Why Some Entrepreneurs Scale and Others Stay Stuck Forever

Is your business making decent money but refusing to grow? In this episode of Success Is Not Convenient, Bernie Gallerani breaks down why so many entrepreneurs plateau, and it's rarely about opportunity or intelligence. It's fear disguised as comfort. Learn the difference between survival mode and expansion mode, why staying still guarantees loss, and the exact questions to ask yourself to break through your ceiling. If you've been justifying why "good enough" is fine, this one will challenge you. Hit subscribe for more real talk on scaling, mindset, and building an exceptional life.

Transcript

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Hello, everybody. It's Bernie Gallerani bringing you an episode of Success is Not Convenient. You know, I had a really good friend of mine who made a suggestion who watches all of these uh podcasts that I do and all the videos that we put out. She gave me a great thought for this video today. So I want to give Kim some credit here on this idea. And um, so she asked me if I could talk about vision and how you move forward with it. If you have a vision in your company, how you move forward of it. So uh today's title of this podcast that we're gonna do is Vision versus Survival and just why some entrepreneurs scale and others just stay stuck with where they are. So I don't know if you're that kind of person that has a business and it's just not growing, but you're making a fair income, you're pretty happy with it. The real question I would be asking you, and the things we're gonna talk about today, is why are you stuck there? Or a question that I like asking them people a lot that talk to me about these kinds of things is I'll always say, like, what made you decide that this is where you stopped growing? It's kind of a weird question because you built a business and you took some level of risk to get to where you are today. There was something you put out there that caused yourself to be uncomfortable that somewhere along that process you made a decision to stop. And um, and this is always a hard topic for most people because they're like, oh no, Bernie, I didn't stop. I'm just running a business. It's like, well, I understand that, but how much risk are you taking or are you protecting, right? Most people don't have a uh business. What they really have is a job that they built for themselves, right? A J-O-B. And I've talked about that about other videos before where do you have a job or are you really a truly an entrepreneur? So same stress, same hours, and same ceiling. So we have the same thing every single day, but yet we continue to cap financially at the ceiling level where we are. The only difference is they don't have a boss. So really, you have a job, you just don't have a boss, but they also don't have a future in their business. So you may have a job, you may be the boss, so you don't have a boss, but you also don't have a future if you're not growing the company. And there's another group of people out there, and and and they see something bigger, they feel it before it even exists, and they move toward it even when it makes no sense. Sometimes the things people do, entrepreneurs especially, they'll make decisions to move forward and it seems so risky, and it probably has some level of risk. So, what's the difference between these two people? Why do some people see growth in their business and chase it while others see growth and then they absolutely freeze? It like paralyzes people to think about what their business could be if they actually went at it at a much higher, harder level. See, the operator is in basically survival mode. And this is what the mindset is. They're in survival mode that says, this is what I do, this is how much money we make, I just got to keep the doors open, I gotta keep going, and I can't risk too much to get it to shut down. And what they're doing is they're really just focusing on what's happening today. They're much more reactive and not proactive. And what happens is it protects what they have and it measures success by comfort. And everything is measured in this particular scenario by comfort. I'm comfortable, I'm making X amount of money, I'm keeping the doors open, I don't want to risk too much. But here's something to ask yourself: what if this really doesn't work for you? What if it just doesn't work? What if I lose what I built? That's the question that people always ask themselves. Like, well, if I take a risk, what if it just doesn't work and I fail? And what if, what if what happens if I lose everything that I built? And what if, what if I fail? Well, I don't know. What if you succeed? See, their business is built around security. That's the thing. The mindset is the security. See, the visionary, that's the expansion mode entrepreneur, the one that says I want to grow. They focus on what could be. So I'm gonna ask you guys change your thing is look at your business and say, what if I doubled and tripled my business? And there's a reason, and I've talked about this in other podcasts before, is because it actually shows a ton of weaknesses inside of your company if you expand. And you can't expand and you can't see it because you don't have things put in place. In order to put things in place, you got to hire really good people, but you'll never have the money unless you hire really good people. It's it's it's a weird, uh, it's a weird kind of circle, right? It's a it's a vicious little uh thought circle that just puts us in anxiety all the time. What if you focused on what could be though? What if you played the long game, the long-term game? You're willing to break what exists to build something better, measure success by growth and impact. See, here's what's cool about this group of people is what has to happen to actually get there? That's the question. And I want to say all this to everybody who says, Well, well, how do I have a vision? We all have a vision. We all have goals, dreams, and things that excite us. What if that vision of your business that was two, three, four, five times, it doesn't have to be limited to that. It could be a hundred times bigger than it is today. What does that look like for you? What has to happen in order for you to think about what if I three, four, five times my business over the next three or four, five years? I guarantee you it wouldn't look like it looks today. I guarantee you you wouldn't make the money you make today. You'd probably make a tremendous amount more money, but you are going to take some level of risk. Here's a question you might want to ask yourself is who do I need to become? Who do I really truly need to be in order to get to that level? What am I really avoiding? I think a lot of us look like who ask these questions, says, What am I avoiding in order to get there? And by the way, we're avoiding discomfort because we like comfort. That's natural. Their business is built around the possibility of what it could be. Like, what is possible for your business? What is possible? Here's the truth: it's not really a lack of opportunity, and it's not a lack of intelligence because you're all smart. You you're building businesses, so you're smart. It's fear, but not the kind people will admit to. It's fear, like you're like, well, I'm not a feel-for person. Well, sure we are, because there's a lot of uncertainty that we try to avoid. Fear of losing the identity of who you are. Oh, oh, Fred or Susie or Sally lost their business. Well, you don't want to take that risk. So you just feel comfortable with where you're at. See, I have to become someone different in order to grow. I have to be a different person. I might lose control of things. I might outgrow people around me. By the way, if you expand your business, you're gonna outgrow people. Growth threatens who they currently are or how they see themselves. Fear of exposing ourselves through the downside of running a struggling business or a scaling business, right? When you scale a business, it exposes like weak leadership. That is really something that I found out as I was the weak leader as I exposed myself. I realized in growth I couldn't be who I was. And I identified the weak leader was me. I also realized the bad systems that I had that wouldn't support growth. So I've been able to work and try to correct on those, right? All the skills and all the things that I needed to teach all the people within the company that were lacking that didn't have to know those things when we stayed in our current safe zone. See, some people stay small because small hides their flaws. This is a tough one because if you think about it, it's like you're comfortable, your skill level only is where your skill level is. And as you expose yourself, you have to learn new things, and that makes you feel uncomfortable. They have a fear of responsibility, a high level of responsibility. The bigger the vision I have, the the the more weight, the big weight of it I have to take on. More people depending on you, more money at risk, and more decisions that actually matter. Think about that. More expenses. You look at it and go, okay, it cost me X amount to run my company today. What's your payroll, your marketing costs, your overhead, right? Your lights, your bills, your mortgage payment, whatever it is that you have. What is that? You're going to increase that significantly. I remember when I had a little bit of a little payroll, right? It was small. It wasn't hundreds and hundreds of thousands a month. It was small. And now today it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands. And you look at it and go, well, gosh, how do you even absorb that? You do it one day, one step at a time. See, some people don't want freedom. They just want comfort disguised as freedom. You think you're actually doing really well, but think about what you could be doing. Okay. And for the ones that actually have gotten past the fear state, right? We have to understand one thing that addiction to certainty is an issue. Write that one down. We're addicted to certainty. Most entrepreneurs say they want growth, but what they really want is predictability. They're looking for a level of control, low emotional risk. They don't want to have any sort of stress. They want low emotional risk. Growth gives you none of that. Growth doesn't support those other things, it doesn't work that way. So here's the separator between the two. It's not that high-level entrepreneurs aren't scared. What they are is they just respond differently. They redefine fear. And this is the part that's really important. We understand fear is fake. Yes, it doesn't change the fact that we have that butterflies in our stomach when you get a little fearful that you're hoping something doesn't work. But when you're so confident in yourself, you know that based on your ability. See, the thing is, some of us have never tested us. Someone of us haven't tested us. Or when we tested ourselves and it's been 20 years or 15 years and we have this business, we we worked really hard when we had nothing. But when you have something, you start thinking about how much you could risk and how much you could lose. So they redefined fear. Most people think that fear means stop. High performers don't think that way. They look at fear as a signal. If this scares me, it probably matters. So if you looked at fear and say, I really want to do this, but I have fear, what if you just looked at it and went, man, because I have this discomfort and I really want to have it, this actually matters to me in my life. They trust action more than emotions because emotions are overrated. Our emotions are so overrated. They don't wait to feel ready. They move. And while uncertain and while uncomfortable and while doubting themselves, they still move. Action creates the clarity. Action moving forward is what creates the clarity, not the other way around. People always want to be clear. There's no clear in moving a business forward. There's not certainty in any of that. They're willing to lose to win. So here's what's really interesting. I love this because I'm in the sales world too, right? So I'm a salesperson. I run a sales company. And so it's fun to watch our agents and the people inside of our company where they get really fearful of getting rejected and losing. Good salespeople don't think that way. It's a numbers game. And if you're on a business, it's still a numbers game. You're just making constant moves all the time. They understand that you might lose money. That's possible. You might hire the wrong people. That's probably likely. You might fail publicly where you're not, you're putting yourself out there and people think that you fail. But they also know staying still guarantees loss. If you stay still, you guarantee you're going to lose. You just don't see it yet. And that if I can, if I can bring attention to that, you are not moving forward. If you are not moving forward, you're doing everything you can to protect what you have. You're actually eventually moving backwards. I love what my coach used to say to me years ago, and he'd say, put your foot on the gas and stomp that sucker down. He goes, because if you take your foot off the got gas at all, before you know it, you're going to come to a slow roll and then eventual stop. So are you paying attention to that? See, visionaries, they're future driven. They're not present controlled. They don't control what happens today. Today is just today. We have a bigger goal than today. And most people make decisions based on how do I feel today. Doesn't matter how I feel today. Nervous, freaked out, a little bit scared, but I'm confident in me. Visionaries ask, what does my future require of me? What does your future require of you? What is it that are your dreams? This is what separates visionaries from people that are just entrepreneurs or maybe owners that have a job. There are people right now in your market today, in your industry with less talent than you, tough to hear, who are building something bigger than you because they are willing to move while you're still thinking about it. You don't lack opportunity, you just lack information and you lack decision speed under pressure. And what happens is we're so stuck in who we are. We're so stuck in the day-to-day activity of our business that we can never see growth because we're too scared and paralyzed by it, right? Getting to know more, being more involved, right? Planning more, getting excited about that. Sometimes it takes time, right? It's about acting and it's about acting even when you're uncomfortable, moving when it's unclear, moving, still moving when you have no certainty in it. By the way, building a business is filled with uncertainty. Betting on yourself when there's no guarantee. I have my friends ask me all the time, and great uh Kim, who was a really good friend of mine for 22 years, um, is always looking at me and asking me this question. It's like, how do you know? How do you know to move forward? Why do you just do it? I do it because I'm confident in me. And I would say that you're just not confident enough in you, or you just don't care enough about your business. I'm not trying to make anybody angry today, but if I can, you know, piss you off a little bit to a point where you're um looking at this and going, you know what, maybe he's right. Maybe I am fearful. What are you avoiding right now that you know would grow your business today? And you might be going, I don't I don't know. Well, it's your job to figure it out. You're the owner. Are you protecting your current life that you have or building um your future life? I I don't know. If nothing changed in the next 12 months, would you be proud or frustrated? It's a tough one, right? By the way, that frustrates me. For about three years, maybe four years, three, four years, I kind of sat in the same spot and I justified all sorts of things. But then I said to myself, gosh, I'm so much better than this. And I and I and I got frustrated with it. And I asked myself, Am I protecting? And I remember my coach saying to me, Bernie, you're just protecting. I'm like, What do you mean I'm protecting? He's like, Yeah, no, we're not we're not mad at you because you got a great business, but if you're frustrated because you're not growing, you're not taking enough risk. And thank Mike for helping me with that because he was actually right. And making those steps forward is frustrating and and a little concerning at times, but I have to bet enough on myself. So here's a question is do you believe enough in you? You don't have to have the plan. Are you actually building a business or are you just managing one? And here's the real question for you Are you scared or are you using fear as an excuse to stay where you are? Are you scared? That's okay if you are. Being scared is perfectly fine. See, vision doesn't require certainty, it requires courage. Are you a courageous person? Most people don't fail because they aim too high. They fail because they never move at all. They just sit there and wallow in the business they have and go, yeah, the business is pretty great. And I'm not saying it's not, but how can it be better? How can you become better? How can you have an impact in your business enough that your life is exceptional? Do you have an exceptional life today? Well, I'm pretty happy with where I am. Good. I'm not asking you to change. But there are some people that have a burning desire to keep growing as a human being and building a great business for yourself. You know, I'll never forget I recently moved into a very, very large building from what I uh had originally. And so I went from about 3,000 square feet into about 12,000 square feet. And I remember thinking, I don't even need this. This is a ridiculous decision. And a really good friend of mine convinced me of doing it, and so I did it and thank God I did. And my gosh, I had a space where I I mean I didn't even need, I mean, I lived in 3,000 square feet and now I have 12. I'm like, well, what am I gonna do now? But guess what we did? We built because we had it and we forced ourself to continue to keep scaling, and the business has continued to grow over the last year. And so here's what I want to say to you what are we afraid of? See, it's all goes on in here, and that's the best part. It's all inside of our head, and we can be okay with what we have. There's nothing wrong with it. We can be okay with the money we we work for. There's nothing wrong with that. We can be proud of the situation we're in. I'm gonna leave you with this one thing before I let you go. And this is something that I've heard from a friend of mine years and years ago, and I try to be uh I try to be very careful of this for myself because it can sound a little bit weird when I say you want more, you want more. Are you not happy with where you're at? I'm ecstatic from where my life is today. And if it ended today, I would be ecstatic for the life that we've built. But I love this saying, and here it is. I'm very grateful for what I have, very appreciative for it. What a great life. But I don't want to stay here very long. I want to move to the next level. I want to experience even greater things in my life. And I know by moving forward, it challenges me, which makes me feel really good that I'm pushing myself to a higher level. But what's important also is that I feel like I'm pushing myself to the highest level I possibly can. It gives me the ability to know that no matter what I do, as long as I continue to keep moving forward and growing, that I'm confident in me. And I've always seen success, trials and tribulations, ups and downs, but I've always seen success slower than I wanted it to be, but it always showed up every single time. I hope everybody has found some value in this message today. Would love to hear you, would love it if you hit the subscribe button. Um, I'd love to get the thumbs up if you guys like this video and subscribe button. Thank you, thank you for uh listening. And if you have any questions, please feel free to write a comment. Everybody have a great day.