Why Most Entrepreneurs Struggle to Scale Their Business

Transcript

Hey, Dan Henry here, founder of GetClients.Com, and I'm super excited because today I'm going to share with you my devil and the food truck parable. And it's one of my favorite analogies to explain how to scale your business. Welcome to the Dan Henry Show.

Where else can you see behind the scenes of a multimillion-dollar online business? Nowhere! So you better stick around. This is The Dan Henry show.

All right, so let's get started. What is the devil and the food truck and what the heck does it have to do with growing your business and scaling? Well, imagine for a moment that you are in a desert and you have not eaten you have not had any water for days, maybe weeks, and you're like literally about to die. All right. Now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere appears the devil. And the devil says, all right, you don't have any water, you don't have any food. You know, you're starving. Check it out. I am going to put a plate of food right in front of your feet. And on that plate of food, you have like a nice steak, you have some mashed potatoes, maybe a big glass of water. And it's right there. It's at your feet. Your feet are literally touching the edge of the plate. You can smell the food. Your stomach starts growling. You know that you haven't eaten in weeks. And the food is right there. The devil says, listen, here's the deal. You can eat this food or way off here in the distance. Is this food truck okay? And this food truck has a month's worth of food.

Speaker1: It's got a dining table in it with food ready to go. Prepared. It's got a full tank of gas. It can get you out of the desert. And it's got all the food and water you never need. But here's the dilemma. In order to get to the food truck in time before it leaves, you have to step over the plate of food and immediately start walking towards the food truck, which is probably an hour walk away if you stop to eat the food. You will miss the truck. What do you do? Now, anybody with a rational mind would say, well, I would step over the food and I would walk to the food truck. But you've got to remember, you don't have a rational mind because you've been in the desert for weeks. You haven't eaten, you haven't slept, you haven't had any water. So you're not thinking rationally. Just like when you're growing your business, you're stressed, you're tired, you're overwhelmed, you're looking at your bank account, you're worried about the bills. Your significant other is like, oh, come on, grow your business. All right. And so you are in a somewhat similar position to being in the desert. You're not thinking clearly. And so this is how scale works. Scale is all about making decisions that cost you money now, but make you far more money later. And so when you as an entrepreneur, decide to step over this plate and go towards the food truck, that requires massive amounts of discipline, because most entrepreneurs, they don't. They take the food. Now, what is the food to an entrepreneur? Imagine for a moment that you're trying to build your business and a potential client comes along.

Speaker1: That's not a good fit. And they say, hey, I want you to do this other thing that you don't really do, but I'm willing to pay you money now to do it. Now, you might say to yourself, well, that's money now. I'm going to take that so I can make some money now. You get distracted from the growth of what you're building. And so it takes longer and longer and longer for you to hit the promised land, which is that food truck full of all the food you could ever need. To give you one personal example. I remember when I was growing my consulting business and, you know, the whole thing was, all right, we're going to refine this automated system that brings qualified clients in, qualifies them even more, and then gets them on the phone with us. And I had so many offers left and right. Dan, I want to do a joint venture. Dan, can you come on my podcast? Dan, can you you know, can you do this product with me? Can you be a guest on here? Can can we do this thing together? And in the beginning, I said yes to a lot of those things. And sure, I made a little bit of money. But what was happening was I was getting so distracted with the food in front of me that I kept missing the food truck. And so one day I said, stop, I'm not doing that anymore. And I started saying, no, no, no, no. And when I started doing that, I was able to build out our system.

Speaker1: I was able to refine and fix the problems in our company, really dial things in. And we were able to, as a result, scale and grow and have, you know, seven figure months when I did hold events for myself. We had seven figure events where we did seven figures in revenue in a day because I was so focused on that. I wrote my book, Digital Millionaire Secrets in one month. It became a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller. It's produced about eight million dollars for my company. People read my book. They like what I have to say. They go to get clients, Starcom. They become a client. And none of that would have happened. That book, that system that we use, those events that we did, that's the food truck, those other things that would have made me a little bit of money here, there and there. That's this. When you learn to say no to this and have the discipline to step over it and walk that mile to that food truck, and there's no money here, there's no money here. It's just a walk. But when. You get there, that's when your business truly scales. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the devil in the food truck. Hey, Dan Henry here. And if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to visit, GetClients.com for more free resources on how to grow your online business. And if you love this show, don't forget to leave me a five star review. See you in the next episode.