Stop Chasing Growth—Start Scaling Smart for Time, Freedom, and Exit Value
Welcome to the first episode of the Scale Smart series! In this episode of Freedom to Exit, Lani Dickinson breaks down the crucial difference between growth and scale—a distinction every founder must understand to avoid burnout and build a business that delivers both freedom and long-term value.
You’ll discover how systems, automation, and AI help you scale smart—not just fast—so you can get out of the daily grind and build a company that runs without you. Lani shares real-world examples, including how Henry Ford’s systems changed everything, and how those same principles apply today in home services, professional services, coaching, and e-commerce businesses.
This episode lays the groundwork for a business that gives you more time, more money, and a better exit.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The difference between growth and scale (and why most founders confuse the two)
- Why growing revenue without systems is a fast track to burnout
- How to use automation and AI to reduce your workload and increase your valuation
- Real examples of founders who scaled without growing their overhead
- The foundational mindset shift that leads to true freedom and exit readiness
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 get more insights on building 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 shift your mindset, share it with a fellow founder—and don’t forget to leave a review!
Transcript
>> Lani Dickinson: Welcome back to the Freedom to Exit podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker:Lonnie Dickinson, and in the first
Speaker:few episodes of the podcast, we talked about all
Speaker:things related specifically to Exit. But you know, I'm
Speaker:passionate about two versions of Exit, the
Speaker:exit now for time and location freedom while the business supports
Speaker:you and the life you built your business to have,
Speaker:and also the build to sell version of
Speaker:Exit. So I am launching a
Speaker:Scaling SC smart series right now. This is
Speaker:episode one of the Scale Smart series,
Speaker:because smart scale is the thing that's going
Speaker:to give you the time and location freedom because it's go
Speaker:goingna create the systems, the team and the
Speaker:money for you to be able to go out and live
Speaker:the life you want and hold on to the business now, but
Speaker:also create that exit multiple later.
Speaker:So buckle up. Today's topic is
Speaker:one that trips up so many founders. I
Speaker:hear these two words used interchangeably all the
Speaker:time, and they are not the same and should not be used
Speaker:interchangeably. So what's the
Speaker:difference between growth and
Speaker:scale? And you might think you know the answer, but
Speaker:let me tell you, if you've been listening to the first 16
Speaker:episodes of this podcast, than you know, I'm, constantly
Speaker:talking about optimization systems,
Speaker:adding in AI, adding in
Speaker:automation, all of those things, because
Speaker:that's the stuff that will start to lead you to scale. It
Speaker:will help you grow. But there's a difference between the two. They
Speaker:are not interchangeable, and I want to reinforce that.
Speaker:So if you're chasing growth when you
Speaker:should be scaling, you're going to burn through
Speaker:cash, burning out your team and
Speaker:really building a business you can't really sell
Speaker:and that you hate and don't want to be in anymore. So today
Speaker:I want to help you fix that. But first we're going to roll back into
Speaker:the past and give you one of the first
Speaker:sort of stories of scale that I think
Speaker:will kind of resonate with our audience. In toa talk about
Speaker:Henry Ford, he really focused
Speaker:on scale and made
Speaker:history, change the world, Frankly. So
Speaker:in 1908, it's been a minute. He released
Speaker:the Ford Model T. It was not the flashiest car. In
Speaker:fact, we should probably put a picture of it in here. It wasn't
Speaker:the fastest. It was reliable,
Speaker:affordable, and easy to produce. But the
Speaker:easy to produce came from
Speaker:Ford's focus on
Speaker:every little thing being optimized,
Speaker:which drives down cost and increases the
Speaker:ability to make massive amounts of things. So
Speaker:that's scale. In the first year, he produced
Speaker:10,000 cars. This is 1908. So first year,
Speaker:10,000 cars. We didn't even have roads. We didn't have gas
Speaker:stations. Right, but I'll talk about that. By
Speaker:1924, he had delivered
Speaker:10 million Model Ts.
Speaker:Now that's scale. But here's the kicker. He didn't
Speaker:scale by doing more, which is what many of us
Speaker:are guilty of today. Lots more activity that
Speaker:burns everybody out. He didn't add 12 new
Speaker:models. He didn't chase luxury
Speaker:features. He focused on one product and
Speaker:built the system and solved every friction
Speaker:point along the way, optimizing
Speaker:everything to be able to build more,
Speaker:faster with less cost and make it more
Speaker:accessible to more people in the market. He did
Speaker:that by creating an assembly line that was
Speaker:new for the time, by standardizing parts.
Speaker:We take that for granted today. But this was really
Speaker:entrepreneurial and Forward thinking. For
Speaker:1908, he really advocated for the
Speaker:highway system in building roads. He didn't build the
Speaker:roads himself, but he got very active in
Speaker:making sure that a national highway system would be
Speaker:built. He paid his workers enough
Speaker:to buy the product. Now this is a problem that we
Speaker:see more in entrepreneurial space than we do in the
Speaker:small business space. But in the entrepreneurial space, you will often
Speaker:hear focusing on how low can they drive the
Speaker:wage down and where can they get access to those
Speaker:resources. Now, small business people in your local
Speaker:town probably are paying a little bit better wage, but
Speaker:he made sure that his own workers could afford to buy the
Speaker:product. And then he did support and help create the
Speaker:infrastructure around the support for people driving
Speaker:cars like gas stations to make owning a
Speaker:car possible. Those were all
Speaker:problems that needed to be solved to make his
Speaker:product really go from 10,000 to 10
Speaker:million in the span of, I think it was 16
Speaker:years. He didn't scale
Speaker:production. He scaled the entire
Speaker:system, solving one problem, fully,
Speaker:optimizing it, and then moving on to the next.
Speaker:This is the thing that made that kind of true
Speaker:scale possible. That is
Speaker:scale, not just growth. The difference
Speaker:between the two is really what matters.
Speaker:If you're trying to make something that's going to create
Speaker:the cash flow that allows you to
Speaker:remove yourself from the business and go live the life you
Speaker:want and create the exit multiple later. So
Speaker:growth means increasing revenue,
Speaker:increasing clients, or increasing output.
Speaker:Usually that is an increased
Speaker:effort, increased cost, that's
Speaker:adding team, right? So if I say I want to add
Speaker:100 clients, what is the delivery I need to add for
Speaker:that? Especially if I'm not doing anything with automation or
Speaker:AI. Scale means increasing
Speaker:output without a,
Speaker:matching increase in effort.
Speaker:Or cost. So in today's world,
Speaker:that is absolutely going to mean using
Speaker:AI and automation, because how else can
Speaker:you increase on a scale level
Speaker:without adding a bunch of team or expense? So
Speaker:growth adds more weight, whereas scale
Speaker:builds more lift. Growth is what happens when you
Speaker:take on more clients, hire more staff, and
Speaker:you, the founder, work more hours. Scale
Speaker:is what happens when your system's taken
Speaker:on without you doing more. Perfect
Speaker:example. I launched a new webinar a few weeks ago,
Speaker:and the first while we were getting the Facebook ads working,
Speaker:the first couple, and I'm doing them live, so the first couple of
Speaker:webinars had four to seven people on it. That's
Speaker:normal. Then out of the blue,
Speaker:I noticed I was getting ready and I looked
Speaker:and there were 41 people registered for the webinar
Speaker:because the registration, the onboarding
Speaker:sequence, sending the zoom links, all those things happen
Speaker:in full automation. So I was like, hey,
Speaker:the ads are obviously starting to work. So
Speaker:that's just one example of that's certainly not
Speaker:a scaled product, but it's this idea
Speaker:that we could go from four to seven people
Speaker:to even 100 people without even noticing
Speaker:that that had happened. You can grow
Speaker:yourself into frustration,
Speaker:fatigue, even death, but you cannot
Speaker:scale yourself to death. Right, because it's all
Speaker:happening without more effort from you or your team.
Speaker:So here's what scale might look like by
Speaker:a couple different business types, and then I'll talk
Speaker:about what scale is for everybody, but just
Speaker:by a couple different business types. So in the home services space, that'd
Speaker:be H vac, landscaping, handyman, painting,
Speaker:those kinds of things. Before scaling, we would
Speaker:definitely wa want toa see a full
Speaker:CRM customer relationship management system where
Speaker:all of your contacts are marshalld in one
Speaker:place. And an AI receptionist
Speaker:that handles every single lead is
Speaker:getting vacuumed up and moving through a process to
Speaker:get scheduled, and also can then
Speaker:be put into data database reactivation to be
Speaker:sold something else later. Before scaling, you'd want
Speaker:consistent pricing, scheduling and communication.
Speaker:And pricing is an issue. So many people
Speaker:underprice their services, and so they are
Speaker:potentially delivering service at a loss, and they don't
Speaker:know that. So we talk about that a little bit too. Once we
Speaker:get those foundations in, you can scale
Speaker:by hiring some field tecxts and having
Speaker:SOP so that everybody's doing the same thing, everybody has
Speaker:the same answers for the questions so that they're staying on brand.
Speaker:We've talked about how brand builds the ability to have
Speaker:higher pricing sell for more. recognition means you're going to
Speaker:spend Less on marketing, all of those things. You want to have
Speaker:automated quotes, dispatch and follow
Speaker:up sequences ready to go. If you're trying
Speaker:to do that manually, when you are trying to grow
Speaker:beyond growth and get too scalable,
Speaker:that is way too much manual process. And
Speaker:obviously you already have to have recurring
Speaker:revenue built in and a way to
Speaker:automatically grow that. Buyers are going to want that
Speaker:monthly recurring revenue. They're going to want a
Speaker:whole host of reviews and responses to those
Speaker:reviews to be built up. You say who has time? Guess who has
Speaker:time. An AI assistant has time to do those
Speaker:reviews. A buyer isn toa want systems that don't
Speaker:require an owner in the truck running
Speaker:his business. From the Dutch brothers. Drive thru in
Speaker:between jobs and we talk about a professional services. This is
Speaker:law, accounting, physicians, those kinds of things. Before
Speaker:scaling, you're gonna wa want toa have documented workflows
Speaker:and standardized onboarding and some kind
Speaker:of automation for intake and scheduling and payments and
Speaker:those kinds of things. Now scale in the
Speaker:professional service will look a little bit more
Speaker:like growth. This idea of scale would be
Speaker:hiring junior staff and client success
Speaker:roles. So that's a lot more like growth because you're putting more people
Speaker:into the process but delegating delivery
Speaker:frameworks and unbundling so you
Speaker:have a limited scope of what you're providing.
Speaker:Professional services are almost all always very people
Speaker:heavy. So I use the word scale lightly, but
Speaker:I have clients who say I wa want to scale my law firm. M what can I
Speaker:do in law when you unbundle and you do a limited
Speaker:scope engagement, everybody in the building
Speaker:is fast at just those
Speaker:limited scope things that you're doing. Rather than having
Speaker:to know every kind of law and being a generalist for
Speaker:everything. That is something that can
Speaker:become somewhat scalable. Especially if any
Speaker:of that can be done templatized
Speaker:in automation using AI. Any of that in
Speaker:healthcare that would look like a bariatric surgeon
Speaker:would do the surgery, but the
Speaker:people would be delivering nutrition screening
Speaker:ahead of time and the post op care would
Speaker:be delivered not necessarily by the surgeon. Right.
Speaker:So unbundling the elements that need to
Speaker:happen and then delegating them out to
Speaker:like junior staff to maximize the
Speaker:output of the professional. So in the
Speaker:professional services, remember this is hard to really
Speaker:scale because we generally are adding humans
Speaker:for the expertise. As more and more AI
Speaker:takes over in places like law and accounting, they
Speaker:will be absolutely truly scalable in a
Speaker:hospital setting. You know, I have a big background in hospitals, but I think
Speaker:this example is really good in coronary artery
Speaker:bypass the hospital gets paid about
Speaker:$40,000 per
Speaker:operation, the surgeon gets paid separately
Speaker:for that. But the way the hospital
Speaker:maximizes that payment is they
Speaker:step down by level of care needed
Speaker:to lesser trained staff as
Speaker:less expertise is needed. So they're unbundling
Speaker:the care and putting it in the most
Speaker:appropriate space all the way out into the home health setting.
Speaker:So you can see how you could do more of those
Speaker:when the surgeon doesn't have to provide everything from
Speaker:A to Z. Right. So that would be professional
Speaker:services scaling opportunity. The
Speaker:other thing in both those examples is you would be using care
Speaker:pathways which be bulleted lists of this is what we
Speaker:do on this day. If the patient has this problem, this is what we
Speaker:do. Right. So you can really get down to a
Speaker:bulleted care point pathway of what people are going to do.
Speaker:What do buyers want in these situations? Recurring
Speaker:retainers, well developed referral network
Speaker:for higher level work and clients that
Speaker:don't necessarily need the founder in the room for the whole
Speaker:process to take place. Which means systems, as
Speaker:much automation and AI as you can
Speaker:incorporate and obviously junior level
Speaker:staff who are well trained in the unbundled pieces
Speaker:so that they're getting expert
Speaker:level information and care at every level
Speaker:and every phase of what they need. An online coaching
Speaker:business before scaling you needed toined
Speaker:offer and it's proven people are buying
Speaker:it and a fully built out lead generation and
Speaker:onboarding system then you would scale
Speaker:and I love online businesses because they absolutely can
Speaker:have 40% profit margin. So this is
Speaker:exciting to me. This business can truly scale
Speaker:when they fully have all the problems
Speaker:that the person would have this core offer for the
Speaker:first problem that people are Googling at 2 o'clock in the morning
Speaker:and then when that's solved people always have the next
Speaker:problem and so then they've got ready made sold in
Speaker:automation. Here's the next solution you're going to have
Speaker:an example of that would be if somebody's looking for credit
Speaker:repair, the very next problem they probably are going
Speaker:to need solved is I don't want to need to go
Speaker:back to credit repair. So I probably should learn how
Speaker:to manage a budget in a real world situation,
Speaker:right? Like maybe the credit repair need for
Speaker:creditair came from the inability to budget.
Speaker:So let's fix your credit now. Let's teach you
Speaker:how to budget now. When somebody's budgeting and saving
Speaker:money, very often maybe it's
Speaker:a car that they need, but very often pretty soon it's
Speaker:homeownership. So maybe the next problem that they
Speaker:have is how do I buy my first home when I
Speaker:have a credit history that might say
Speaker:I'm risky? So this business that I just made up
Speaker:as we're talking here could go from credit repair to how to
Speaker:budget to how to get to buying your first
Speaker:home post needing credit repair. Right. So
Speaker:that's like a fully built out offer ladder that
Speaker:solves the problem they're Googling for at 2:00 in the
Speaker:morning. And then after that's solved,
Speaker:there's something else they need solve that too.
Speaker:It's always less expensive to keep
Speaker:serving the same people rather than paying to get new
Speaker:people and convincing them to come get your
Speaker:service. Now in every case there
Speaker:most of what the content and the
Speaker:expertise can really be delivered either in
Speaker:automation or at the worst case
Speaker:in group programs. So there's not a ton of
Speaker:individualized work that needs to happen there. The scaling
Speaker:would also need to have fully built out AI and
Speaker:automation handling for all leads coming in then for
Speaker:nurture, for cross sells, for upsells, all of those things.
Speaker:What do buyers want in this case, consistent
Speaker:repeatable systems and really
Speaker:sales systems they want to clean back end
Speaker:with as much as possible being delivered
Speaker:in automation with onboarding funnels, a
Speaker:portal that has all of the information and
Speaker:for whatever staff you need to deliver the content.
Speaker:If you need staff involved and then if
Speaker:staff and clients are involved, then beyond one
Speaker:step then you want somebody involved in client success
Speaker:and making sure people are going, having a great experience so
Speaker:they go from one step to the next monthly recurring
Speaker:revenue, that's no brainer, they want that.
Speaker:And in an online business, definitely
Speaker:a whole content ecosystem out there that
Speaker:is creating visibility, building audience
Speaker:and then converting traffic into customers. Now
Speaker:in an e commerce business it's slightly different.
Speaker:Before scaling you want fulfillment systems
Speaker:galore, support systems in place,
Speaker:all of the email systems that go along with
Speaker:e commerce, onboarding, product information,
Speaker:ongoing offers in a weekly email
Speaker:situation, abandoned cart sequences
Speaker:because that does capture between 6 and
Speaker:9% of lost sales just in sending a few
Speaker:emails. And then automated upsells and
Speaker:downsells and cross selles in funnels. And
Speaker:then an e commerce business, once all that's in
Speaker:place would scale by having subscription
Speaker:models and having bundles
Speaker:and then reaching out to influencers and
Speaker:setting up things for user generated content and then
Speaker:automating the outcome that comes from that.
Speaker:So buyers want obviously repeat customers
Speaker:operations they don't have to rebuild and
Speaker:optimize traffic sources that are absolutely
Speaker:converting and then getting into all of that automation
Speaker:workflow. Now mistakes that break scale
Speaker:early scaling before stabilizing. So
Speaker:usually there's a period of growth, the metrics get
Speaker:all wonky. I talk a lot about metrics and monitoring and
Speaker:making decisions based on data. So the metrics
Speaker:get out of whack while we're doing massive growth
Speaker:or scale. So we've got to get those back
Speaker:into benchmark by optimizing the delivery
Speaker:system and then we can take another step at growth.
Speaker:So if we don't stabilize at each step,
Speaker:we're just building more chaos. Another problem is
Speaker:adding more offers before you stabilize and
Speaker:optimize one. So you start with either your high
Speaker:ticket or your core offer. And when that is
Speaker:fully functioning with everything around it, then you would
Speaker:build the next thing which would either be your high ticket or
Speaker:your core offer, whichever one you didn't build first. And
Speaker:then maybe it's your lower end low
Speaker:ticket offer that creates audience visibility, builds
Speaker:no like and trust with other markets that weren't
Speaker:buying your product before. And then maybe you
Speaker:re super high ticket or you're exclusive or your
Speaker:VIP or something like that. If you don't optimize
Speaker:one at a time before you build the next thing, you're just
Speaker:scaling chaos. And really it all breaks.
Speaker:Automating too late or not at all. This is a huge problem in
Speaker:small business. They're in my opinion, not
Speaker:seeing how important automation is.
Speaker:And that was already something we should have been doing. And
Speaker:now AI. I believe there's a statistic that
Speaker:says $80 million in labor will be
Speaker:eliminated by the end of 2026,
Speaker:all through the deployment of voice
Speaker:AI agents. But small business isn't
Speaker:really taking to automation in AI
Speaker:in a way that's meaningful. And
Speaker:so they're going to be left behind their competitors who
Speaker:are early adopters of AI and
Speaker:automation. It is very difficult to scale
Speaker:if you are not maximizing automation and
Speaker:then building in AI as fast
Speaker:as you can. The biggest mistake I see is building
Speaker:everything around the founder or
Speaker:personalities within the business. So
Speaker:not creating things that need to happen
Speaker:because somebody doesn't like it or is in a bad
Speaker:mood or the founder doesn't want to do it that way or something like that.
Speaker:So building everything around the
Speaker:founder or a key personality in the business
Speaker:is a surefire way to never to be able to scale.
Speaker:So at the end of the day you can't scale chaos, you're
Speaker:just going to multiply it. So systems
Speaker:automation data use all of those things
Speaker:that I talked about on all of our episodes before
Speaker:this. So the right questions to ask yourself are
Speaker:does this make my life better now? If the answer is
Speaker:yes, we can go on to number two. Will it make my
Speaker:business more valuable later? If the answer is
Speaker:yes, then you say can it be
Speaker:automated, delegated, deleted
Speaker:or handled by AI? If the answer is yes,
Speaker:you want to go down the path of automating,
Speaker:delegating, deleting fully, getting rid of it,
Speaker:or creating the AI process to handle it
Speaker:and then you will be ready to scale.
Speaker:Smart Scale is how you make more,
Speaker:keep more, and get home not just on time, but maybe
Speaker:even early while you're doing that, while
Speaker:also building something that someone else will want to
Speaker:buy later. So if you're not sure where to start, this is
Speaker:a great time to take the changes assessment. The link for that
Speaker:will be in the show notes. It'll show you exactly which
Speaker:parts of your business is ready for Smart Scale
Speaker:and what a buyer would see if they were going to
Speaker:come and try and buy your company. Now I'd love for you also
Speaker:to subscribe to this Smart Scale series
Speaker:and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
Speaker:Because this whole series is going to be
Speaker:how do you scale smart? Get home early, make
Speaker:more money. So as always, thank you so much for
Speaker:joining us today and we look forward to seeing you in the next
Speaker:episode of the Smart Scale series.
