35: Disrupting Your Business for Growth with Stephanie Scheller of Grow Disrupt

Business owners often wear multiple hats, but to scale a business, you need to take off some hats, so to speak, in order to focus on growth. Tim chats with Stephanie Scheller of Grow Disrupt on the first steps to take when thinking about growing your business, how to decide what parts of the business to focus on, and how to properly use outsourcing to scale.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How to clarify your company’s vision and the 5 “why’s” to help you find your purpose
• Why doing everything yourself can sabotage your growth
• How hiring a team is more than matchmaking the right person to the right role
• When your business needs a custom software solution versus something off the shelf

This episode is brought to you by The Jed Mahonis Group, where we make sense of mobile app development with our non-technical approach to building custom mobile software solutions. Learn more at https://jmg.mn.

Recorded April 17, 2020 | Edited by Jordan Daoust

Show Notes:

• Grow Disrupt

Episode Transcript:

Tim Bornholdt 0:00
Welcome to Constant Variables, a podcast where we take a non-technical look at all things technical. I'm Tim Bornholdt. Let's get nerdy.

Today we are talking all about growth and scaling with Stephanie Scheller of Grow Disrupt. In this episode we discuss the first steps you should take when thinking about growing your business, how to decide what parts of the business to focus on, how to properly use outsourcing to scale and my personal favorite part, when you should start incorporating custom software as part of your scaling dreams. So without further ado, here is my interview with Stephanie Scheller. Stephanie, welcome to the show.

Stephanie Scheller 0:52
Thank you so much for having me, Tim. I'm excited. We just had a blast chatting just now. This whole podcast is just gonna be on fire.

Tim Bornholdt 0:59
And just the fact that, we were talking, we were nerding out about microphones and you could just tell the way that you responded with your mobile Britney Spears microphone of being able to pace back and forth versus my intro where I'm seated. Your energy is going to definitely help propel this conversation to the next level.

Stephanie Scheller 1:18
Totally. That's funny. I did a podcast the other day where the guy was like, I've only had one cup of coffee. I'm not at my normal height, and I was like, Dude, I don't even drink coffee and I still hit this level of energy here.

Tim Bornholdt 1:32
Yeah, I'm not a coffee drinker either. And it seems like we're the people that bring in the jumping jacks into the conversation. It's like we're able to just bring it, bring the energy without needing any performance enhancing drugs.

Stephanie Scheller 1:49
Oh my gosh, I love that. I'm so borrowing that. I'm like, Yeah, I don't need the performance enhancing drugs anymore. Good. I got past that.

Tim Bornholdt 1:56
No way. Well, we won't need any asterisks in our name in the Hall of Fame.

Stephanie Scheller 2:02
Perfect.

Tim Bornholdt 2:03
So today we're talking all about scale and growth. And who better to bring on the podcast than someone that owns a company called Grow Disrupt? Why don't you tell us about, before we get started, you know, talk about Grow Disrupt and what you do to help businesses that are looking to grow.

Stephanie Scheller 2:18
Yeah. So Grow Disrupt has gone through, like all these evolutions, right? I had someone ask me the other day, they're like, Have you ever had to rebrand your company? I was like, oh my God. Yes. Like when we started the company.

Tim Bornholdt 2:30
Every month.

Stephanie Scheller 2:30
Right. Yes, there was a period where, yes, that was legit the answer. But when we started the company, the focus was sales training. So it was actually a sales training business and we just used Scheller Enterprises, my last name because I was trying to get the business started quickly and didn't have time to come up with something clever, so, you know, we went with basics. And we built that company very quickly. We built it up to be the largest, most active sales training practice in Central Texas like within, literally, within like, you know, 13 months. I built it really fast. And there was like this one day where one of my trainers came to me at the end of our, we had a two day boot camp that we do. And one of the trainers that did the boot camp with me came to me and said, Stephanie, can I work with some of the business owners too? And I was like, What? And she goes, Well, you know, there's really two groups of people that come to these boot camps. We have the sales reps that work at another company. And then you have like small business owners who are trying to do their own, you know, business and they're building their sales process for their company and whenever we go out into the audience to work with the individual, like you always assign me to work with the sales reps, but I love working with small business owners. Could I work with them too sometimes? And I just had this like aha moment of, oh my gosh, where I get excited and passionate about is helping small business owners and not just with sales. Like it's looking at how do you holistically create growth? What are the key areas that you have to approach to create real growth in your business? And we have to look at how are we doing this differently than the majority of the world because the majority of the world isn't managing to stay in business past five years in business. So we need to disrupt the way we grow our businesses to create real true growth and scalability. So that was how Grow Disrupt came about. And so now we do events. We put on events online and offline, where we bring together the experts that actually know what they're doing, and are currently doing it in business. Right? So I don't want to talk to someone who built a business 20 years ago, you know, the people who are currently active know what's going on in our economic climate, and we bring them in to be the experts and help small business owners get the tools they need to create a stable foundation for a business that can really produce ROI on both time and money.

Tim Bornholdt 4:52
And that's perfect for what we're talking about today with scaling and growing. And I know, like I was saying beforehand, I think probably part of this is going to be a half therapy session for myself in my own business. But I do think that there's a lot of people, I always like to say, building mobile apps, you can't really build a mobile app without building a business around it. So I think it's really important to consider all of the business side of all the cool technology that we can build. At the end of the day, app development's expensive so you need to make money so you have to kind of focus on the business side of it.

So yeah, I wanted to start our conversation talking about where can people even get started with thinking about growing. So just laying out a scenario here, you know, I'm a business owner, been working for a couple of years, got a few, maybe a couple of people working for me, but we have what we're building kind of down. We have some processes, maybe, in place. I know I want to grow, but how do you even get started thinking about that? It's so like, such a broad topic. Where do you even focus people down to get started with learning where to grow?

Stephanie Scheller 5:59
Yeah, so we always start people, and this sounds so basic, but if you bear with me for like, just a second, it'll make more sense. So we always start with, Where do you want to grow to? Right? So people come, I want to grow stuff. Okay? How big do you want to get? What do you want? Like, what do you need to fix in the business? So a lot of business owners are either taking a paycheck, or they're taking profit distributions, right? They, you know, they're using their profit distributions as their paycheck. They're not actually getting paid for the work they do in the business. Or, you know, they are. They're getting a paycheck, but there's no real profits left, right? They kind of assume that, because they're getting a paycheck, that's what they get. And then they're working crazy hours; they're working too many jobs in the business. They're not thinking about where they need to be in 10 years, like, well, how big they want... Or if they've thought about it, they've thought about it in this capacity of like, it would be really cool to be there. But let's be real, right? Let's be frank. Let's be, let's be realistic. I hate that term. Because it's like, you know what? You can build whatever business you want. You can build as big as you want. And people shy away from growth because they're scared of having to hire people and getting screwed over, but done the right way, it's not a problem. So you got to create some serious clarity on what are you building. How big is this business going to be? I mean, what's the geographic range? Are we talking about, like, do you want to be the go-to guy across the whole globe? Or do you want to be the go-to guy across the US? Or just in Minnesota or just in your hometown, right? Or do you want to be like the go... And what do you want to be the go-to guy for? And what does your role in the business need to look like when you get to this level? Because right now, I pretty much guarantee any business owner that's looking at how do I grow or scale, I can pretty much guarantee every single one of them is doing stuff they don't want to be doing for the business. They would love to take that stuff off their plate, but they can't afford to hire. They can't. So they're sitting here and they are doing the work. So what do you want to be doing? What would your ideal role look like? And don't come at this from the perspective of, well, nobody but me can really do this. Come at this from the perspective of like, I love doing this. So I get juiced when I get to work on this stuff, right? That's where you, that's the end goal for you and your business. And then how much money do you want to make? How much time do you want to be working? You know, you can build a business where you're still active in the business and working in the business, but you can take six weeks, eight weeks, you know, 12 weeks off a year, and really true vacation. So getting that clarity, like when you start digging down, most people have no real... They have kind of this nebulous idea of where they want to grow. But they haven't really put it down on paper in detail. This is what we're creating.

Tim Bornholdt 6:04
There's a lot of parallels to with, when we're building out apps, a lot of times people come to us and they're like, I have this idea. And the idea is in their head and it's not really there. It's like a rough, like, you know, they had a problem and they wanted an app to solve it. But then when you really dig down into it, and you get into the nitty gritty, because that's what we have to do when we're actually going to build it., you know, it always comes down to, I didn't even think about that, or there's this component to it, and it becomes there's so much more to solve than just what you originally had thought. And I would imagine there's some parallels there with business owners of you probably are, you know, if you're running a law firm, you're probably a really good lawyer. But do you also think about like staying up to date with your state employment insurance practices? And do you think about, like, all the other weird little nuance things that come up as a business owner, you probably don't.

Stephanie Scheller 9:38
That's a perfect analogy. And that's exactly like, that's exactly what happens is they sit here and they're like, well, I want to build, you know, and I'll talk to people who are like, I want to build a billion dollar business. I'm like, Great, so what business do you know that's a billion dollar business? Oh, Coca Cola. No no no no no. Coca Cola is a multi billion dollar business. Find me a billion dollar. I want you to look for a business that's the size you want to build, and I want you to figure out what your business is going to need to look like. Right? Because all of a sudden it creates this reality check of like, everyone, you know, not everyone wants to build a billion, but I talk to people all the time. I want to build a billion dollar business. I'm like, Yeah, but you need to get some clarity on what that billion dollar business looks like. Right? And would you actually be happy running that business? Because you may not be and if that's the case, why? If you're trying to build something you're gonna hate, you're gonna self sabotage.

Tim Bornholdt 10:28
Oh, yeah, totally. And yeah, that's a really great point is a lot of times, you kind of get like some survivorship bias in this too of like, you look at some businesses that are like billion dollar businesses and you can look at them and say, like, well, that's what I want to be because that's where all the VC money goes to or that's where all the success, all the fame and the press and everything goes to but if you really look at a working company that's actually putting out products and making a billion dollars a year... It's like, I look at some of those businesses and it's like that looks like an absolute nightmare. But conversely, some people look at that and say, that's my dream. So yeah, it really does come down to that clarity.

Stephanie Scheller 11:08
Yeah. So that's the first thing. We call this the vision. Right? What are you building? If you go back to the the Latin root of the word vision, it's the verb vis, v-i-s. And that means "to see." We need to see, like we human beings have this amazing capability to actually visualize stuff, right? So we need to see what you're building. I want you to describe it to me in so much detail, that I could see what your day to day life looks like, as the owner of this company. That's the level of clarity you need to create, if you want to create, if you really want to scale the business. And here's the thing I will throw out there; you may scale your business to the level you can see right now, and when you get there, you may realize it was only a resting point and you still have some more growth to do, and you want to scale up but now you can actually. It's kind of like climbing a ladder. And the clouds are kind of thick. And you can only see so far ahead. When you're building the business, sometimes that's where you're at. And you could only see to this level, and then when you get there, you can see a little further, right? So that's how you figure out your vision too. But you got to create that whatever level of clarity you can. You've got to get that down.

Tim Bornholdt 12:19
Well, so speaking of clarity, and I would say part of that is also focus of, once you figure out what you want, you know, how do you focus on that? I find personally, that as a business owner, I can exactly see what you're talking about. And as soon as you start getting, you start to put some clear vision in front of you, and you know where you want to go, you kind of, almost through osmosis but it's obviously hard work, but you just kind of look back a year later at what you've written down to where you want to be and you're like, Oh my god, now I'm here. And then yeah, you look ahead and continue to see more issues, but I find that as I get further down the road, the horizons open up farther, and there's more options to go down. And so when it comes to focus, what do you advise people do for figuring out if they have a bunch of options that they can choose to go down with their business? You obviously, you know, can't take every fork in the road. But how do you help people decide which area of the business or which goal they should actually focus on?

Stephanie Scheller 13:24
That is a really good question. Because you're spot on and where people will sabotage their growth is going after too many different things. So a couple things. I always remind people, just because you're not going after an opportunity right now, doesn't mean you can't go after it later. I mean, people think of this, like, you know, I'm traveling this road and there's a fork in the road and I either have the chance to take it or I don't, but you know, what's actually going on is you're building the road as you travel. So if you decide you want to fork off and go a different direction, you can because you're literally building the road. So you can do it later. You don't have to take advantage of it right now. And so that is one of the first things I tell people. I'm like, Look, get a journal, get a project management board somewhere, where you're just listing out all these cool ideas you have for what you want to do in the business down the road. This way, it's listed somewhere. You don't have to try and remember it in your head somewhere, you know, waste energy trying to keep it in the back of your head that you want to go this route down the road. Just list it out and move on, get back to what you were working on.

And then let's say you're talking to someone who has like two opportunities ahead of them. And you know, they don't have a super established business. They're trying to figure out which direction do they really want to go. Because that's another one I'll see a lot. What the first one is is, I've got an established business and there's this cool opportunity and you know, I want to go over here, right? The other one is, I don't have an established business and there's like four opportunities in front of me, and I don't know which one to go for. And I encourage people to start with your personal mission statement. So every single one of us, I am a big believer, there's a reason we're here, right? I'm one of those people that believes in there's a purpose for each of us. We're not here just on the planet just to live our lives and die. Like, we're impacting people around us all the time, every day. You're here for a reason. Your job is to find out what that reason is.

And then the other thing I'll remind them of when you figure out what your personal mission statement is, you can then figure out how it applies into which of the opportunities in front of you you're most passionate about based on that personal mission statement. And you may have a different mission statement for the company, right? Because you and the company are not the same entity. And that is one mindset thing that people have to get over in order to really grow their business. You and the company are not the same thing, that you and the company, you're like a Venn diagram. You have some overlap, but you each have your own circles too. And so you have your own mission statement. Figure out what that is, you know, and I tell people to do the exercise of five why's, so you're asking yourself what is if there was one thing I could change on this planet. What would it be? And it needs to be personal right? So don't give me any BS answers of, I would create world peace. Like unless that really matters to you, I don't want to hear it. And so what is the one thing you would change? And then you start asking yourself, okay, well, why is that the thing, like why would I change that? Okay, so once you get that answer, then okay, well, why does that answer matter to me? Why does that answer matter to me? And you keep going right? Each answer you get, well, why does that... Until you get to at least five or until you're like stuck beyond like you're like, that is the answer. Okay, then that's your personal mission statement. So my personal mission statement is to inspire others to recognize the power of personal choice. My company's mission statement is to disrupt the way the world does business, but we realize that my mission statement is to empower others to realize they have personal choice. A lot of small business owners don't feel like they have a lot of choices in the business; they feel like the business is kind of running their life. They just have to do whatever the business tells them to do to keep it alive. And so our goal is if we can change how people think about and run their business, my personal mission statement gets fulfilled as well, because now they feel like they have a choice. So look at what your personal mission statement is, to bring this full circle here, what's your personal mission statement, and then look at which of the opportunities in front of you seems to fulfill that mission statement most for you, and then go with that one.

Tim Bornholdt 17:38
And again, it goes back to having that vision and having that personal statement down. And then once you have, you know, kind of your values laid out ahead of you, then maybe that will make the decision a little easier for which path you should focus down. And like you said, I think it's important to focus on like one thing, and you can always come back to it because like, again, not to keep bringing everything back to building apps, but I guess that's kind of my job. When we're building out software, it does kind of feel like we're building the plane as we're flying in it, or like changing the tire on the car as we're driving down the freeway going 90 an hour. And so I think it does, it is important to realize that. One of my favorite quotes is there's a Steve Jobs quote of how life is a lot better when you realize that everything around you is made up by people that are no smarter than you. And I think it kind of goes along that same track of like in fulfilling your personal goal of helping people make personal choice, it's like, we can all decide if something is not the right way. You can always come back and fix it later. If you accidentally chose to go down one path when you focus on one thing you can always come back to a different thing later. There's you know, most of the time, just like you rebranded your business so many times. It's like, Who cares? Like, work it out and start the next thing and move on and see what happens.

Stephanie Scheller 19:07
Very little in life or in business is absolute. Like, there's very little that you're gonna put out there, and most of the time, you know, here's the thing. I know people who panic because they're like, Well, you know what if it goes viral? What if it goes massive? I'm like, Yeah, the stuff that goes viral didn't go viral by accident. And it didn't go viral overnight. Like you look at everyone's like, Oh, my God, the Instagram story. You know, those guys, it just blew up. I'm like, yeah, after years of them experimenting and figuring out what they wanted to do. And, of course, the Instagram app itself did, but how many apps did they have before that.

Tim Bornholdt 19:40
Right.

Stephanie Scheller 19:41
And that's the thing. People are like panicked to make decisions because they're afraid they're going to be stuck. And it's like, you're very rarely stuck, like, make a decision, move forward. And here's what I tell people, commit to it for a minimum of 90 days and really commit, like put the energy in to make it happen. At the end of 90 days, if you're not feeling it and you're not liking it, then you know you can make a shift. But you're not stuck, right? If I'd waited to figure out exactly what business I wanted to open, I wouldn't be here today. We wouldn't be making the impact. We wouldn't be putting on the events we're putting on. Because then I never would have taken that step. There's a quote I love. I think it's from Zig Ziglar. And he says, "What you get by achieving your goal is nowhere near as important as what you get by reaching for your goal."

Tim Bornholdt 20:29
Hmm, I love that.

Stephanie Scheller 20:30
It's this concept of like, as you move towards your goal, you're going to grow, right? The clouds peel back, and you can see more and you can shift direction, and that's fine. But you got to have a direction you're going and you got to commit to it and move forward.

Tim Bornholdt 20:45
Exactly. One thing, we were talking, again to bring it back to like, how do we grow and how do we scale? One thing that you had talked about was outsourcing and hiring other people and all of that stuff. How do you think about using outsourcing as a way to scale and kind of a tail on question to that is, what should I be outsourcing as part of my business?

Stephanie Scheller 21:11
Yeah, good, good, good, good questions because when I first started my business, my coach would tell me this quote all the time, he said, you know, Stephanie, there's an old African proverb if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far go together. And I would always kind of smile and like in my head, be like, I'm gonna go fast and far alone. Like, I was the kid in school that hated team projects, like, I would literally assign work out to everyone on the team project, and then I would duplicate all their work. I'd have everyone send their work to me, and I'd be the person who would put it all together at the end, so that I could just use what I put together instead of what, like, I'm such a control freak, and I did not trust people.

And so for years, I was you know, how long did it take me? I started my business in May. I didn't hire anybody until February. I mean, like, I didn't hire anybody, not even like part timers, nothing. I didn't hire a single person till February the next year, so almost a year of not doing anything. And even when I hired someone, I wasn't really leaning on them. I wasn't really trusting them. And part of it is, you know, I have this idea in my head that I'm going to hire people and I'm just going to have to go back and do like, redo everything. So why bother? Right? Or, you know, by the time I explain it to someone, I can just do it myself. And the problem I think for a lot of business owners is we are pretty freaking competent. Like we're good at a lot of stuff. And that actually ends up like sabotaging us. A friend of mine was hanging out with Richard Branson, and he told me the most impactful thing that Richard said the entire weekend was that the reason I was able to grow my businesses like I did is because I'm a ADD and I'm dyslexic. I literally could not do most of the stuff that was needed to grow the business. I did it for a day or two, so that I could get a grasp on it. But it just didn't make sense for me to keep doing it. So I had to outsource. And I think that's really key.

So then to get into the actual, okay, how do we actually outsource type of thing? Because this is where people panic. And they're like, I want to outsource, right? So I tell people this, it's a matching game. And there's actually four things that happen. You have to find the perfect intersection between these four things. And until you do, most people are only looking for the intersection between two things, and then they wonder why, you know, 50% of their hires don't work. Well, it's because they're only, you know, sorting out 50% of the hiring process. So you have to find the right person, that's the first key, for the right role. So first they have to be decent or competent or great at the role that you're hiring them to do. But you also have to find the right person for the right company. So now you have to find the right person for the right company that gets along with your culture, that understands and is excited about your mission and your vision, and is, you know, passionate and fired up about these two things, but is also good at their role. And on top of that, the fourth connection, you have to find the right person for the right manager. So, you know, everyone has their own style of management and leadership and your style of management may not work for that person. And so they may have been a great fit for the company, a great fit for the role, but you tried to manage them, you manage them wrong, and they quit. And of course, you're sitting here blaming them for just not being a good person. Well, you know, actually, that one was on you. So finding those four, that like perfect intersection, the thing is, it doesn't happen by accident. But most people that is their hiring process. It's completely like, I need to hire someone. Guess I'll put an ad out on Craigslist, or what's that site, Upwork? And then they start sitting here and they're like, well, I'm going to hire a virtual assistant, and I'm going to put them in charge of these five things. They're going to be responsible for managing my calendar. They're going to be responsible for updating our website. And they're going to be responsible for posting to social media. And it's like, Well, okay, you just listed out something that is super logical and organized, right? Managing a calendar, followed by something that requires a very specific technical skill, followed by something that requires a very creative brain. You're not going to find someone who can do all three of those things. You'd be better off saying, Okay, I need help with organizing my calendar. I'm going to hire someone just to keep my calendar organized, and go and hire a VA that you're paying, you know, part time hours to, like two hours a week. It's not a ton of work for them, but they have one task and they're really good at it. And then you'll find someone else to do the website or the app design, and then go find someone else. But then that's where people try and have one person who's going to do a whole bunch of things and you're trying to find the right person for the right bunch of roles and then you forget you also have to find the right person for the culture and for you as the manager. And so one role, one person and then the culture and then the manager and it requires you have a plan in advance.

Tim Bornholdt 26:19
Well, I think you've made really good points. I think as a business owner, it's kind of a rookie mistake when you're hiring somebody, you might in the front of your brain, well they're going to do the website. They're going to do the scheduling of the calendar. They're going to do all this stuff. And you think on the front of your brain, I'm going to find somebody like that, but what it actually seems like you're trying to do is find yourself, just duplicating exactly yourself in another person. And that kind of like opened our eyes when we brought on somebody full time for the first time like a few years back, and it was just like, wait a minute, now work is actually getting done. Like people actually love doing, you know, these specific tasks. Like when we were foolishly doing our own accounting, you know, for the first couple years because, again, you can't hire an accountant if you don't have any money. It doesn't make sense. But you know, we were doing it ourselves and it was just miserable. And we found somebody that we could give it to and they love doing accounting, and they were doing a phenomenal job and generating all these reports that we were like, what is this report? This really helps, like, why weren't we doing this before? And that's my thing I found when it comes to outsourcing or hiring or just getting things off of your plate so you can run the business is, it's really scary at first to try to trust somebody else to get this job done. It took me so long to think of it from a different perspective of like, you just need to find... If you find the right role and you actually have a well scoped out role and you find somebody that does fit those four boxes, it's just life changing for the business, where it's somebody that is actually fired up about the thing you hate, and that you can get this person going on a four hour, I guess in your case a six hour lecture, on like outsourcing.

Stephanie Scheller 28:16
Right.

Tim Bornholdt 28:17
You know, it's like, I wouldn't like doing that. But that's why you're the guest on the podcast now is because you are so fired up about that, and you get somebody that's working for you, that's how you can actually go far together as opposed to going fast by yourself.

Stephanie Scheller 28:30
Right. And the thing is, when you start going far together, you build momentum, and you start going fast as a group, but like that really is the key. And the thing is, like I said, it can't be accidental. You have to have a plan for this. You have to say, like you said, right? You need to figure out what exactly are we hiring for. You need that job description that is detailed, that's organized, that explains exactly what they're responsible for. You need a job ad that's going to appeal to the kind of person you want to hire. So I myself am a huge fan of using, like we use DiSC assessments for our hiring processes. I'm a huge fan of using DiSC for your hiring processes, or some variety of personality assessment, because then you can design, when you know who you want to hire as far as what kind of personality, you can design the job ad that's gonna appeal to that person. So that's the first thing you can do to start eliminating a lot of the wasted, you know, people and then you sit there and you say, Okay, so how many interviews do I want to do? What questions do I want to ask? How am I going to find out if this person is a culture fit? Because if I sit here, and let's say on my website is our core values, right? So on Grow Disrupt's website, our company's core values are listed there. So if I talk to someone, and I'm interviewing them, and I'm like, so, you know, integrity is one of our core values. What does integrity mean to you? They're gonna give me a really great answer. That's gonna sound like it's thought out, because they've sat there and they've realized that integrity is one of my core values. And so if they've done their research, they may be able to trick me into thinking they're a good culture fit when they're not. So instead, you have to sit there and come up with, Okay, so how am I going to find out whether or not integrity matters to this person? For us, integrity is doing what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it. So we've designed all these little tests inside our hiring process. For example, we'll ask them to send us some information, and ask them when they'll send it over by and look to see if they actually get it over by that timeframe. We'll do stuff like, you know, we'll ask a question in the first interview, and then rephrase it, so it should be a similar answer, but not phrased in a way that it should trigger them to think it's the same question. And we'll ask the same question in a later interview with a different interviewer, so that we're checking to see, are they consistent with their answers? Are they being honest or are they making stuff up as they go? So when you become really clever and really smart about how you're hiring people, suddenly you actually can find someone who's really fired up about that job. Accounting, right? Accounting is not my thing either. And so I want to find someone who loves accounting and gets jazzed about it. And I want to find that person who's also a great culture fit. And then for me as their manager, either I'm gonna have to hire someone who is kind of like a middle ground, right? Maybe they don't answer to me, maybe they answer to someone else in the company who's a little bit closer of a personality fit, that I manage that other person kind of like if I'm on one extreme, and they're on another extreme and we have this person in the middle who can communicate well with both of us. But you've got to look at that. If this person is a really high D, do I want them, or a really high C in the DiSC profile, do I want them answering to me when I'm like a 7C? Probably not. But I do have someone in my company who's like a 52 C. I could maybe put them in charge of that person. And then that person can answer to me, so I'm still managing them. And I'm still communicating, but they're getting managed in the way they need to be managed in order to feel competent and capable and excited about their job, while still staying inside what they're great at, which is accounting and details and organization, which is not my strength.

Tim Bornholdt 29:43
Yeah. And man there's so much we could get into with outsourcing.

Stephanie Scheller 32:17
I know, right?

Tim Bornholdt 32:18
I think one thing I wanted to cover, changing topics again on you, since we are a tech kind of podcast, I'd be remiss to not spend some time talking about software. So especially I mean, when I think of the word scale, maybe it's because I'm so entrenched in software. That's the first thing I think of with scale is software. One thing that I find is, a lot of times, you know, people will see a problem, and they'll go and look for like the silver bullet app solution that's going to solve everything about it, like Oh, good, now we have sSack. So that solved all of our team's communication problems. What is your silver bullet app? Is there a silver bullet app that's going to help my business scale and grow?

Stephanie Scheller 33:03
Well, so the thing is, I actually don't think there is a silver bullet. Like I think silver bullets are a made up thing, right? Because a silver bullet kind of has this connotation of being an end all, be all, fix all. But there really isn't one piece of software that is really the end all, be all, fix all. You've got to find the stuff that, and I could even say, for us, we use Asana as our project management software, but I know people who hate Asana. So you know, what I do think is, I think everyone needs a good project management software. They need a scheduling software, right? Even if you're not trying to set sales appointments, maybe you're just trying to set internal appointments. You know, one of the smartest things I did for my team was they all have a link that is just for them. It's only an internal link. If they're stuck on a project, they're stuck on something I've assigned, they can go to that link and they can schedule time with me. And it's like the only link that bypasses all of the other restrictions we put on the calendar. But instead of them having to reach out and saying Steph, I'm stuck on this project and me finally getting around to replying to their email four hours later, and then a scheduling a meeting that's another 12 hours later, right? They just go to the link, they schedule a meeting that's within the next, you know, five hours, six hours, and we have the meeting, fix the problem, they can move on. So I think it's about discovering where the breakdowns are in your business and then finding that one piece of software that is a fit for that. So if you're having trouble juggling projects, find the project management software that does work for you. If your accounting sucks, you know, find the accounting software that does work for you, or you can't keep up with your sales activity, find the CRM that does work for you, but I don't think there's like one individual software that I think is like the go-to everyone has to have.

Tim Bornholdt 33:04
Nice. I didn't think you would. Now, you mentioned Asana, we talked Trello. There's so many, like, prefab solutions out there and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I would presume that the first step, if you're going to go solve a problem in your business, would be probably first identify what the problem is and figure out what the process is around that problem, and incorporate some off the shelf component, a tool that's going to let you best solve that problem. But I'm sure that as businesses are growing and scaling, you get to a certain point where, you know, Trello is not going to cut it for your business or there's going to need to be some sort of customization and custom tooling that's built up around whatever your process is. When should a company start thinking about incorporating custom software into their business?

Stephanie Scheller 35:53
I don't know what y'all's opinion on this is, but what I tell people is, don't try and get a custom software unless you... So let's say, like I know a guy who's getting a custom built CRM. So they have a very specific type of business. And it's almost finished, but it's a custom built CRM. And they were using, they tried Salesforce, they tried HubSpot, they tried a whole bunch of different CRMs. They had one that they were using that worked well-ish, but they were really starting to push the limits of what it was capable of. And what was happening was when they were onboarding a new person, they had customized it so far, that there was so much training that had to be done on how to use this software. That is usually a good signal that it's time to get a custom piece of software, when you've had to do so much adjustment and so much work, that you have to train people how to use that software and you can't rely on the automated trainings that the software comes with. That's a really good signal that it's time to get your own piece of software built. But I would say I don't think the first place to go when you find a problem in the business, the first place to go is not necessarily a custom piece of software. I would look for something that could fill the gap and try it out. Because kind of like you referenced earlier, right? People come to you and they're like, I want an app that can do this. It's like, eell, you know, did you think about this, and this and this and this. And until you've actually started to get your hands into it, you don't think about any of that stuff. So where I think is, you start with the basic piece, right? And then when you're starting to bust at the seams a little bit and you're getting beyond what that software is capable of, when you've had to, you know, like for him, they were having to rename, like all of the fields were being used for stuff that wasn't what the fields were labeled for. So they literally had like a legend of how to read their software because nothing was what it was actually labeled as. And so at that point you really kind of need a custom designed piece, especially if there's nothing on the market that does what you really do want it to do.

Tim Bornholdt 38:08
Well, you make some really good points in there because we, personally, in our business we had for the longest time, we had absolutely zero process around our sales activity. Our system was literally whenever an email came across, whether my partner or I got to it first, whoever got to it was going to handle it. And then from there, it was just like the wild west of the way that he handled sales and I handled sales. There wasn't even any consistency in that. So, there was one day that we like sat down, and we just whiteboarded it out, every single project that was a sales opportunity we had, and we were just like, Oh my God, we forgot about this, this, this and this and you just like, kind of freak out. We figured out our process really quickly at that point, right? Like we moved to a Google Sheet, then we moved to another. We finally built our own software. But it was after we'd stretched the limits of writing it on a whiteboard, then we stretched the limits of Google Sheets, and we stretched it to where we just kind of got to that point. So yeah, I think that's a great way to think about it is don't go custom immediately. Figure out how to stretch the limits of whatever software you're using and go from there.

Stephanie Scheller 39:21
And when you do start stretching the limits, don't be afraid to upgrade to that custom solution. Because think about this, I'm a big believer that, one of the things I really push to people is your most valuable resource is your energy, not your time, not your money, but your energy because you can have time without energy to do anything with it. And you don't actually really have anything of value. So when you start, when your customizations, when you're pushing the limits, right? You are wasting so much energy where people are having to remember how to do this and tweak this and push this and all these workarounds. And so people get there, and they're like, oh my God. It's so expensive to get custom software. I'm like, Yeah, but think about the amount of money you're wasting because you don't have the energy to go after those big clients because you're so busy working with your workarounds. Being cheap gets you cheap results in business.

Tim Bornholdt 40:20 Couldn't say it better.

Stephanie Scheller 40:22 Now, you don't need to be extravagant. But don't be cheap guys.

Tim Bornholdt 40:25 There's a fine line between building out a million dollar, custom app, but like everything we've been talking about, you can start small and grow from there. That's the best way I've seen to scale.

Well, Stephanie, this has been incredibly insightful for me, and I know people are going to take a lot away from this episode. If anyone wants to reach out to you and learn more about you or Grow Disrupt or they want to take you up on that 6 hour seminar to learn more about outsourcing, where can people find you?

Stephanie Scheller 40:58 I think the best thing to do is go to our website. It's super simple, growdisrupt.com. We actually have this really cool quiz that we just launched on the site that if you want to grow your business and you're not sure what you need to fix, what you need to focus on next, like what fire do I put out first? This quiz actually walks your through it. This is like a year and a half in the making quiz. We designed it to help you figure out what you need, which fire do I put out first, so that I can really grow the business. It's awesome. But then if you actually want to chat with us, there's tons of resources on the website, free, paid. There's tons of stuff there. Then if you want to chat with me, connect with me, you can do so. I think there's a calendar link on there. You could also fill out the Contact Us. My team is awesome. They'll get you to me within like 24 hours.

Tim Bornholdt 41:55 Nice. That's fantastic. I'm going to take that quiz. Sounds like a fun quiz.

Stephanie Scheller 42:00 Right? I love it. It's a little bit of a brain tease because you have to really think, but it's so good.

Tim Bornholdt 42:06 I'm not opposed to thinking a little bit.

Stephanie Scheller 42:10 Oh good. Here and there. Every once in a while.

Tim Bornholdt: 42:12 Stephanie, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you coming on.

Stephanie Scheller 42:15 Man, thank you so much for having me. This was fun and I love this topic. I'm so glad we got to do this.

Tim Bornholdt 42:22 Thanks to Stephanie Scheller of Grow Disrupt for joining me today on the podcast. You can find out more about Stephanie and her business by heading to GrowDisrupt.com

Show notes for this episode can be found at ConstantVariables.co. You can get in touch with us be emailing hello@constantvariables.co.

I'm @TimBornholdt on Twitter and the show is @CV_podcast.

Today's episode was produced by Jenny Karkowski and edited by the dapper Jordan Daoust.