Surviving “The Crunch” Phase in Your Business Growth

Joseph has a quickly growing business …and it’s just him. Knowing that something has to change in order to achieve his dream business, Joseph joins my Lifestyle & Leverage Coaching Program. As we develop his plan to hit six figures I notice that Joseph gets more and more anxious with the gap. His lack of patience quickly turns to outright desperation as he begins to believe he can never have the right help to grow.

Joseph is in The Crunch.

The Crunch is that horribly overwhelming and quite daunting phase of knowing WHAT to do but not having the TIME to do it. It manifests first through thinking things like this:

- I know I need to outsource more tasks but I’m afraid to spend any more money on my business.

- Bringing clients in the door fast is essential to my cash flow but when I do that I’m overwhelmed with too much to do.

- Tasks and deliverables are falling through the cracks but I can’t slow down enough to put the systems into place.

- There’s never enough time in the day to get everything done so I always feel like I’m slipping farther and farther away from my dream business!

Ouch. The Crunch is not a fun place to be but I see so many eager entrepreneurs fall into this challenging phase over and over again.

Why?

Because we want things faster than we can realistically achieve them.

Here’s a little recipe to survive “The Crunch” phase:

1. Decide to set realistic expectations of what’s possible.

The reason you feel so frustrated and down-trodden is because your expectations are not realistic – so your mental chatter is beating yourself up for not moving fast enough. You can’t do it all at once. Introducing leverage strategies takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your business won’t turn around in a week – or probably even a month.

2. Prioritize your new strategies.

Take time to identify what strategies should come first. You can’t get them all done at once (really, you can’t, I promise) so let’s set proper expectations and just decide what you’ll put into action first, second, third, etc.

3. Get that you have to invest to grow.

Whether it’s investing in a team or growth opportunities, it takes money to escalate your business to the next level. If you freak out when you have to spend money then you might as well just decide to stop growing. Consider each expense an investment and determine what has to happen to turn it into a profit.

4. Indulge in a little (or a lot) of tolerance and patience.

Being frustrated won’t help. You’ll need to pace your expectations and decide to be patient as your new strategies get implemented. Some will work right immediately – others will require more time. Have patience as it all unfolds.