The Clarity Killer - How to Find Your Business's Real Bottleneck

We’re so busy doing or questioning what we’re doing that we can’t see the wood for the trees. We may feel like we never have enough time, especially to work on the business, or that we don’t know enough to take our business from this pivotal stage to the next one. 

So, we keep going, and things take a lot longer than we thought they would. And we may see others succeeding and we wonder how they are doing it. They must have some secret code or formula. 

They seem to navigate getting more customers, building up a team or having the right tools with ease. They even seem like they have time off from their business to do other things. They must have been in business for longer or have a lot of business knowledge? 

That’s not always the case. And I see a lot of capable people seeking answers externally, from those online gurus who sell ‘blueprints’ or step by step guides. The challenge there is that you’re handing the power over to someone else rather than developing your own capabilities to make smart decisions. The other challenge is when everyone is following the same blueprint, it often becomes obsolete. 

Those who’ve sought answers externally before may have got burned. It certainly felt like a waste of time and your time is precious, right?!

And that’s one thing I am particularly passionate to solve for people. How do you get time. Time to work ‘on’ your business rather than in it, but time to ensure a balanced life, so you build a business on your own terms.

1. The Solution (The "0 to 1"): So, Let’s clear some of the fog with the 4Cs Growth Audit. Your business's growth is stalled by just four things: Clients, Capacity, Cashflow and/or confidence. I'll walk you through a 5-minute 'friction test' you can do right now. Grab a pen and paper. We’re going to rate each of these areas from 1-5 based. And then assess how much stress or friction it's causing you this week. 

Try to be as honest as possible to help you do the evaluation yourself. Let’s start with Clients. With 5  being that you have a steady stream of new customers and a fanbase of loyal returning customers and 1 being that you have some customers, but definitely not enough to pay yourself (or anyone else) a salary. 

Now, let’s rate Capacity. With 5 being that you have all of the resources you need in your business to service your customers so well that they constantly rave about you in testimonials and reviews and your internal systems sing they’re so well optimised and automated and 1 being that you are madly doing most things yourself and the thought of trying to change that because of the time it would take is terrifying. 

What about Cashflow. Let’s say that 5 is that you have a stable business with growing cash reserves and you’re paying yourself a competitive salary with 1 being that you are just merely existing day to day.

And finally, let’s rate our confidence. 5 is that you have complete and utter certainty in your plans and actions and how that will lead you to future successes and greater impact. With 1 being that you constantly question what you are doing and whether you are doing the right thing. 

Let’s review your numbers. The lowest score is your primary friction point and overcoming that will help reduce your stress. Ideally, you can focus on working to increase these common blockers to help you reach more people and create more impact for them.

For those in the early stages of business getting customers and ensuring what comes in is greater than what comes out provides the most solid foundations. 

Those in the later stages, you’ll find capacity and confidence key to the stages.