EP 53 | The Unglamorous Truth About Scaling Your Design Business

Well, I wanna lean into, like, it is uncomfortable because up until this point you've only had to worry about yourself, which is the easiest person to typically control.

Moneywise, it's all coming to you.

There's very minimal money kind of going out to either grow the business, pay people to support the business.

All of it is very, very small.

So the gift of going on your own, again, if you're blessed with that lead gen, is there's a lot of freedom, there's a lot of flexibility, and it's a very low investment model, and you can make a lot of money in this industry simply being on your own.

And that is a decision some people need to make, is the ceiling of yourself, great.

It's always gonna be on you.

There is no you take a vacation, the business is shut down.

You get hurt, there's nothing there to support you.

I mean, there's a lot of decisions that you have to really, like, weigh out in this conversation with yourself.

Most of us, the dream is that this business can continue to run without you.

You could take the vacation for a week, a month, let's just say, and that business and your clients are still being supportive.

It's not regressing.

It's hopefully progressing or if not, staying at a constant state of being.

But for most of us, that's the goal, and it's very unglamorous behind the scenes.

It's...

I don't know, it's like you almost grieve, you know, the self-employed times.

I do think there's a period of grievance.

There's maybe a period of questioning what you're doing.

Sometimes maybe some regrets when you're in the middle of this very uncomfortable zone that you have to start investing financially that's not gonna ultimately bring back money right away.

There's more time you have to spend just feeding the business, not the clients, not the projects that are ongoing, just the business.

And there are things that you know you need to do, and you just maybe don't know where the heck even to start or what you're even doing, so it's very, very, very uncomfortable in this time of transition that if you're making that active decision, I wanna be a business owner.

I want freedom at some point, and I say that very strongly [laughs] at some point.

You gotta pay your freaking dues, man.

Like, the dues must be paid, and then the land of desire is on the other side, and there's a lot of work in building your team to get you there.