 The number one thing that's stopping your business from growing is you. Often the biggest strength of the founder becomes the biggest weakness of the business. Today we're going to look at if you're stuck in business and you cannot scale why that is and how to fix it. Let's get into it. So the purpose of being an entrepreneur or owning your own business is to build a system that makes you money. It's not to make money. A lot of people get those two things confused. You think your job is to make money. It's not. Your job is to build a system that makes money. Now what happens is you get into a business that's based on one of your strengths. Maybe you're really good at marketing and all of a sudden you start to find success. And what happens? You grow as big as you possibly can given the amount of time and energy that you have to devote to marketing your business or marketing your customers' businesses. But what happens? That's the number one thing you're good at. So you start to hire for customer service, for sales, for management, for all these things except for the one thing that you're good at. And all of a sudden you have systems and processes and experts and people in place for each piece of your business but you don't have somebody to replace you. And that is going to become the biggest bottleneck in your business. It's the things that depend on you to get those things done so you're stuck doing that job instead of doing what you're really supposed to be doing which is building the system. So if you want to grow your business you have to remember that your job is to build the system. It's not to make money. So your job is to go out there and find the right people for the right roles, put systems and processes in place and then let that business, that system do what it's designed to do. And if it's not doing what it's designed to do go back and be the architect. Be the conductor of that orchestra and start to fill those chairs in the orchestra with the right people for the right role. And so if you're further along usually this means replacing yourself. Getting over the idea that nobody can do what you do because it's a common myth in entrepreneurship and it's just not true. There's plenty of people who went trained properly and given the right systems and processes can do exactly what you do. And that's what you have to figure out in your business is how do you turn this into a cookie cutter approach that can be replicated over and over again. Now if you're not quite to that point if you're more of a beginner in business then you have to make the mindset switch that you're not making money you are making a system that makes money. And so anything that depends on you is probably going to be the point of failure in that system especially if it's things that you are not good at. So if you're out there and you're trying to do sales and prospecting and marketing and management and systems and finance and all these things yourself and you don't love all these things they're going to become points of failure. So I try to figure out what can I first of all automate with free software because we live in the age where there's more free software available than ever before. So how many of these things can I set up software once and put in the work up front to build a system that automatically runs itself so I'm no longer the bottleneck in that area. And you know if this is accounting maybe you just set up an accounting software that automatically pulls in your bank transactions and categorizes them and at the end of the month you sift through them. If this is prospecting can you set up an automated email system that pulls in from a huge database of leads and then automatically goes out every single day instead of you waking up and having to feel like prospecting that day. So how can we put in a lot of work up front to build a system that will automatically keep doing the thing and this is why most people don't do it is because it is more work up front to build a system but you get the result long after. So it's delayed gratification for a longer payout. So you have to find those bottlenecks in your system you have to think what task if done repeatedly at a level of excellence would grow my business and why isn't it getting done and if it depends on you that's probably why because you're one human and you're trying to be the orchestra conductor as well as play all the instruments and that's just not possible. You have to step out and say I'm not going to play the instruments I'm going to become the conductor and I'll find the right people for those seats and that's when your business really starts to take off and it starts to do what it's designed to do which is make you money instead of you trying to make all the money yourself. So if you're stuck growing your business and you're not sure what the bottleneck is ask yourself what do I need to automate to take these things off my plate what do I need to automate to grow the output of the system so that the business makes more money. Let me know in the comments does this help you grow your business where you stuck out right now what do you think the bottleneck is and maybe I can help you out and find that true bottleneck that's all for today it's christian the work commander our guy see you on the next one