Smart Growth vs Burnout - The Real Path to Time, Freedom, and a Sellable Business
In this episode of Freedom to Exit, Lani Dickinson explores the hidden cost of “growth” when it’s not backed by scalable systems. If you’ve been hiring, hustling, and stacking clients—but still can’t step away from the day-to-day—this one’s for you.
You’ll learn why most founders who think they’re scaling are actually just adding more weight to their own shoulders. Lani unpacks the key shifts that turn burnout into real business freedom—and explains what buyers actually look for in a business that runs without the owner.
This episode is your wake-up call to stop babysitting your business and start building one that can stand (and sell) on its own.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
• Why growth without systems leads to burnout—not freedom
• The true definition of scale (and how it builds lift, not weight)
• How to make your business run without you—using systems, team, and automation
• The 4 hidden costs keeping most businesses unsellable
• What private equity and serious buyers want to see before making an offer
• A better way to grow that funds your future and increases your valuation
Links Mentioned:
✅ 7 Ways AI Can Boost Your Sales and Save You Time – Free Guide
✅ The Changes Assessment – Is Your Business Exit-Ready?
Enjoyed this episode?
Subscribe to Freedom to Exit to follow the full Scale Smart series and learn how to build a business buyers chase.
Connect with Lani Dickinson:
📌 Instagram: @stealthfreedomtoexit
📌 Facebook: Lani Dickinson
📩 Email: info@stealthfreedomtoexit.com
🌐 Website: stealthfreedomtoexit.com
If this episode helped you think differently, share it with a founder who needs to hear it—and leave a quick review to support the show!
Transcript
>> Lani Dickinson: Welcome back to the Freedom to Exit podcast. I'm Lonnie
Speaker:Dickinson your host, and this is. Although we're at episode
Speaker:18, this is episode two of our scales Smart
Speaker:series. And today we're going to talk about building a business
Speaker:that gets you home now, gets you the time and location
Speaker:freedom you want now. That's what you built your business for,
Speaker:and also creates the option to sell later. As you
Speaker:know, in this series, or, excuse me, in this podcast, I
Speaker:generally focus on the ability to exit, the full version of Exit.
Speaker:But I'm most passionate about the part of
Speaker:exiting now and getting your time and location freedom. So that's what
Speaker:we're really focused on over the next few episodes. So I'd love for you to
Speaker:subscribe so that you can get this whole series. Last episode
Speaker:we talked about what scale actually is. People often use
Speaker:growth and scale interchangeably, and they're not
Speaker:interchangeable. Growth is really just about getting bigger,
Speaker:cost be damned. Right, today we're going to
Speaker:dig into why growth alone isn't enough.
Speaker:And in a nutshell, if you think about the way
Speaker:private equity is buying business, they
Speaker:are looking for 20 to
Speaker:25% return and growth on their
Speaker:money. Why? The sovereign funds? So the funds that
Speaker:support royal families and the pension funds in
Speaker:the United States, they have significant
Speaker:obligation, so they
Speaker:need more growth than the 7% you
Speaker:can get in the stock market. So 7% is accepted as the
Speaker:average in the stock market. So they take a little bit more
Speaker:risk because they need more return. They need that 20
Speaker:to 25% to ensure that they can continue
Speaker:to support the Roya families, that they can continue to
Speaker:meet pension obligations. So when you think of it
Speaker:like a private equity investor who has significant
Speaker:obligation down the line and in
Speaker:perpetuity, you start to think why growth and
Speaker:scale really matter. Because even if you're not a member
Speaker:of a royal family who needs support in perpetuity,
Speaker:even if you're not going to be a pensioner, you
Speaker:do have things that you need and want
Speaker:now and in the future. And so
Speaker:building something that gets you the time and location and the freedom
Speaker:you built your business for now and then
Speaker:appreciates and sells for a higher
Speaker:multiple later, but also grow. Your return now
Speaker:is really important to you and your kids,
Speaker:right? So you want smart growth.
Speaker:Growth that makes your life easier now, growth that
Speaker:makes your business more valuable later. Growth that's
Speaker:funded by math and decisions that are coming out
Speaker:of data, not hype and
Speaker:feeling like the next big thing is just right around the
Speaker:corner. So that Means it's time to talk my
Speaker:favorite thing, numbers, automation
Speaker:and replacement strategy and how to
Speaker:grow without building a beast that's more like a prison. So,
Speaker:you know, I love to start with a story sometimes. So I want to talk about
Speaker:Amazon today. Amazon was
Speaker:smart growth versus everyone else's burnout
Speaker:growth. So they launched in
Speaker:1994, as you may remember as an
Speaker:online bookstore. But Jeff Bezos
Speaker:didn't chase just top line growth or top
Speaker:line revenue. He reinvested his
Speaker:dollars into infrastructure and making things
Speaker:more efficient through the use of logistics
Speaker:and systems. You know, think about when you order
Speaker:Amazon. You can today order something and get it
Speaker:to your house by 4:00am I just ordered two phone
Speaker:chargers before I traveled this week and they
Speaker:literally were on my doorstep at 4:00am he didn't start that way, but
Speaker:that is the investment and the logistics
Speaker:and the system and the automation and now the
Speaker:AI that is built into the system. He's much
Speaker:like the Henry Ford story I told in the prior
Speaker:episode where he built his own
Speaker:warehouses, he created his own distribution center,
Speaker:he prioritized long term value over immediate
Speaker:margin and now he's off funding
Speaker:space missions and whatever all else he's up to. He's
Speaker:not sitting in Amazon packaging up books
Speaker:and sending him from his garage anymore. Now he
Speaker:also didn't turn a consistent profit until over a
Speaker:decade in. So I'm not saying everybody needs to do it that way.
Speaker:Most of us need to survive off of the business we've
Speaker:built. But he built a machine that could
Speaker:scale infinitely without
Speaker:sacrificing customer experience or
Speaker:burning out the founder. Most people are pretty much
Speaker:addicted to the Amazon Instant
Speaker:Oatmeal society. I get my stuff right away
Speaker:and many people are making their living on Amazon. It's done a
Speaker:lot of great things in the world. But he is not burnout.
Speaker:So we want to compare that to the 90%
Speaker:of the high growth founders today who
Speaker:use the word scale incorrectly and they
Speaker:think that means they have three offers going, all of which are
Speaker:not optimized. And they're going until the
Speaker:wheels fall off and all their people are burn out and they hate the word
Speaker:sop. Right? So Amazon grew smart,
Speaker:others didn't grow so smart and they imploded and we had
Speaker:the whole dot com bust. Right? So let's
Speaker:talk about revenue modeling for the life
Speaker:you actually want. Most people started their business
Speaker:for something called freedom. And then when they get into it, they
Speaker:don't have that freedom. And part of that is not
Speaker:understanding what do things cost and then
Speaker:pricing correctly and hiring the team
Speaker:to get you to that revenue level without the burnout.
Speaker:So you may want a ten figure business, M. You
Speaker:may want just a seven figure business. You may just want your
Speaker:$250,000 business to be more
Speaker:profitable and give you more free time. This doesn't matter how much
Speaker:money you want to make. You need a business that funds your
Speaker:life. The whole life you really want. Not the
Speaker:scaled down version of your life. One that lets you take Fridays
Speaker:off or weeks off. And one that supports
Speaker:your exit when you're ready. So one that gives you
Speaker:options. So the first question is, when you're figuring
Speaker:out what does it really cost, the first thing you need to ask
Speaker:is what does it cost to replace yourself? So all the jobs
Speaker:you're doing, what would it cost you to pay somebody to do those jobs?
Speaker:Because you're buying back your time at that place, so there's a cost
Speaker:there. And then you have to think about what is the life you want
Speaker:cost? Look at your kids teeth. Do they need braces?
Speaker:Are they going to college? What is it that you
Speaker:want that business to fund is, you know, you want to put some money
Speaker:away from retirement. What does that really cost? I just
Speaker:went through this with my son in law who's launching a
Speaker:handyman business and same problem
Speaker:many people have is, you know, okay,
Speaker:well he wanted to replace his income for his job.
Speaker:That's a great first goal. But you have to think about that
Speaker:cute kid you have. He's gonna want toa go to baseball camp
Speaker:and travel ball and all those things. His teeth are
Speaker:straight. But maybe he needs some other kind of
Speaker:thing. And he's going to need private school
Speaker:and all the things that go along with that. Right.
Speaker:So what does that really cost? Because this is go goingna directly
Speaker:impact your pricing. And you have to build a brand and
Speaker:have outcomes that are worthy of the pricing
Speaker:to give you the life that you want. Then you'got toa start
Speaker:identifying tasks that you can automate,
Speaker:eliminate or delegate. When you start looking at
Speaker:systems, oftentimes you can stop doing something. It
Speaker:doesn't provide value to the customer. It slows
Speaker:things down. It's a bottleneck. So often you can
Speaker:eliminate something and make more money and go faster. You have to
Speaker:be really honest with yourself about that. What's the cost to
Speaker:replace you in each function? We talked about that. But
Speaker:fully replace you. So are you still doing all the
Speaker:sales? This is the number one thing I have
Speaker:people do it' what are the first things? Get the
Speaker:founder out of sales so that someone else is
Speaker:generating revenue while you're doing anything
Speaker:else that youn toa be doing. And then what
Speaker:can you take from every role and turn over to
Speaker:automation? Because that is going to be time
Speaker:but profit dropping to the bottom line.
Speaker:So you can use the changes assessment to figure
Speaker:out where should you start with all of this. But almost always
Speaker:it's first get the founder out of sales and
Speaker:delivery and then start looking
Speaker:where can we automate and add in a Because that's going to start
Speaker:dropping profit to the bottom line fairly quickly. But
Speaker:you have to know what number you're trying to hit before you
Speaker:start making a bunch of changes. So do this little exercise
Speaker:to figure out how much money do you need. And then you really
Speaker:dive into the automation. What must be automated
Speaker:before you can step back? Lead response and booking.
Speaker:That should be pretty much turned over to AI these
Speaker:days. Appointment reminders and
Speaker:confirmations. That should all be happening in automations.
Speaker:Your show up rates will increase if you have
Speaker:automated reminders for everything. Email and text
Speaker:message nurture for leads who
Speaker:disappeared. That should all be happening in
Speaker:automated timers and workflows that just happen
Speaker:while you're doing anything else. Review, collection and
Speaker:responses. I'm not going to dive deep into why that matters. I actually
Speaker:do a live webinar you can sign up for. The link will be for that in this
Speaker:show notes. But I go deep into how you can stop
Speaker:leaking money by using AI and automation. And
Speaker:everything I just talked about. There is a statistic tied to
Speaker:it that is just mind blowing. The revenue you
Speaker:can capture and keep if you'll just do
Speaker:the four things I just mentioned. Invoicing, payment
Speaker:collections, card expiration notes. All those things
Speaker:should bey fully automated at this point.
Speaker:Ongoing newsletter and nurture and
Speaker:communication. So keep keeping yourself top of
Speaker:mind with people. That should all be automated before you
Speaker:step back. I also have a list. I think it's like 100.
Speaker:This is not the exact title but 100 things you should automate before
Speaker:you're trying to scale. You can also download that. That'll be in the
Speaker:show notes as well. So if you're still managing any of this
Speaker:stuff manually, you don't have time. Freedom. You have
Speaker:disguised chaos and that's a fact. Then you wanna look at
Speaker:cost containment and margin protection that's
Speaker:gonna lead you to smart growth and
Speaker:lead the way for you to be able to scale growth. That
Speaker:increases revenue remember but also
Speaker:increases team size and ad spend and delivery
Speaker:complexity. That's heavier. That's growth
Speaker:that is not leading the way to scale. So smart
Speaker:growth, you should be looking every
Speaker:90 days minimum reviewing all the tools that
Speaker:you're paying for. Are we using these? And the answer
Speaker:is yes or no. If it's no, we get rid of it. We had
Speaker:a subscription in my business to a thing a training on
Speaker:how to make Google Docs a lot prettier. And it was just showing up
Speaker:every month. 11$11. $11. And finally
Speaker:I said to my assistant, are you actually using this? And she
Speaker:said no, I haven't used it in a while. I said go look at it
Speaker:and see if there's something you should be using. We can continue to
Speaker:pay for it if we're going to use it, but if we're not, we need to stop this right
Speaker:now. $11 is going to go unnoticed. I just
Speaker:happen to look at it because I'm not the person who does the day to
Speaker:day numbers. I just happen to be looking at it and said, hey,
Speaker:here's $11. We don't need to spend those.
Speaker:$11 add up. And in fact every turnaround
Speaker:I've ever done in most places
Speaker:you can find thousands of dollars at least
Speaker:in a year, if not in a month depending upon how big the business
Speaker:is in underused software
Speaker:in freelancers that are on a contract that' were
Speaker:sending work to that we could do differently. Licenses
Speaker:for software for people who left a long time
Speaker:ago. Magazine subscriptions that nobody's
Speaker:reading 72 copies of the daily newspaper
Speaker:when there's only four clients per day coming to the office. Right.
Speaker:So looking at this, it could be thousands and
Speaker:thousands of dollars. And if you remember back in an episode
Speaker:I talked about an H. Vacat guy, there was enough money in office
Speaker:supplies, $10,000 a month to pay
Speaker:for the general manager he said he couldn't hire. And then when
Speaker:we got rid of all of the subscriptions on top of that there was
Speaker:enough for that guy's bonus. So tightening delivery scope is the
Speaker:next one. And saying no to out of scope work,
Speaker:if you're really clear on what your scope is and what that cost
Speaker:you to deliver, you can be profitable. When you
Speaker:get difficult clients who are constantly pushing
Speaker:the scope on what you offer that's costing you
Speaker:money because your business is built on
Speaker:this product, not this product plus these things.
Speaker:So that leads to understanding the
Speaker:profit per product, per
Speaker:team member per hour. And if that comes out,
Speaker:if the cost comes out to more than what you charging, obviously
Speaker:you've got toa decide do we wantn to keep delivering the service. If the
Speaker:answer is yes, we need to raise the price. The true cost of
Speaker:delivery involves all of those things. It's down to the pencil lead
Speaker:that's in the pencil that your staff use, right? So you
Speaker:wanna make sure that you truly understand that
Speaker:cost. One turnaround I did, they had an office
Speaker:across the street that was providing a service that was not
Speaker:profitable. When I looked at the monthly financials, they
Speaker:were losing $2 million a month. And I didn't have forever
Speaker:to turn that around. And so I was looking at every single
Speaker:department, every single employee, every single product
Speaker:that they were selling, and they were doing this thing across the street
Speaker:at a complete loss. And they had just
Speaker:bought a million dollars worth of equipment to provide a
Speaker:service at a loss. So I sold the equipment,
Speaker:closed that down, save the salaries. And that's a hard
Speaker:decision to make. But if you're looking at data,
Speaker:you know it has to be made right. So you're
Speaker:not chasing revenue for revenue's sake. You're building
Speaker:a business that pays you now and gives you the
Speaker:ability to go on the travel ball schedule.
Speaker:It funds your team and the things that they want to
Speaker:do and still leaves room for margins so
Speaker:your business will sell someday. The next thing
Speaker:I want to talk about is the really common mistakes
Speaker:I see people make while they're chasing growth
Speaker:and maybe thinking that they're trying to scale if they're using
Speaker:that inappropriately. And this would be
Speaker:hiring people without fully understanding
Speaker:everything that you want them to do and then
Speaker:understanding how each of those things actually
Speaker:connects to the business plan and profit. People
Speaker:are at risk of being laid off if we really don't
Speaker:understand can they contribute to the profit
Speaker:into the bottom line. And not only are are they at risk
Speaker:of being laid off, you're at risk of just shedding money
Speaker:down the toilet because you're not clear on
Speaker:what are the things you're gonna have them do and how does
Speaker:that connect to the future. But also not having systems
Speaker:in place and then hiring people into that, you're
Speaker:just multiplying the chaos. I think I said in a prior
Speaker:episode, selling a second or third offer before
Speaker:you've got the first one converting. Predictably,
Speaker:you've gott to really finish the work over here
Speaker:before you start the next piece of work. The
Speaker:scattered attention means both things are potentially done
Speaker:in a mediocre way. And if you're already not paying attention
Speaker:to all the details about how much the paper costs and
Speaker:the people cost and all those things, you''re gonna pay even less
Speaker:attention when you have two products and 10 people caus
Speaker:you. There just won't be time to do it. Building funnels and
Speaker:automation without adding nurture to that. So it
Speaker:doesn't make sense to just put a funnel out in the wild,
Speaker:but not have follow up nurture, ongoing nurture.
Speaker:And the next phase of that would be not
Speaker:onboarding, not automating the onboarding process
Speaker:and then fully having a customer journey. I talked about that in the last
Speaker:episode. Not fully having a customer journey mapped out.
Speaker:Now when you're on your first product, you have an
Speaker:idea what the next product should be. When the first one is
Speaker:fully out there and optimized, then we start building the second
Speaker:one. But eventually we should have the
Speaker:whole customer journey mapped out. Solving the next
Speaker:problem they have so that we're not paying to get new
Speaker:customers all the time. We're serving and
Speaker:increasing the lifetime value of each customer,
Speaker:which also spreads the cost that it costs you
Speaker:to acquire that client. In
Speaker:acquisitions, they will often ask, what is your cost to
Speaker:acquire a customer? Most people usually don't know that. But
Speaker:spreading that cost over a lifetime of service
Speaker:makes the cost to acquire that first customer worth
Speaker:it. Not knowing your margin, we've already talked a lot about that
Speaker:spending on ads without plugging the leak. So I had a client
Speaker:who said, I need someone who can spend more money
Speaker:on ads. And they were already spending, $60,000 a month
Speaker:in ads. I think that is a red flag. When somebody says
Speaker:I just need more marketing, I just need more ad
Speaker:spend. Well, that's a red flag
Speaker:that there's a lot wrong goinging on there.
Speaker:So spending on ads without
Speaker:understanding the lead leads, if you're not capturing
Speaker:100% of the leads in AI and automation and
Speaker:following up with them and seeing where they convert, you don't need
Speaker:more ads. You need to fix that problem first. If you don't
Speaker:have a way to reengage, get referrals,
Speaker:get them to buy more things, you need to think about that
Speaker:before you start scaling your ad spend. So there's a lot
Speaker:you can do before you start spending more money on
Speaker:ads. If you're manually scheduling, collecting
Speaker:payments or chasing any reviews, and I understand reviews
Speaker:are going to fall to the last thing on the list if it's the
Speaker:difference between an empty chair at dinner or asking
Speaker:somebody for a review, and if they would please hurry up and turn it back in,
Speaker:I understand why that falls to the bottom, but AI
Speaker:can do that for you perfectly well and get you
Speaker:home on time as well. Now collecting payments, that should
Speaker:all be an automation. But everybody has the one client that they have
Speaker:to go make a cash collection call. That
Speaker:happens, I get it. But overall we should have
Speaker:our invoicing payments and automations all be done
Speaker:in automation. If you're not, this is just
Speaker:a prison for the founder. This is not growth
Speaker:that's going to lead to smart scale. So the path to
Speaker:smart growth that can get you to scale is
Speaker:identify what you want your business to fund.
Speaker:That's your life and your exit and the
Speaker:people in the business and audit what roles need to
Speaker:be replaced so that you can get
Speaker:out and then what do those roles cost?
Speaker:And then we install as much AI and
Speaker:automation to handle as many robotic
Speaker:tasks ah as we can. Lead capture, follow up, review
Speaker:payments. There's my 100 plus things you can
Speaker:automate before you try to scale. And then we say okay, what
Speaker:people do we need after that's left over? And we just
Speaker:use math to figure out what's the revenue we need to
Speaker:create. And then we create the combination
Speaker:of automated and AI sales system,
Speaker:100% lead capture. And then if we need
Speaker:people in our sales process, we hire the people to get
Speaker:the founder out of sales. So the system and the
Speaker:other people are creating the revenue to fund all of that
Speaker:while we go do anything other than
Speaker:work in the business. And this is where we ask ourselves can it be
Speaker:automated, delegated, deleted or
Speaker:done by AI? And if the answer is yes to
Speaker:that, we need to do that because it will drop more
Speaker:profit to the bottom line. Create freedom for you now and
Speaker:options for you later. So if you're ready to stop
Speaker:guessing and start scaling on purpose, you can take
Speaker:the changes assessment. The link for that is in the show notes and
Speaker:you will find out where you might be the bottleneck and what a
Speaker:buyer would see if they were coming to buy. Remember, the actions
Speaker:you take now that give you freedom now are the ones that create
Speaker:the ability to sell later. You can also book a marketing
Speaker:and systems call with our team so we can tell you, point you in
Speaker:the direction of what would be the next thing to
Speaker:do. And almost always that's going to say
Speaker:what could we automate or do with AI? It will
Speaker:help you model your smart growth path and show
Speaker:you how easy it is to drag and drop some of these systems
Speaker:into your business. And you can also download the 100 plus
Speaker:automations you should really get going in your business if you wantn to
Speaker:scale at some point. Smart scale starts with smart
Speaker:choices and hard decisions. So let's build
Speaker:the business that supports the life you really want,
Speaker:not one that's consuming it. As always, so
Speaker:grateful that you've attended today, and I'd love for you
Speaker:to share this with somebody who needs to hear it. Maybe that's your
Speaker:spouse or. Subscribe to the episode and we will see
Speaker:you in the next episode.
