Change is an inevitable part of life and an essential component of successful businesses. As a CEO of an online course company you deal with changes every day, big and small.
Everything changes, even your perception of change CHANGES over time.
For example, think of what you believed to be a “major” change that occurred in your business over a year ago.
At the time, you likely perceived that change as MONUMENTAL – maybe it was switching email providers, maybe it was hiring your first VA, or maybe it was experiencing an increase in cost to running Facebook ads over the holidays.
I remember the first time I was working with an ads manager during the holiday season and I saw my costs start to increase. He was cool as a cucumber (as he’d experienced this many times before), but I was a complete basket case.
I created ALL SORTS of stories about what that increase in ads cost meant. I thought:
…ads costs are up, so that means I need to raise the price of my offer and start doing sales calls!!
…ads costs are up, so that means I need to lower the price of my offer and build out an entirely new funnel!!
…ads costs are up, so that means I need to shut off all my ads!!!
Yikes. Talk about solving the WRONG problem…
Looking back now, I can see how nuts these solutions sounded…and how they would actually end up creating NEW problems and making things worse.
Lucky for me, at the time I was in coaching and communities with people who had experienced this situation before.
I listened to their advice, suggested some solutions to my ads manager, kept my ads going, and because I stayed the course and didn’t let my emotions get the best of me, the following year we increased our revenue from $1m to $1.7m.
This was YEARS ago, but I’ll never forget the way it felt to successfully DEAL with change.
The hardest part about dealing with change as a CEO is that we often make those changes MEAN something that isn’t true – when it could be something completely normal and 100% solvable.
Here’s some hard truth: As you scale your business, your problems don’t get smaller – they get bigger. But, the difference is that with experience comes confidence…
…your risk tolerance increases, which allows you to manage your emotions and make better decisions
…your perception shifts, which allows you to see the big picture and understand that change is just part of the package
This confidence doesn’t come by trying to PREVENT change from happening, it comes from learning how to RESPOND to change and even use it to your advantage.
Did you know that if your company is growing at least 50% per year, you can expect all your systems to break every 6 months?
This means that JUST when you feel like you’ve figured everything out and you’ve FINALLY solved a major problem…something changes.
It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, it means you’re doing something RIGHT.
So, you’ve grown your business to $20k/mo and now your ads aren’t working. GREAT. It’s time to adjust so you can increase to $40k/mo and then guess what…you’re going to have to do it all over again.
This is why I’m SUCH a big fan of focusing your sales, marketing, and delivery efforts on scaling ONE offer to $1m in revenue BEFORE you think about adding other programs into the mix.
Listen…scaling to seven figures is NOT easy.
But, there are a few things that I’ve learned along the way that will help YOU deal with big changes successfully and come out the other side STRONGER as a result.
#1 Change can happen TO you or FOR you.
Resilience is a muscle that strengthens overtime. Remember the first time you did something hard? I remember when I first learned to ride a bike, it was HARD. I didn’t know how to do anything and even something simple like my foot slipping off the pedal made me fall right over. Over time, I learned how to course correct. I learned that my foot slipping off the pedal didn’t mean that everything was over, it just meant I had to put my foot back on the pedal. I learned that while I couldn’t control outside circumstances, like a slippery path or someone whizzing right past me, I could control my response. I mean, not in the beginning. In the beginning I was a train wreck and would freak out if a leaf flew by…but, with PRACTICE, and repeated EXPOSURE to change, I began to feel MORE confident. I wasn’t as easily triggered by the unexpected. Sure, I still made mistakes, but I learned how to recover from those mistakes more easily.
#2 Change is unavoidable, so stop trying to avoid it.
If you are spending tons of time, money, and energy into avoiding something that is completely unavoidable AS OPPOSED to learning how to deal with it – you’re going to end up in a much worse spot than you would be in if you dealt with the changes head on. ASK ME HOW I KNOW. Because I’ve made that mistake a million times. I remember there was a policy that needed changing in my business YEARS ago, but my team and I developed this complex system to AVOID making that change…simply because we were nervous it would make a few students unhappy. So, we sacrificed A TON of time, energy, and resources JUST BECAUSE we were afraid of a negative reaction. Of course, eventually, we had to make the change anyway…but we ended up sacrificing so much profit trying to avoid it. I see this happen all the time with our clients. You know you need to change something about the delivery of your program, but you’re afraid that ONE PERSON is going to be upset. Well, guess what…they probably will be upset. But, that’s just ANOTHER opportunity for you to INCREASE your resilience.
#3 Change doesn’t mean anything about you, it’s simply a result of progress.
The faster you can accept that, the faster you can move on. Stop thinking that the fact that you need to make a change to the way you do things in your company MEANS that you made a mistake. You didn’t make a mistake, you simply outgrew the process. Remember, when you’re growing, things break. They were great to get you here, but they’re not going to get you there. You set things up just fine and they served their purpose. Now it’s time to adapt and move forward. Don’t hold on to the way things used to be. The “good old days” weren’t even really that good. I mean, parts were good, but there were bad parts, too. Stop romanticizing and start moving forward. You need to learn how to reframe your OWN thoughts about change because when you’re running a company with 30 employees, you’re going to have to show THEM how to reframe THEIR thoughts about change.
Like I said, scaling a business beyond 7 figures is NOT easy – but it can be A LOT of fun and incredibly rewarding.
Now, I want to know YOUR #1 takeaway from today’s episode. Send me a DM on Instagram or join my FREE Facebook group and let me know!
Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale With Success® Accelerator — an online course designed to help you generate launch-sized revenue without lanching. If you want to learn MORE about our proven method for success, click here to watch my free masterclass. See you in there!
