There are two main problems in business.

A SALES problem – when you need more sales/revenue/clients.

Or a CAPACITY problem – when you have trouble delivering on what you have sold.

The key is to know which your biggest problem is right now and to focus on solving it.

In other words – don’t try to solve the problem that you don’t have!

Most of my work is around helping people solve their capacity problems. People come to me when they are growing, making money and have great clients BUT they can no longer keep running the business in the same way. Sometimes this means tweaking their business model (from a 1-1 to a leveraged model). Sometimes this means expanding their team so they don’t have to keep doing it all themselves. Sometimes this means working on getting key systems in place so they can be more automated and have a solid foundation to grow on. Usually it’s a mix of all 3 things.

When someone comes to me asking to work on capacity problems one of the first things I dig into is their sales and current revenue.

Do they have enough (or too many) clients? Or are they struggling to get the clients they need?

Are they making any money?

If they are struggling to get clients and aren’t making money then their biggest problem in the moment is a SALES problem – not a capacity problem.

And even if they come to me asking for help with their team, systems & backend I will often (lovingly) decline and recommend that they focus their investment of time/energy/money on getting their sales in order first.

Put simply – I don’t want them to invest in fixing the wrong problem.

That’s just poor business.

Once they have their sales geared up and are easing into the territory of a capacity problem then great! That’s when we can work together.

And as business owners we will always swing back and forth between the two.

We fix our sales problem – it leads to a capacity problem – which then leads to another sales problem as we take things to the next level – and once again, the capacity problem shows up.

This is the natural ebb and flow of our business challenges.

So my question to you today is this – what problem do you CURRENTLY have?

And what are you doing to work on it?