Growth is exciting, until it starts running you instead of the other way around.
In case you missed it, I hosted a LinkedIn Live on the 3 levers that make scaling sustainable.
1. People — Leadership Before Growth
“That’s right. The first lever is people. And I don’t just mean hiring. I mean building leadership capacity ahead of growth.
One of the biggest mistakes founders make is waiting too long to invest in leadership and support infrastructure.
In franchising, that looks like selling units without bringing in experienced franchise coaches until six months too late. But this applies to any business.
If you wait until you feel the pain to hire, you’re already behind.
Your people are your strategy.
Hire for where you’re going, not where you are.
Empower leaders who can scale with you, make decisions without you, and protect the mission even when you’re not in the room.Because if the company only grows when you push it forward, you don’t have a scalable business, you have personal stamina on a timer.
2. Process: Systematize Growth Before You Accelerate It
Scaling exposes every weak point in your systems. If you don’t have structure, every new client or franchisee just creates chaos at scale.
Without the right processes in place, you leave too much room for uncertainty.
Before BrightStar ever sold a franchise, I documented what it took to open the first company-owned location and then provided the document to a leader to open a second and third location and identified what wasn’t as clearly defined to make the process truly repeatable without me.
We used this documentation as the basis for the operations manuals and training content for our franchisees. We mapped workflows, built playbooks, and standardized how success looked.
That included:
- Documenting what great looked like
- Creating technology and training for consistency
- Defining what the top KPI’s were to know the business was on-track
Most founders skip this part because they’re chasing speed. But growth without process isn’t scaling. It’s gambling.
Process gives you efficiency, consistency, and eventually – optionality. It’s what allows you to step back, sell, or hand off leadership without everything unraveling.
3. Data – Intuition Is Not a Strategy
You can’t manage what you don’t measure — and at scale, intuition alone stops working.
I always tell founders: Decide early what success looks like, and build your KPIs around that.
Identify leading indicators where possible so you know if the key activities are driving the results you want long before you see the results in the financial statements.
KPIs should include lead flow, conversion rates, customer and employee retention, and margins per customer segment.
Ensure you are monitoring cash flow in addition to revenue and profit growth.
Margins and collections matter the most early on because for most small businesses revenue growth doesn’t mean the business is healthy and there is enough money in the checking account to fund payroll.
Data doesn’t replace judgment. It sharpens it.
When your dashboard is clear, you know:
- Which markets need support
- Which leaders are ready to scale
- Where to invest, and where to stop the bleeding
Scaling isn’t about doing everything. It’s about doing more of what’s working – and stopping what isn’t – faster than everyone else.
Hustle alone won’t get you from busy to breakthrough.
If you’re scaling a team, a franchise system, or simply juggling more responsibility than ever, this one’s for you.
Watch the highlights and take note of where you’re strong — and where there is opportunity to refine your processes.
What lever are you doubling down on next: people, process, or data? Comment below with your goals and questions.
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