According to the US Census Bureau, a record 5.5 million new business applications were filed in 2023. Cardone Ventures co-founder and president Natalie Dawson joins Wealth! to discuss how to best scale your business to the next phase of growth.

"It feels like you're fighting fires constantly, all day, every day. You have customer challenges, you have negotiation challenges with vendors, rent is going up, insurance is increasing. And so everything that's happening today that is difficult to navigate, difficult to manage, is hitting you constantly," Dawson explains. She says that with all of these issues going on, it has become harder for business owners to focus on growth. However, she believes that engaging employees is a great place to start.

Dawson states, "The easiest way to grow and scale a business is through finding and attracting great people." In order to do this, she believes that business owners should establish goals with their team members as well as be clear about day-to-day expectations to meet both their goals and the company's goals. She notes that a big mistake is when business owners believe their employees will be engaged simply because they were offered the job. Rather, when employees are engaged and inspired, businesses will truly able to grow.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video Transcript

A record 5.5 million new business applications were filed in 2023.

That's according to the US Census Bureau, that's an increase of 8.7% from the prior year.

So with more and more people starting their own ventures, we want to talk about the expertise, people need to scale their businesses here with more on how to get your company to the next phase of growth.

We have Natalie Dawson Cardone Ventures, co founder and President Natalie is also the author of the new book, Start the Work.

How To duplicate yourself and scale your business.

Natalie, thanks for being here.

I want to start with this tricky environment that we're seeing for business owners.

Rates are high.

There is a level of uncertainty about where things will be heading where what business owners be prioritizing to not only succeed right now but to really thrive within the next 12 to 18 months from now.

Well, a funny fact is that out of 35.5 million small to mid size business owners in the United States, only 600,000 of those businesses have greater than 12 employees.

So think about that if you have only 12 employees, what you haven't figured out as a business owner, how to do is duplicate yourself.

You started this business because you are passionate, you had an idea and you want to create an organization.

Well, if only 5% of businesses have figured out how to take what they do really well sell, market, it duplicate themselves so that they can hire other people.

Then there is a huge gap in this process of duplication.

And this is why I wrote the book is because if you aren't focused as a business owner owner on how you spend your time, not just solving a problem but teaching other people how to solve those problems.

The exact same way that you did to create processes and systems inside your business, your business will never expand beyond you.

So why is it so challenging to scale and duplicate a business?

And what are some steps that founders can take ahead of time to really avoid that?

Well, it's challenging because it feels like you're fighting fires constantly all day, every day, you have customer challenges, you have negotiation challenges with vendors, rent is going up, insurance is increasing.

And so everything that's happening today that is difficult to navigate, difficult to manage is hitting you constantly.

And so you're not thinking about what do I need to do to attract the best talent if I was a business owner starting a business today, instead of focusing on how to best service my customer, I would think about how am I creating a brand that attracts the right type of talent to help me grow and scale.

Because the easiest way to grow and scale a business is through finding and attracting great people.

But if you as a business owner are not thinking about being a great leader and communicating clear expectations and talking about the vision and where your organization is going.

You're never going to find the talent that you're looking for and then you're going to be victimized by people who aren't really wanting to help you and quote unquote disengagement where you never did anything in your business to get great people to be engaged in the first place.

You just offer them a job and thought because they were getting paid from you that they were going to be inspired and excited and want to help you solve the most important problems in your business.

And it's just not how employees look at their opportunities and it's not how businesses really work.

So engagement of really a crucial strategy play there in terms of the mundane every day, what are every day business owners can do to foster that engagement and foster that growth within their businesses.

I would say two things.

The first thing that they can do is get really clear with their team members on what their team members goals are.

If you know what your team members, goals are and you take it as your responsibility to help them achieve those goals through working inside your organization, you will find engaged team members.

The second thing is once you figure out what their goals are, you have to be really clear about the expectation of what it's gonna look like day to day.

Do your people know every single day?

What exactly they have to do in order to make more money if they do not, if they don't have incentive plans, if they're not clear on the exact activities that could, that could connect with the goals that they shared with you, that would allow them to actually see a path to achieve those things, then you're gonna be stuck in the same trap that most business owners get stuck in, which is the cycle of not finding great people to help them grow.

And a lot of what we've been discussing today, it's based off of your book, start the work and it's based on your own experience starting a business.

You're also a female founder.

What do you want to demystify when it comes to starting and cultivating your own company?

You know, you don't have to do it alone even though leadership is challenging and most of the time you're making a decision by yourself, the most rewarding part of any business isn't actually impacting your customers and clients.

That can be very rewarding the work that I get to do.

We work with business owners across the country.

And it is incredible to watch them grow from 5 million in annual revenue to 15 million in annual revenue.

But the real opportunity that every single business has that keeps you inspired.

If you choose to accept this responsibility is the ability to grow and create a positive environment for your team members so that they are winning.

Because if your team members are winning, if they are making more money through working inside your business, all you have to do is is figure out how to be connected enough to how do we make the business grow while they're growing?

And how do I point them strategically every single day to the decisions that need to be made in order to create that growth.

And if you're thinking about that every single day, it is the most fulfilling and rewarding thing.

Because regardless of if you're in the maybe home services space might not be the the most impactful um uh opportunity for somebody to think that they're really making an impact.

You know, you're, you're changing out toilets every day.

As a founder, you might not be super connected to your product or your service if that's your product and service.

But you have team members and to be able to take somebody who just came in who doesn't know much about this trade and be able to help them grow to where your business now has five locations and they are leading in hiring and attracting and training all of these plumbers in your region.

That is the real opportunity that every single business owner has.

If they learn this process of duplicating themselves and believing that they can attain this teamwork makes the dream work as what they say.

And Natalie Dawson, thank you so much for joining us, Cardone Ventures, co founder and president.