at scale.
Why Expansion Requires Operational Maturity
In the earlier stages, you can get away with duct-tape operations. A few Google Docs, some Slack messages, maybe a spreadsheet or two. But in expansion, those systems break down fast.
This is where you need mature operations — project management tools, documented SOPs, and clear communication systems. Without them, the weight of growth falls back on you, and burnout becomes inevitable.
Market Presence Objective in Expansion
In the growth stage, the focus was differentiation. In expansion, the focus is market expansion.
You’re not just carving out your uniqueness anymore, you’ve already done that. Now you’re amplifying it across more channels. This might mean:
- Expanding from one primary social platform to two or three.
- Investing in long-term visibility strategies like SEO, blogging, or YouTube.
- Developing a multichannel or omnipresence approach so your brand shows up consistently in more places.
This is also where you can start layering in passive visibility channels — strategies that keep working for you long after the initial effort, like search-based content or partnerships that continue to bring in leads.
The Tipping Point Toward Scale
Expansion is when you finally earn the right to talk about scaling. If you’re under $500K, you’re almost certainly still in growth. But once you cross that threshold, you can legitimately ask: How do I generate more revenue with fewer resources?
That’s the essence of scale — and expansion is the bridge to get you there.
Phase 5: Maturity Stage
Maturity is the stage where your business consistently generates more than $1M in annual revenue. At this level, you’ve already proven your offer, built consistent demand, navigated bottlenecks, and reinforced your operational foundation multiple times. You’re no longer asking if your business will work — you’re asking what’s next?
The Strategic Question of Maturity
In maturity, the key strategic question is: Do I want to replicate or do I want to exit?
On a macro level, that means deciding whether you’ll continue to expand the business or prepare it for acquisition. Some founders thrive on scaling bigger, building out more products, hiring larger teams, and acquiring more market share. Others realize they’ve built a valuable asset and want to sell, cash out, and either retire or start something new.
On a micro level, the same question applies. Where do you want to replicate — doubling down on what works? And where do you want to exit — cutting out what no longer aligns with your goals or drains your energy?
Market Presence Objective in Maturity
Your market presence objective in maturity is omnipresence and authority. At this stage, you’re not just another player in your niche. You’re a recognized leader, a name people trust, and a brand that sets trends rather than follows them.
This often means:
- Establishing thought leadership through books, media features, or large-scale speaking engagements.
- Expanding internationally or into new verticals.
- Leveraging partnerships, acquisitions, or licensing to multiply reach without multiplying personal effort.
Operational Priorities in Maturity
Operationally, maturity is about efficiency and sustainability. By now, you have systems, teams, and structures in place — but they need continuous refinement. You’re not just asking how to make more money. You’re asking:
- How do we protect profitability as we grow larger?
- How do we keep team culture strong as the organization scales?
- How do we deliver a premium client experience even at volume?
This is also where founders often step back from day-to-day operations. The CEO role evolves into visionary leadership — setting direction, nurturing culture, and making high-level strategic decisions while others run the machine.
The Risk of Stagnation
One of the biggest risks in maturity is complacency. When your business is comfortably profitable, it’s easy to coast. But markets change quickly. Competitors evolve, technology advances, and customer behavior shifts.
To thrive in maturity, you need to balance stability with innovation — protecting what works while experimenting with what could work next.
Exit vs. Legacy
Finally, maturity is where legacy enters the conversation. Are you building a business to last for decades, or are you building an asset to sell? Neither answer is right or wrong — but being intentional about it ensures that your strategy, operations, and energy align with your end game.
The Four S’s of Business Growth
Alongside the five phases of growth, I use another framework to help entrepreneurs understand where they are and what they should focus on next: the Four S’s of Business Growth. These four stages — Starting, Scaling, Skating, and Structuring — describe the way you approach growth depending on your current context and goals.
This framework weaves into the five phases. For example, Starting overlaps with development and startup, while Scaling aligns more closely with expansion. Skating and Structuring can happen at multiple phases, depending on your situation.
Starting
Starting is exactly what it sounds like — the early days when your job is to prove your concept, get consistent sales, and build confidence in your ability to market and sell.
It correlates most directly with the development and startup phases. You’re pre-revenue, inconsistent in your sales, or just hitting that first six-figure mark. Your time is best spent on three things:
- Learning to market
- Learning to sell
- Training your mindset to handle both
This stage is about energy and focus. Seventy percent of your effort should go toward marketing and sales. Not content creation for content’s sake, not tinkering with your logo, not spending months perfecting a funnel. Just selling, refining, and selling again.
Starting lays the groundwork for everything else.
Scaling
Scaling is where most entrepreneurs want to be, but few are actually ready for it. Scaling means increasing your input — more leads, more sales, more revenue — while decreasing your output — less time, less energy, fewer resources required.
This is different from growth, even though I technically talk about them together. Growth means more in, more out. Scaling means more in, less out.
True scaling doesn’t realistically begin until the expansion stage, usually around $500K in annual revenue. That’s when you have the systems, demand, and team capacity to make scaling possible. Before that, when entrepreneurs say they want to scale, they’re almost always still in growth.
The goal of scaling is efficiency. How can you serve more people, generate more revenue, and expand your brand without multiplying the effort required? That’s where automation, delegation, and infrastructure come in.
Skating
Skating is one of the most overlooked — and most freeing — stages of business growth.
Skating is when things are working and you’re happy with the revenue you’re generating. You’re not chasing exponential growth. Instead, you’re asking: how can I maintain this level of income while reducing the effort required?
Skating might happen at $100K, $300K, or even $1M. It’s less about revenue and more about lifestyle design. Maybe you’re satisfied with your income but want more free time. Maybe you want to streamline operations to boost profitability.
The key question in skating is: how do I work less while maintaining or improving what I’ve already built?
This is where optimization shines. Simplifying offers, tightening delivery systems, and delegating more. It’s about creating more spaciousness in your business — how delightful, honestly!
Structuring
Structuring happens when your business has grown faster than your systems can handle. Things feel clunky, overwhelming, or broken. You’ve pushed too hard, too fast, and now you need to rebuild the foundation.
Structuring can happen in growth, expansion, or even maturity. It’s the stage where you step back and say:
- Do I need to simplify?
- Where am I bottlenecked?
- What systems or support do I need to make this sustainable?
Sometimes structuring means slowing down revenue temporarily so you can fix your operations. Sometimes it means hiring or reorganizing your team. Sometimes it means cutting offers that no longer fit.
The goal is to create stability so you can keep growing without everything collapsing under the weight of success.
Key Insights and Takeaways on Building, Growing, and Scaling a Business
The most important thing to remember is that building, growth, and scale are not interchangeable words. They are distinct stages, and confusing them is one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make. You cannot skip ahead without consequences.
In the development and startup stages, the only thing that matters is proof of concept. You need to know that people want what you’re selling and that you can sell it to them consistently. Until you’ve proven that, scaling is not on the table. Anything times zero is still zero, and anything times one doesn’t get you further than you already are.
As you move into growth, your perspective shifts. You’ve proven your concept, but now you’re increasing both input and output at the same time. You’re bringing in more leads and making more sales, but you’re also spending more resources to make it happen. Growth is where the bottlenecks appear — around $100K, again around $300K, and later at $500K or $1M.
Every time you hit a new level, something starts to feel like it’s breaking (IYKYK). That’s because each level requires a stronger operational foundation. You cannot add a second story to your house without reinforcing the foundation, and you cannot grow a business without reinforcing its systems.
Final Thoughts: Building the Business You Actually Want
If there’s one takeaway from this guide, it’s this: scaling is not the starting point. It’s the reward for building strong foundations, navigating growth bottlenecks, and reinforcing your operations again and again. Most entrepreneurs say they want to scale, but what they truly need is to grow. Growth comes first. Scale comes later.
Think about where you are right now. Are you still in the development stage, trying to prove your concept? Are you in startup, learning how to generate consistent revenue? Are you in growth, feeling the squeeze of bottlenecks and needing stronger systems? Or have you crossed into expansion, ready to strengthen the seven pillars of scaling? Maybe you’re in maturity, deciding whether to replicate or exit.
Wherever you are, the next step is always clear once you know the stage you’re in. Development demands proof of concept. Startup requires building a client base. Growth calls for differentiation and reinforced systems. Expansion demands delivery at scale and multichannel presence. Maturity requires clarity about legacy, authority, and long-term strategy.
This is the work of entrepreneurship: understanding your phase, honoring it, and resisting the temptation to skip ahead. Because when you honor the stage you’re in, you move faster. You make cleaner decisions. You stop wasting time on strategies designed for businesses that look nothing like yours.
And perhaps most importantly, you build a business that actually supports your life instead of draining it. That’s the real meaning of scaling your vision — not just bigger numbers, but a structure that gives you more freedom, more impact, and more sustainability.
So as you reflect on this, ask yourself: What stage am I in right now? And what’s the most important thing I can focus on today to move cleanly into the next?
What’s Next?
If this guide helped you rethink how you’re approaching your business growth, here are three things you can do next:
- Share this post with another entrepreneur who keeps saying they want to “scale” but might still be in building or growth. Sometimes clarity is the best gift you can give.
- Bookmark this page so you can revisit it whenever you hit the next bottleneck. The stages don’t disappear — they repeat at new levels, and reinforcing your foundation will always be part of the work.
- Want me to answer a strategy question for you on the podcast? Click here to send me a voice note!
Scaling is not a destination. It’s a process of building, reinforcing, and expanding. And when you commit to the right stage at the right time, you give yourself the best chance of creating the business — and the life — you’ve always envisioned.
