Segment:- Scale Your Business: Time, People and Money are the real currencies of growth

Most founders chase money and forget the only thing that actually starts a business: a paying customer. We open the playbook on going from zero to traction with sweat equity, then show how to turn early wins into systems that don’t depend on your constant presence. If you’ve hit 100K and feel stuck, this conversation breaks down the next moves—document what worked, hire against your playbook, and decide what to automate so output scales without burning you out.

We walk through the three real currencies of business—time, people, and money—and why time is your default when cash is tight and your network is thin. From cold calls to walk-ins, the fastest path to cash is direct contact with buyers and clear promises you can deliver. Then we pivot to scale: writing SOPs that anyone can follow, building delegation lanes for sales and delivery, and using technology like CRM workflows and AI to remove busywork that slows growth. You’ll hear a step-by-step account of landing first clients after quitting a job with almost nothing in the bank, and how those lessons turn into repeatable revenue.

Finally, we tackle the profit trap: more clients does not guarantee more money. We unpack value-based pricing, explain how premium offers protect margins, and share the “Maybach move” that kept high-end buyers from drifting to competitors. Along the way, we show how to find your unique selling proposition—by studying what rivals miss, what they do poorly, and what your strengths can deliver exceptionally well—and how to use your own customer data to refine offers that people are happy to pay more for.

If you’re ready to move from hustle to a business that grows beyond you, press play. Subscribe, share this episode with a founder who needs it, and leave a quick review with your biggest scaling challenge—we’ll feature our favorite in a future show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Customers Before Capital
• 1:59 The Three Currencies of Business
• 3:45 Sweat Equity: Getting First Cash
• 5:17 From 0 to Clients: A Personal Playbook
• 6:57 Scaling From 100K: Systems & Hiring
• 9:10 SOPs That Let You Step Away

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

They want to scale. They want to scale. Okay. And then the other one wants money. They just want they want some customers in the door. Okay. So yeah. So I mean, when you're not making money, that's like a very big issue. So I I always say that you don't need you don't need money to start a business. You need money, you need a customer to start a business, not money. That's what most people don't do. So most people just, oh, I need money to start a business. You need money to scale, but you need a customer to start. And so if you're you're running whatever type of business you're selling, building materials. There's a time ago, one of my friends is running a cement business at a YarfR. I mean, we had no money to do anything. We have the product spend on everything to buy and ship our product. Now, what do we need to do? You need to go into the place and then start looking for kind of a lot of customers and say, Oh, yeah, building. And so we can give you cement to be to be building your thing. And so once they agree, they pay us tickets and you go. And so you need to get the customer's money first and you need to start moving. So if I'm on zero, I'm going to spend one. So quick one. So in life, there are three types of currencies. Or yes, three types of currencies. Or in other words, I can say capital. Okay. So most people is they think they want capital. Okay. So all capital. Number one is everybody's most initial thought: money. Number two, this is actually number one, is time. And number three is people. And so this is your most default, this is your default time. Because nobody was born with money. I don't think there was anybody who was born with like a bunch of$50,000 just in the hands of the baby. So the only thing you're now born with is time. So this is your most default currency. If you don't have money and you don't have a network, this is where you fall because this is your default currency. So these things are not defaults. These things you find, you accumulate over time. But this is your default thing. So when you are booked, when you don't have anything, no revenue, you need to leverage on a currency or leverage on this capital. And so this is what you call sweat equity in business. And so you need to be able to find a way to be able to have find have sweat equity set sweat equity. What that means is that you need to go out there, do cold calling or warm calling, call everybody that you know, kind of go onto the ground and go get some cash. You need to first of all get cash, get cash for your business. Once you get the cash, that's when you can now be able to now put it into things that will allow you to scale. But most people don't even know what to put it into. And that's where the challenge now lies. So once you get the cash, that first of all, your first thing should be about cash. For example, in my business, when we were when I first quit my job, I resigned my job, and all I had in my bank account was 49 Ghana CDs. No kidding. I resigned and I said I was going to do whatever I was going to do with faith. I had employees still waiting for me to pay them and everything. And so what I needed to do was that the first thing that I did was that I made a list I made on like the week after because I was bent out. I was thinking about what to do. I was struggling. I had to find a quick therapist online, and I spoke to the person. The person said, Oh, relax, and all of that. But what I did next was that I made a list of people who I wanted to work with. And then I started calling them and asked them, when can I come to your office? And I went to all of them and I got two clients by like after two weeks after I was done. And that's how I started running. That's how I used to pay everybody that was working with me. Is because I knew that my first go-to currency is time toward equity. So that's what I would do if I had zero.

SPEAKER_00: 3:28

But you're blessing. So 100% agree with time. Yes. So you don't need money to make money, which we've we've spoken about. Okay, so I'm going to take the person at 100K who wants to scale, right? So now you have grown your business to 100,000 CDs or dollars, and now you want to make more of that. First of all, you need to understand your business well, your system, the systems in your business. You need to leverage on systems. How did you make that 100k in the first place? Was it by your own sweat? How did you do that? Did you document the whole process? Did you market in a certain way in order to make the 100,000? Write it all down. Now hire people who can execute that and then make you 100,000 more. So if you are able to document that and imagine you are able to hire four people to follow that pattern, that's 400,000 coming into your business, right? And also, like I've said already, discovering your unique value proposition, looking at your competition, what are they not doing? What can you do better? What are they doing but failing at? And what is missing in the market? Can you supply that? If you can supply that, you have your unique selling proposition. If you can look at your strengths, okay, these are my strengths. How do I make them better to serve the customer? That is your unique selling proposition. And also looking at the customers' needs, very important. You've already made 100,000. It means you have customers. You have data. Go back to your customers, understand what went wrong or what went right in when you were trying to serve them, understand them better. Leverage on that data and then use that data to now understand your customers' needs to attract the right audience that are going to pay you a lot more in order to go your business. Yes. So scaling is about understanding the customer, understanding your unique selling proposition and hiring rights. Yes. And also leveraging systems, SOPs, documentation, inventory system, AI, leverage technology. Technology will make your work so much easier. Yes. So that is how you scale. And and SOP is? Yes. So standard operating procedures. So SOPs are just the documents that guide any aspect of your business. So right now, when we came here, you had to set up the microphones and then the cameras and stuff. So if you had a standard operating procedure pasted there, where when you come in, the first thing you need to do is to, you can even be very, very, very cryptic, like very descriptive. Take 10 steps and then turn on this first camera. Check. You turn on this, make sure the cameras are all working. Now make sure the host or the guest sits here. Check. So when you're when you're able to document everything you do, that's when you, Derek, you can decide to take a vacation. And then your assistant who speaks well can host connected minds with SOPs.

SPEAKER_01: 6:40

Yeah. Just want to add something to the scaling part. So one of the ways to be able to learn about how to scale is by looking at other businesses and looking at how they're able to scale their businesses as well. So one of the easiest ways to scale a business is to upsell. I'm not just saying upsell, but I'm trying to say create a higher version of your product, like a premium offering. Now, how did how does this work? So, for example, when you look at Mercedes useless, okay, so all they realized that all of their best clients were going to Rolls-Royce. But even though Mercedes sells cars, it was good, the cars are quality, it's classy, but all of their best clients who wanted more in terms of status were going to Rolls-Royce because they wanted some, they wanted to feel bigger, they wanted to feel better, richer, and everything. And so they realized that oh, they're losing all of their clients. So what they need to do, what they did was that they introduced what you call the Mayback that was more expensive than all of their cars. And you're able to keep a percentage of the people who are actually going to other companies like groceries, just because they added something that was a more premium offer. And so when you're trying to scale, always think of what can I or what can I add more to my business that would make my clients feel like this is something premium. The moment you do that. So that's the scaling means more money or more clients.

SPEAKER_00: 7:58

Scaling for me, scaling is making the business grow beyond you.

SPEAKER_01: 8:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:04

Yes. So just creating something that doesn't depend on you to survive. For me, that's what scaling means. So making the business grow beyond you to grow on itself. Like, so maybe like winning, like how you would win a child, winning your business, which is essentially your baby off you. That's what I think scaling is. Yeah. That's what scaling is.

SPEAKER_01: 8:25

Yes. More clients brings you more money. Yes, of course. Allows when you get when you get more money, it allows you to actually build the systems of skill. Most people don't have the systems of skill. There are two ways to like there are two systems when you're trying to scale or skill a business. They are either delegation systems or automation systems. So it's actually you are building probably some chat book chatbots or AI workflow or some AI agents or something, or you're trying to hire or create a delegation system whereby you don't need to be present, you don't need to be in your business every day.

SPEAKER_00: 8:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:55

Go on.

SPEAKER_00: 8:55

Yeah, I want to just say something. You were like, more clients mean more money, not in my experience. Because a lot of people are not pricing right. We always think pricing, like low pricing, brings in clients, but clients don't buy based on price, they buy based on value. So a lot of people are selling, but they're not making money. They are posting thousands of bags of deliveries going out, but their business is struggling. They are not making money because their pricing is way off. People are really putting even as little as 20 CDs.

SPEAKER_01: 9:27

Connected Minds podcast.