How To Think With Dan Henry Why Scaling is the Art of Making Decisions that Cost You Money Now, but Make You Money Later
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Scaling your business is one of the most misunderstood things out there, quite frankly.
People tend to think that scale is all about selling more, doing more advertising, more everything.
The truth…
It's much more complicated than you may think. Scaling actually starts with the processes and operations of your company.
You scale by working through the bottlenecks and logistics. That's what prevents you from selling more while maintaining or improving the quality of the product and your reputation.
There is so much more to scaling than people realize.
So I'm going to break it down and focus on the core of what makes scaling difficult, especially when your business is in its early stages.
In this episode, I am going to cover:
- The Devil and The Food Truck and how this applies to your business
- What you have to give up now to make more in the future
- The question to ask yourself before you get involved with another offer
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— TRANSCRIPT —
In today's episode, I'm going to talk about why scaling is the art of making decisions that cost you money now but make you money later.
All right, everybody. Today I want to talk about why scaling your business is one of the most misunderstood things out there, quite frankly. People tend to think that scale is all about selling more and more and more and more and more and more advertising, more this, more that. And, you know, I could go on for hours about the actual logistics of scale and how, you know, I mean, we've done 20 million, you know, well, over $20 million and you know, very rarely do I say to myself, "Oh, I just can't make more money because of the advertising, or I just can't get more leads that just can't get more sales." It's never really that it's the processes and operations and the bottlenecks and the logistics that prevent more selling from happening in a way, which doesn't decrease the quality of your product or your reputation. And so there's much more complication to scaling than people realize.
And it would be a very long conversation to get into it. But for me to simplify this for you, it's one core piece. And especially for those of you who are a bit newer in your business, scaling is the art of giving up money now to make more money later. Let me see if I can explain this with an analogy I call the devil and the food truck.
So let's just say that you're in the middle of the desert, right? And the devil appears, and you know, you've been in this desert for weeks, no food, no water. You're literally about to just fall down and die of dehydration. You're walking around feeling like a piece of beef jerky. Okay. Devil appears. And he says, okay, you see way out there in the distance. You see that food truck, and, boom food truck appears. And he's like; there's a food truck all the way out there with, you know, water and food and, and it'll last you months. Plus, the truck has fuel in it. You can drive it out of the desert, get out of the desert. Okay. That's awesome. But then the devil says, listen, you've been hungry, starving, thirsty for days. And he makes a plate appear in front of you with like a porterhouse steak and big glass of and lemonade, maybe a beer, what have you just, you know, right there, right in front of your feet. Literally, your toes are touching the edge of the plate. And he says, it's going to take you about an hour to walk all the way down that desert and get in that food truck. And if you do get all the food in the food truck and get to drive it away.
But if you stop to eat this meal that's in front of you right now, you're going to miss the food truck. What do you do? Now, some would say it's quite easy of an option to just walk, skip over the food that's in front of you, walk the hour and get in the food truck. But when you're hungry and you're thirsty, and literally all you can think about is food. And you feel like you're going to die if you don't eat or drink something. It's a lot more difficult. It's easier said than done to give up that food in front of you and make that hour walk to the food truck.
And a lot of entrepreneurs, they a ton of entrepreneurs, they eat the food in front of them. And let me see if I can make you understand how this applies to you.
Let's just say for a moment that you are focused on growing your business, and you sell a product, right? And somebody comes along and says, "Hey, I'd like to pay you to do this other thing. It's like, sort of outside of what you do," or "I'd like you to speak at this event." Or "I'd like to do a joint venture with you," or "I'd like you to become a partner in this other company." Now, if you're an experienced entrepreneur and you've been running companies for a while, and you've already scaled companies, you know, maybe you would be able to handle a situation like this a lot better than somebody who hasn't, but most people listening to this podcast right now, you're probably in the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey. And I can tell you that those opportunities, as great as they may sound, are absolutely the plate of food in front of you and your product, your long-term vision, is the food truck.
I remember when I first got started, you know, I had a goal, I was going to create an online course, and I was going to sell it. And that was my goal. And a lot of time needed to go into me really figuring that out. And I ended up getting distracted quite a bit by people who, you know, wanted me to do this thing. Why don't we do that thing? Oh, well, Hey, I know you don't normally do this, Dan, but I'll pay you this to do that. Yeah. You know, and just all these things that were, may have made me money right then and there, like, so, Oh, here you go, here's money. But now that takes up time that could have gone towards me building that business that will long-term make a ton of money. And, you know, I eventually decided like I'm going to focus, period. And then I, you know, I grew an eight-figure company.
I'll give you another example that happened recently for the past, I dunno, six months we've been diligently, diligently working on this new company that I'm starting called Plan Tomorrow. And we sell a really awesome and unique productivity planner called the Plan Tomorrow Daily Planner. And it is unlike any other planner you've seen it's. First of all, it feels higher quality than any planner I've ever held in my hands, but it's just, it's structured in a way for people that really want to get things done. And they don't want a complicated planner that they have to learn how to use. They can just get right to work. And it also comes with some productivity training, it comes with the free productivity class.
So there's a lot that had to be done in that. We had to like develop, you know, a system for productivity. We had to design and write all the pages of the planner. We had to come up with like 90 something productivity tips that we put throughout the planner, sprinkled throughout the planner. We had to create a course that we give with the planner. I mean, just a lot of stuff, right? Now, those planners are only going to sell for, you know, they're going to be an under $40 product. So it's not like the margins are astronomical with that, but when you have an e-commerce company and a physical product that you build up, there's an exit play there. 'Cause I exited a software that I was a part-owner in, and that was great. I mean, there was, you know, you exit company, you can make a lot of money.
And that's the weird thing about what I do. You know, I own basically a consulting company and I can't, I can't really sell it because it's me, right? But I can take all that cash, and I can dump it into creating companies that I can sell. And that's what I'm doing with this. So I spent, oh man, I'll probably a hundred grand creating this company so far. I haven't made a dime from it. I haven't sold a single planner. And that's mainly because my planners got stuck in customs, but I just heard that they finally got released, and they're arriving at our warehouse tomorrow. But the point here is that during all that time that I was building all that, I could've done other things. I could have done events. I could have done JVs. I could have built relationships that made me money. I could've done a lot of stuff, but it didn't. And there was money that was offered to me.
There was money I could've made a lot more money than I made by not doing it, but I chose to instead of taking the plate of food in front of me, the money now, I chose to have some discipline and walk that hour to the food truck, because I'll tell you right now all that time, I spent really building this out and making it good, not just making it, oh, let me throw together a planner and sell it, no. This thing is legit, and a lot of people are excited about it. We have a huge waiting list. I'll probably sell out the first few days I launch it. I don't know, but you know, the point here is that in five years, if I build that company up to, you know, whatever, I mean eight figures, and I sell it for an eight-figure exit. You think I'm going to look back and go, Oh, I wish I didn't spend all that time laying the foundation, laying the groundwork, and focusing on that company. I wish I would have done that JV. I wish I would've spoken at that event. I wish I would've done it. No. You know what I mean?
And so when you scale, whether it's scaling your company, whether it's expanding your company, whether it's creating a new company, whatever it is. There's no way to scale without giving up something right now. You're never going to get to the food truck unless you step over that plate of food and start heading straight forward. So next time you see an opportunity come along, I always ask myself, is this temporary money or is this permanent money?
Permanent money is money that will bring in money constantly for years. Temporary money is a one-shot deal. So a live JV launch. It's why I don't, and everybody tries to get me on these JV launches. Oh, you know, it doesn't matter what it is. You know, Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson, this person, that person. Get in on the launch, get in on the launch. No. I'm not going to do it, man. I'm not. I'm busy doing my stuff. I'm just not going to get in.
Now, if I personally use the product and I love the product, I might consider doing some sort of promotion. Or if there's an evergreen thing where I could make commissions off of it forever. And it's a tool or something I believe in, fine, maybe. But you know, Oh, we're doing this event, will you speak at it. I mean, I spoke at Funnel Hacking Live cause I knew that they're going to market that content for years. So it made sense. You know what I mean? But I've spoken at events before that I shook my head and went, why did I do this? You know?
Anyway, so the point is that you really got to decide is what I'm going to do going to make me a little bit of money now, and that's it, or are these efforts going to pay off for years to come. And ultimately, regardless of either one, is this time that could be spent building something for the future? And that's where the discipline comes in. If you really want to scale to eight figures, it ain't ads. It's discipline. It ain't sales. It's discipline and its focus. Steve Jobs said focus is not about what you choose to do with your time. It's about what you choose not to do.
So I just want you guys to think about that and remember that sometimes when you have a big vision, and you want to do big things, you have to give up the little things in order to make those big things happen. I hope you enjoy this episode, and I'll see you in the next one.