The Hidden Mistakes That Sabotage Growth
In this episode of Freedom to Exit, Lani Dickinson unpacks the painful—but crucial—mistakes that sabotage business growth. From scaling too soon to ignoring retention systems, Lani breaks down what really happens behind the scenes when entrepreneurs rush into growth without solid foundations. Using real-world examples from home services, coaching, professional services, and e-commerce, she makes the case for optimization before expansion—and shares how to fix it before it costs you your exit.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
– Why scaling multiplies what's already broken
– The biggest silent killers of growth across industries
– The difference between growing revenue and growing profit
– How to identify founder bottlenecks and fix your follow-up
– Real examples of failed scale—and how to avoid them
– How automation and systems can boost revenue without adding staff
Links Mentioned:
✅ The Changes Assessment – Is Your Business Exit-Ready?
https://stealthfreedomtoexit.com/changes
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 opened your eyes to growth mistakes you might be making, share it with a fellow founder—and don’t forget to leave a review!
Transcript
>> Lani Dickinson: Hello and welcome back to the Freedom to Exit podcast.
Speaker:I'm Lani Dickinson, your host, and today we are in
Speaker:our third episode of our Scale Smart series
Speaker:and episode 19 of the podcast. So we're so glad
Speaker:that you are here. And if you've been following along with
Speaker:our Scales SMR series, you know how good this information is. I'd
Speaker:love for you to share this with someone who needs to hear it
Speaker:and certainly subscribe so you continue to get the updates as we
Speaker:move forward. Today we're gonna talk about
Speaker:the hidden mistakes that sabotage growth, which is really
Speaker:the unsexy stuff, the painful stuff, and also not
Speaker:sexy. These are the things that most business
Speaker:owners don't see until it's too late. The truth is,
Speaker:scaling a business doesn't just add stress.
Speaker:It multiplies whatever's already
Speaker:broken. And that's the painful part. So if the
Speaker:wheels are falling off, pretty soon it feels like an
Speaker:earthquake's happening, right? So if you're leaking
Speaker:leads, mismanagining delivery, or growing
Speaker:without a really solid foundation, you're not scaling. You're setting
Speaker:yourself up for a crash. And we've talked a lot about that in the prior
Speaker:couple of episodes. So let's fix that
Speaker:before it costs you, your team, your margin, and
Speaker:eventually the ability to exit. So I want to talk about
Speaker:Blockbuster versus Netflix. Think about this for a
Speaker:minute. In the early 2000s,
Speaker:Blockbuster had every advantage.
Speaker:They had stores in every market.
Speaker:They had team. They had all
Speaker:kinds of stuff, right? They were obsess_ed
Speaker:with in store experience. My kids still
Speaker:remember going to pick out their tape and
Speaker:then the candy and all the stuff. But it was
Speaker:kind of an event to go to Blockbuster and get the
Speaker:weekends movies while that was happening. Netflix was
Speaker:very unsexy. It was. I used to get these. That's how
Speaker:old I am. The white little package with the
Speaker:CD in it in a red sleeve. Very
Speaker:unsexy, boring. It was optimizing
Speaker:systems and logistics and consistency. They weren't as
Speaker:worried about what it looked like or what the experience
Speaker:of it was. It was very efficient. You put in your list and then the
Speaker:next one would come when they get the CD back.
Speaker:Blockbuster kept focusing on their retail
Speaker:footprint while Netflix was
Speaker:streamlining delivery and followed up religiously
Speaker:on CDS and DVD reminders that
Speaker:hadn't come back in smart packaging and
Speaker:improving the speed in which you received the next
Speaker:movies. Netflix scale and Blockbuster failed.
Speaker:That happens in small business today at a smaller
Speaker:scale, but that is exactly what's happening for entrepreneurs and
Speaker:small business Owners today who don't think about how to
Speaker:scale smart. So let's talk about how this might be playing out
Speaker:in your business right now. Here are some of the universal mistakes
Speaker:that kill scale scaling before stabilizing. So
Speaker:I've talked a little bit about this in the past and this is why I
Speaker:focus on optimization. Optimization, optimization.
Speaker:We use data, make decisions, do something different, measure
Speaker:and keep going. So if you don't know your
Speaker:customer, churn rate your close rate by sales
Speaker:rep. If you don't know what it costs to deliver,
Speaker:like down to the scent of how many pencils
Speaker:you're using, how many pieces of paper you're using, what
Speaker:each traffic source costs, if you don't understand that, then
Speaker:you don't know your margin. You may be delivering service at a loss.
Speaker:That means you're not ready to add more. I had an offer
Speaker:when I was first starting to replace my corporate
Speaker:income. And it started as a done
Speaker:with you kind of like get Clair on your avatar
Speaker:and launch your expert expertise kind of a
Speaker:business. And it was, done with you kind of group
Speaker:coaching. And it started out as $6,000. I could
Speaker:see that the problem everybody was having is they would come to
Speaker:the next call and they hadn't done their homework, they hadn't done their research, they
Speaker:hadn't talked to the audience. So we don't know if we really have an
Speaker:offer. But the rest of the group has moved on to writing the
Speaker:copy. So I started adding
Speaker:more done with you sessions that were
Speaker:focused on exactly the next step. And in the
Speaker:beginning, I just was doing that at my cost
Speaker:because it was just my time. Do you hear that? Just my
Speaker:time. But time's the one thing we can't get back, right? So
Speaker:eventually then with automation, I started adding in
Speaker:drag and drop things like a sales page that could be edited
Speaker:instead of waiting for them to learn how to build it because
Speaker:they were brand new in their business. So they did the
Speaker:I'm going toa learn how to do everything rather than pay somebody to do
Speaker:it. So they were not yet who how entrepreneurs. So
Speaker:at the end of the year, this offer came up to
Speaker:$25,000 and it was still the same
Speaker:outcome. They just went faster. Because what I realized
Speaker:is they knew they wanted to start the business, but they
Speaker:hadn't yet dealt with how do I execute
Speaker:consistently. So I had to find a way to
Speaker:overcome the lack of execution. And that
Speaker:started with we'll just meet more and I'll hold
Speaker:hands more. And then it got into how do I just
Speaker:Drag the solution into their account. I
Speaker:could not have scaled that to replace my
Speaker:full corporate income had I kept
Speaker:delivering more small group
Speaker:sessions to get the result right. So
Speaker:scaling before stabilizing is a crash and burn
Speaker:pattern. Hiring too fast. People will always say, you know,
Speaker:hire people to go faster. But you can also go too
Speaker:fast if you don't know exactly what they're gonna do or how they're
Speaker:gonna do it. And you don't have a process and a system documented for
Speaker:what they're going to do. Now, you may hire an expert to come in
Speaker:and create the system. That's a different story. But if you're bringing
Speaker:in regular employees and they don't have
Speaker:a process and a system and an onboarding to go through,
Speaker:you're not delegating, you're babysitting. You're actually increasing
Speaker:your workload and paying more money to do it. Chasing
Speaker:revenue, not profit. This is very, very common.
Speaker:We did a million last year. I'm a seven figure entrepreneur.
Speaker:But they only kept 28,000 do after ads and
Speaker:payroll and fulfillment and refunds. And that should be
Speaker:closer to 40,000 doars, right? So where's the
Speaker:$12,000 that's gone into thin air?
Speaker:So chasing revenue, not profit, is a real
Speaker:problem. Platform hopping. So
Speaker:adding TikTok and LinkedIn when you
Speaker:haven't done the basics on Facebook,
Speaker:Instagram or YouTube, wherever your people are hanging out, and then
Speaker:also hiring somebody to do SEO, you have to
Speaker:master the one where all your people
Speaker:are before you start going to all of the other
Speaker:places. Ignoring retention and
Speaker:systems, you are always going to make more money
Speaker:more easily. If you sell to people who
Speaker:already know, like and trust you. Solving their next
Speaker:problem, pretty soon you become their
Speaker:stealth. That's my business name, right? Stealth. Their
Speaker:back pocket for everything they need done.
Speaker:That can only happen if you understand what problem
Speaker:they next have and you deliver excellent service,
Speaker:committed to their results every step of the
Speaker:way and building a back end that will
Speaker:allow you to scale. So you have to
Speaker:focus on customer retention and the systems
Speaker:that support that founder bottleneck. If you get sick
Speaker:or go on vacation and revenue drops, that's a
Speaker:real problem. One, you can never sell that. But your family's at
Speaker:risk. If you are the revenue
Speaker:producer and you do the sales and you can't
Speaker:be there to close sales, that is a serious problem.
Speaker:Right? So this has to be fixed. And in the
Speaker:lais last episode, I went in depth about
Speaker:making sure we're replacing the founder in the sales
Speaker:function of the business. So let's talk about
Speaker:in home services the
Speaker:mistakes you should look for. We'll talk about home services, professional
Speaker:services, online coaching and E commerce. That's what we've been focusing on
Speaker:in this series. So if your owner is still doing estimates
Speaker:and involved in any part of the scheduling, you have a problem
Speaker:in the home services space if you're not
Speaker:tracking calls and using automated lead
Speaker:capture that has AI follow up. Remember,
Speaker:in several episodes I have talked about
Speaker:Mike's H Vac company where the sales team told
Speaker:me every day that it was a dead lead list. But as soon as we
Speaker:installed some AI sorting and automation,
Speaker:pretty soon they added a couple million dollars to
Speaker:their revenue to their top line and kept even
Speaker:more in profit from that dead leads list, right?
Speaker:Expanding to another city before you are fully
Speaker:dominating in one zip code. If you can't manage
Speaker:logistics and you can't get traction on your offer
Speaker:in one zip code and then you add another city
Speaker:that now you have travel and potentially a second office and
Speaker:all of that, you're multiplying the problems and spreading
Speaker:yourself more thin. But people just think
Speaker:I need more. It's number one complaint I get. I
Speaker:need more leads, right? Hiring techs with no process
Speaker:and having inconsistent delivery, that makes sense,
Speaker:right? But not collecting reviews in home services
Speaker:and then not responding to them is kind of
Speaker:a death nail. I do a live webinar every week
Speaker:where I talk about AI and automation and in that
Speaker:webinar I attach a statistic to just about
Speaker:everything I say. And not collecting
Speaker:reviews and then not responding to reviews
Speaker:is the death nail to just about any business,
Speaker:but especially home services. Now today I find
Speaker:most home services people understand that they need to focus on their
Speaker:Google my business. But there's still not enough reviews and
Speaker:definitely not enough responses. So I encourage you to sign up for that
Speaker:webinar and really understand how you can
Speaker:use AI and automation to stop
Speaker:leaking money out of your business for things you
Speaker:don't have time to do like collecting and responding
Speaker:to reviews because it is real money at the end of the day
Speaker:in the professional services space. If you're still writing
Speaker:a custom proposal for every client and you don't have
Speaker:repeatable process and you have an unbundled and focused
Speaker:on the thing that is clearly your expertise
Speaker:or the thing that makes you the most money or a reason to
Speaker:niche down, then you
Speaker:are about to commit suicide in your business.
Speaker:You're about to create something that is not manageable long term.
Speaker:If you don't have any onboarding, automation and systemize
Speaker:process for what happens with new clients when they come through.
Speaker:Again, that's a big problem. If you're not specialized in
Speaker:something then you're a generalist and generalist means
Speaker:lower pricing, lower margin. So this is back
Speaker:to bundling down and focusing on something
Speaker:that your niche actually needs and getting really good at that.
Speaker:One or two things, not 10 things. The founder still
Speaker:delivering all the client work. That's obviously a problem.
Speaker:Relying entirely upon referrals and
Speaker:word of mouth without having a lead engine or a
Speaker:visibility or something that's building your
Speaker:authority and getting the
Speaker:masses your message to the masses so that when they
Speaker:have the problem, you're top of mind and they know you're the expert and come
Speaker:in and then you have a lead capture. With online coaching
Speaker:it's always too many offers in a confused audience. So what
Speaker:exactly do you do? Confused mind doesn't buy
Speaker:right over promising and under delivering
Speaker:leads to refunds and churn. So if you're focused on
Speaker:five different offers, you're not going to be able to
Speaker:over deliver for the results that people are willing to pay for
Speaker:over and over again. If you don't have any automation in
Speaker:onboarding or content delivery, you're going to sync because as soon as
Speaker:you have 10 more clients, you have to hire
Speaker:one more person to be able to take care of those, right? The next
Speaker:one is something I mentioned it just now with, the professional
Speaker:services. But this is a big problem in the online world. If
Speaker:you avoid the visibility in the content
Speaker:production, you have no pipeline. If you're not
Speaker:giving people opportunities with lead magnets and to see you
Speaker:on video and all of that, you're not building the no like
Speaker:trust and authority that people need to give you their hard earned
Speaker:dollar to continue to solve the problems that they have.
Speaker:You've got to kind of be omnipresent. If you're an online
Speaker:business, if you have communities where there's
Speaker:no defined journey and there's no
Speaker:moderation in the community, it just becomes an energy suck
Speaker:for everyone and it won't become a lead producing
Speaker:magnet in the e commerce space. Relying on one
Speaker:item, one sku, that's a killer.
Speaker:Scaling ads with no back end flows. You have to have your
Speaker:abandoned cart, your upsell, your down sell, your reviews,
Speaker:your winback campaigns, all those things need to be in
Speaker:place. Otherwise you're just throwing money
Speaker:out the window with the ads because that is what it takes
Speaker:to keep that person buying and rebuing, adding
Speaker:new ad channels before one is profitable. Learn one
Speaker:before you move on to the next one. No email
Speaker:segmentations. The quickest way to get an unsubscribe
Speaker:and we know in e commerce email is doing
Speaker:the heavy lifting of these sales so you've got to
Speaker:segment that list so that you're talking
Speaker:to people about what they want to hear about so they don't
Speaker:unsubscribe and then spending money on
Speaker:apps and tools no one checks. I guess that's probably a problem
Speaker:across all businesses. Here's some real world examples. I
Speaker:talk a lot about a salon owner who had a
Speaker:receptionist who was telling people you don't need the
Speaker:upsells that the owner is going to give you. And that's more
Speaker:about using AI and automation to
Speaker:get people to stay on script and do the
Speaker:sales you need them to do. But this was a salon
Speaker:owner who added a new lead magnet to come
Speaker:see us but didn't have follow up set up. So
Speaker:they launched this free offer to bring in new
Speaker:clients but the front desk wasn't following up
Speaker:and there was no salespeople in the building so
Speaker:they didn't get new appointments book. They would say something soft
Speaker:like would you like to schedule your next appointment? And so
Speaker:the offer flopped and everyone blamed the marketing
Speaker:team that they hired. But every marketing company you ever
Speaker:are going to hire is going to say I found you
Speaker:leads but you didn't follow up appropriately. And at the end of
Speaker:the day that's true because when we start AI and automation in
Speaker:people's companies, we figure out without adding
Speaker:anything else, revenue goes through the roof. And that is
Speaker:because salespeople don't follow the process. They don't follow
Speaker:up enough times. I talk a lot about that in that webinar. There was
Speaker:a law firm that hired three new paralegals but they didn't
Speaker:have any onboarding for the paralegals. Weeks later,
Speaker:documents aren't filed correctly. It's pure chaos. The
Speaker:founder has to step in and start micromanaging and dealing with
Speaker:client complaints because the new people weren't trained in anything. Nobody
Speaker:could find any paperwork. It was all in the owner's
Speaker:head. And so the owner had to start solving all the problems which
Speaker:meant all of the evenings were gone. Fixing
Speaker:existing client issues and they couldn't bring on any new clients
Speaker:for a few weeks. So that's a revenue problem. Right. There's an E
Speaker:commerce brand that killed return on ad spend
Speaker:trying to add TikTok and they hadn't really done
Speaker:anything with their Google. So Google's not
Speaker:optimized but they're Trying to learn something like
Speaker:TikTok, which is also funnel
Speaker:optimization after they click and all of those things.
Speaker:So ad costs tripled and sales
Speaker:stayed flat. They did not realize that Google was
Speaker:producing a 1.4 times
Speaker:return and cart emails abandoned. Cart
Speaker:emails hadn't been turned on. So these basics have to be
Speaker:in place before you start going on to the next thing.
Speaker:So here's how you fix it before you scale it. You gotta know
Speaker:your metrics, you gotta run a metric audit. What does it cost you
Speaker:to acquire a customer? What is the lifetime value of
Speaker:a customer? What is your close rate by person
Speaker:who's responsible to close? What is the churn rate? How
Speaker:many people rebuy from you and how long does it take
Speaker:them to do that? What does it cost you to
Speaker:truly deliver the results that you're promising?
Speaker:If you don't know those things, you're in big trouble. You're
Speaker:at risk to lose money while building
Speaker:revenue. Right? You have to fix your lead follow up. That's always
Speaker:gonna go back to automation and AI.
Speaker:Most humans stop attempting to
Speaker:close a sale after the first attempt. I think it's 44%
Speaker:after the first attempt. Another 8% will try
Speaker:a second time, but after that nobody's following
Speaker:up. But it takes 8 to 12 times to close a sale. So
Speaker:you absolutely need AI and automation to be able
Speaker:to do that. And if somebody needs 7 to 12
Speaker:touches, the nurture sequence really needs to
Speaker:be built out with lots of video and nailed
Speaker:pain points in the emails and downloads of things that
Speaker:they can test you out on. You have to have all of your contacts in
Speaker:one place with tags so that you know
Speaker:who's consuming what and what is the next sequence you need to
Speaker:create. You have to simplify delivery, you have to have
Speaker:SOPs and when something doesn't work, you have to
Speaker:go back and update the SOP
Speaker:and say why didn't it work? Why didn't it work for us? Why
Speaker:didn't work for the client? How are we goingna improve that? Then
Speaker:update the SOP and then say okay, let's run it
Speaker:three more times this new way and see did it get better?
Speaker:If we can use checklists and templates and pre built
Speaker:pathways, everybody feels better. Everybody knows
Speaker:this is what my next step is. I think of my little granddg
Speaker:Charlie when he's walking with me. If he's not
Speaker:sure, he's constantly looking back at me. What are we doing?
Speaker:What are we doing? But when we go for our walk to Starbucks, he
Speaker:knows he will Pull me to the right to turn the corner to the
Speaker:right. He knows the packed Starbucks and his pubup. But when we're
Speaker:doing something not as cool as Starbucks that we haven't done before,
Speaker:he's looking left, looking right. Where's grandma? What are we
Speaker:gonna do right? You want everybody to know where do we get the
Speaker:pub cups? You have to streamline your offers. One
Speaker:core offer is way better than three half
Speaker:built ones and you can understand why if you
Speaker:have frustrated people in three different offers,
Speaker:you are much better to just focus on one and make
Speaker:it hum and then think about do I really
Speaker:want to offer something else? You want to
Speaker:automate 80% or more of your administrative
Speaker:the calendaring, the payments, the forms, the onboard
Speaker:put in all your links here before they're ever a client.
Speaker:Just everything you can automate, you want to automate.
Speaker:That is going to drop a lot of profit to the bottom line. And
Speaker:in this day and age there's so much this
Speaker:drag and drop. You don't have to learn how to build this stuff from
Speaker:scratch. Always ask yourself, can this be
Speaker:automated, eliminated,
Speaker:delegated or done by AI? And if
Speaker:the answer is yes, that means you're gonna have more
Speaker:profit, simpler service delivery and better
Speaker:outcomes. So I'd encourage you to take the changes
Speaker:assessment to see where your is leaking revenue right
Speaker:now. You can get that in the show notes. You can download
Speaker:our free Freedom to Scale field guide and find
Speaker:the checklist that applies to your business type.
Speaker:And this field guide is amazing. I actually just created
Speaker:it two weeks ago and we're making it look
Speaker:beautiful. But I am just so proud of this field
Speaker:guide. I think you're going to love it. So you want to go download that right away
Speaker:and you can register for our AI employee webinar to
Speaker:figure out where you can stop leaking money
Speaker:with a robot doing things that humans are
Speaker:actually bored doing. The biggest thing there is. You will
Speaker:capture all of your leads and suddenly your revenue goes
Speaker:up without you adding any marketing or traffic
Speaker:cost. Smart Scale starts with fixing the
Speaker:cracks before you ever try to grow. Much less
Speaker:scale. So patching them together with duct tape is not
Speaker:the answer. Filling the problems with you working till
Speaker:midnight is not the answer. So download some of these
Speaker:things, attend that webinar and let's start
Speaker:building smart. As always, I'd love for you to subscribe
Speaker:or share this episode with somebody who needs it
Speaker:and we will see you on the next episode in
Speaker:our Scalesmart series. Thank you so much for joining
Speaker:us today.
