Episode Summary

If your business isn’t growing, and it feels harder than it should, the problem might  not be your strategy, your target market, or your team. The problem might be you!

In this episode of the Make Space for More podcast, Melissa Swink discusses five self-imposed growth roadblocks that entrepreneurs often face. These include doing everything yourself, perfectionism, resisting systems and structure, not re-evaluating pricing strategies, and lacking clarity and vision. In addition to pointing out these roadblocks and describing them in detail, Melissa will help you reflect on your sticking points and consider how you can break free from them. 

Key Highlights:

• Self-imposed limitations often block business growth more than external factors
• Perfectionism and reluctance to delegate are major barriers to scaling 
• Implementing systems creates freedom, not restriction 
• Strategic pricing and regular price evaluation are crucial for growth 
• Clear vision and purpose drive sustainable business expansion

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi everyone, welcome to the Make Space for More podcast, where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink, and in today's episode, we're gonna talk about growth roadblocks, five signs you're holding your business back. Now, certainly none of us are doing this intentionally, right? Just sometimes growth just feels harder than it should.

And I'm here to tell you that the problem might not necessarily be your strategy. Like if you're feeling like you're putting in a lot of effort, or maybe you feel like the problem might be your target market, maybe there's an issue with your team, and you're like, you know, this is the reason why I can't get to this level, the problem actually might be you. There might be something that you're doing or that you're holding onto, which is ultimately causing this growth roadblock.

Now, certainly this is not something that we do intentionally. The reality is, is that it's very common for us to be the bottlenecks in our businesses. And this also looks like a new level, new devil kind of situation because I know there are certainly times in the past where I have clearly been a bottleneck in my business in some particular area or some way, or form. And then I've either implemented a system or hired a team member.

in order to remove myself from being the bottleneck and have that running smoothly. But then ultimately as time goes on and businesses continue to grow and evolve, we start seeing more bottlenecks. And that's just a natural part of the growth process. When Angie Huffman was on my podcast, she had talked about the parking garage concept, right? Where you're in the parking and you're going up the ramps and you're just kind of going around and around and around where it's like...

Gosh, I feel like I've seen this before, even though you're rising higher through this spiral, if you will. That's what I want us to keep in mind. I want us to explore some of these roadblocks together so that we can all identify where we are unintentionally blocking the growth that needs to come in and is ready to come in. I'm raising my own hand here because again, just because this is

something that maybe we've worked through in the past doesn't mean that these things aren't going to come up again. Again, as we grow, these things continue to change and we also need to tune into that and see where we are the next bottleneck. So we solve one bottleneck and things are going good for a while and then we have another one come up. That's just kind of the way that it is. So the first roadblock that we want to talk about is doing everything yourself. And depending on where you're at in business in terms of growing a team, everything

Might be a loose term here, but certainly if you're starting off DIY or you don't have a team in place or maybe you do have a team, but everything could be all of the accounting yourself or all of the marketing yourself, whatever that thing is. If you're doing things completely on your own because you have a mindset of no one can do this thing right here as well as me, this is a really quick recipe for burnout.

This is certainly a great way that bottlenecks will continue to occur in the business. And also frankly, you may miss opportunities if that's the mentality that you have. Because even if you are the best juggler in the entire world, there are limits to how many balls you can keep in the air before everything comes crashing down. Now that sounds really dramatic. No, I'm saying that out loud. We don't want everything crashing down. But you get what I'm saying. Things slip through the cracks even if you are extremely organized.

even if you are the best content creator, even if you are the very best consultant, whatever it is that you are the very best at, there are limits to what you can do. And so if you can even delegate just a few things to free up your time and energy and make space for the things that you truly enjoy, it is going to remove that bottleneck in one particular area or several in your business and allow you to keep growing and moving forward.

The second roadblock that I wanna talk about is perfectionism. So many of us are guilty of this. I certainly have, I feel like degrees of this, maybe there are degrees of this. There are things that matter to me very much and then there are things that don't matter to me so much. But perfectionism can certainly get in our way in terms of growth, especially when it comes to maybe launching a new offer or a new revenue stream.

or unveiling some type of new system that you're developing in your business, that's when we sometimes get just so into the nitty gritty details and we just get to a point where it's never quite done yet, right? And I feel like we've all been there. We certainly know people who continue to, I'm researching, I'm still working on this, I'm still working on this, and they never actually get the thing out into the world and make a difference.

This could look like overthinking or over researching other forms of procrastination. I know I had a growth mapping session with one of our clients last month and she has been doing a lot of work to implement a new CRM system. And the system is very exciting. It's going to automate a lot of her sales process. Certainly not the whole thing because she still needs to have her hand in it and develop or deliver that I should say.

that client experience that she wants to, but she's able to create a fully customized system to do exactly what she needs it to do. But she kept getting hung up on some of the, if this, then what? If this, then that, what? Just trying to kind of map out the whole system. And one of the things that I kept saying to bring her back is, what is true 80 % of the time? 80 % of the time, what happens? Client reaches out via...

What method of communication is it through your website? Is it through email? What does that look like? Okay 80 % of the time so then that being said 80 % of the time we need the system to do this there are always exceptions that come up from time to time and We can certainly address those as they need to be addressed. But even if we build something that's 80 % there or the system this is this is the process 80 % of the time that's better than

the zero that we're at right now. I hope that makes sense. Now certainly done is better than perfect. So get it to 80%, launch it. You can continue fine tune, tweak, and fine tune and tweak from there. Another good example of this is I've had clients in the past that are developing new websites or they're investing in a new website. And I'll ask them six months down the road, like, how's the website? Did you launch? And they're like, it's like,

almost done, I'm still making tweaks to it, or the company's just waiting on me to approve it before it goes live. And these websites sit for long periods of time, whatever that might look like, maybe it's weeks or months or maybe even a year. And like, well, wait a minute, is it good enough in order to launch? Because again, you can always continue to fine tune as you go, but if you're waiting for things to be absolutely perfect with a bow on it, you're

there's probably a lot that you can be missing out on. Okay, the third roadblock that I wanted to talk about is, are you avoiding systems and structure in your business? And depending on kind of your personality type and how you work, I might've said that and you would've been like, yep, I hate it, I don't like systems, I like to just kind of fly by the seat of my pants, they're overwhelming to me. Or some people are like, I absolutely need systems, I couldn't live without them.

I realized that the word systems can bring up a lot of different things for people. But I want to give you an example here or even a story of how I held back by not implementing and upgrading a system that I needed to truly run my business. So back when I started my company, I just used an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of our income and expenses. So I had a tab for each month and then would tally it up at the end of the year.

And it was pretty simple and straightforward. My business was pretty small and manageable at that point. And then over time, I decided, you know what, I really don't need to spend the time tallying everything up every month or let's be real before tax time, tallying everything up from the previous year and getting ready to be able to file taxes. And so I upgraded to a basic QuickBooks online subscription. I want to say it was like $20 a month or something like that. But

What happened was is that I was able to sync it automatically to my checking account and my bank feed so that it kept a running tally for me. All I had to do is just go in and say, that's what this was for. This was office supplies. This was software. This was advertising or what have you. And that made it really, really easy then to look at any point in time exactly what was coming in, exactly what was going out. But.

that was not quite enough for what I needed. So I was still invoicing my clients manually and processing their payments automatically. So a couple times a month, I would basically go in and do my client invoicing and my clients are on monthly retainer. And so their invoices really don't vary much from month to month. So what I would do is go into the previous month, copy it, and then maybe make a change, maybe not, usually not, and send it to them.

and then would go in and process those payments when the due date came about. So even though this didn't take a lot of effort, certainly didn't take a lot of concentration, it was pretty simple and straightforward, it was time that I was spending every month doing this thing that could easily be automated. The difference was, is I needed to upgrade that QuickBooks subscription by another $25. For some reason, I resisted it.

and you might be laughing at yourself here because you're like, yep, there's that software that I just need to upgrade to that tier, or I just need to go ahead and invest in it, and it's gonna make a huge difference in my business. But of course, we all do it. So once I made that switch and I upgraded my QuickBooks, I was no longer the bottleneck in client invoicing and receiving payments. It all happened for me. Now, to give you another example of why this was significant, sure, maybe it didn't free up

many hours worth of time. Maybe it saved me two or three hours worth of time over the course of a month. But what happens is, is that that gave me an additional freedom. It gave me a new freedom. So if I'm on vacation or maybe I take the day off because there's no school and it's an invoicing day, it's already handled for me. I don't have to go in and log into my computer and send out emails and invoices when we're

doing a road trip, something like that, where it's just very, very freeing. It's all automated for me. So think about systems and processes as a way of actually creating freedom for you, not necessarily creating this rigid container that now you have to kind of force yourself to fit into. Another way to think about the opportunities that systems and structure can provide is that it also create a more

consistent experience for everyone. So if you think about what your customer journey looks like, if you have a system and a process for this and it's clearly mapped out, even if it's as simple as a checklist, you can make sure that every client, when they start working with you, they receive this welcome email, you gather this information, you have this initial consultation call, whatever it looks like for you and your business.

that's going to be consistent across the board and you're not going to worry about missing different things. Okay, roadblock number four, undercharging for your products and services. Now, I realize that this can be very triggering for everyone. I feel like in the economy right now, everything is expensive and the stock market is feeling a little volatile and I could go on and on and on and...

So I just want to have you pause for a minute and evaluate, is your pricing based on fear or is it based on value?

So think about that. We want to make sure that we're providing as much value as we can for our clients and the price point for where we're at. And maybe it's time to make an adjustment. Maybe your expenses have gone up because you've needed to pay your team members more, or your software expenses have gone up, or maybe you have found a new, more efficient way to support your customers that...

requires less time where they can get results much sooner because of a new system or process you've developed for working with them. It's time to reevaluate to make sure that you're charging appropriately because once you get that pricing up to where it needs to be, that also opens up more opportunities to get additional help in your business or to upgrade to that new system that you've had your eye on. So just want to address that because that's something that I'm seeing coming up.

And it's certainly something that weighs on my mind as well because while we want to be as affordable as we possibly can so that we can give owners, business owners the support that they're looking for, I also sometimes hesitate because we want to make sure that our margins are where they need to be. So we're all there. We get that. Okay. The last growth roadblock that I want to talk about is a lack of vision or clarity. So question.

Do you know what you want? Like truly want? I wanna pause there because sometimes, especially if we've been in business for a period of time, we're just used to going through the motions like every day, like I meet with my clients and we do this and we do that. And it starts to just feel like it's just a part of us, right? And sometimes we just get into this groove where we don't actually stop and think, is this really what I wanna be creating? Is there something that's next for me?

by maybe ignoring some of the whisperings that you're getting, like, I think it's time to do something new, or I think that it's time to add this thing in here, or maybe I no longer want to be working with clients one-on-one. I want to do group programs instead. Whatever change that looks like for you, I want you to really think about it and allow yourself to create something new, or...

Is there another way that you want to be serving others that's a little bit different or maybe even completely different than you are right now? So really tuning in, is this still a line for me? Am I still offering what I want to offer? Because if there's anything that's out of alignment, you could certainly be unintentionally sabotaging yourself and your own growth because it's just not something that your heart is truly into anymore.

And I also want to caution you here because it's easy to get distracted by shiny objects. And I'll give you an example of this. I had a client that I was working with on the consulting side of my business a couple of years ago, and she owned a company, we'll go ahead and say that it was like in the home services industry. And she got an offer from her business coach to become an associate coach for her program.

and she was over the moon excited about this. I had asked her, said, first of all, congratulations. That's a huge compliment that your coach would trust you and your wisdom and guidance and your intuition to help other people. said, but is this something that you truly want to invest your time in? Because you guys, she was working like 60 plus hours a week and struggling to hire people to support her business and her customers.

And so this seemed like, where does this fit into the big picture? And she kind of said, but the money is really good. And that's when it me kind of stop and think about, is this a shiny object, a chance to earn more money, a chance to kind of escape the day to day she finds herself in, or is this something that's truly a line?

And so sometimes we need to take a look at these shiny objects and these opportunities that come up for us and think, is this truly aligned with what I want and where I'm headed? Or is this one more thing that maybe I don't necessarily need to get involved in at all, or maybe even right now? So all of these roadblocks being said, the doing everything yourself, the perfectionism, avoiding systems and structure for whatever reason,

undercharging for your products or services, having a lack of vision or clarity or not quite being quite sure what you want out of all these roadblocks, or maybe you can even think of some, you know, in your own situation that you feel like could be blocking your business growth. I would love to hear what's resonating the most, what's coming up for you. Send me an email at hello at melissaswing.com. I would love to hear from you. And if it's something that's a common theme that I'm hearing from a lot of people,

happy to create another podcast episode and address some of these things. And certainly I reply to my emails. So we'd love to hear from you and you can expect to hear back from me as well. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Really appreciate you. And I will be back next week with another episode of Make Space for More. Take care.