What Works

The Nitty-Gritty: * Why Sean & Tara McMullin are starting a second company, Yellow House Media, and keeping scale in mind from the get-go* How they’ve prioritized doing every task like they’ll have to do it again tomorrow* Why they’re keeping future hires in mind while they document processes* The importance of considering an exit strategy earlier than you’d ever expect Big businesses start small, too. Today, we’re kicking off a month focused on scaling up. We’re examining the misconceptions, the assumptions, the biases, and—of course—the many ways that small business owners today are scaling up. And no—it’s not all online courses or apps. If you’ve been thinking about how your business can have a bigger impact, serve more customers, and make you more money… …but you’re at a loss of how to do that without running yourself into the ground or sacrificing your values… …this month is dedicated to you. To start this month, I have a confession to make. I started a new company. A second company. And I started it with someone you know: my husband and the producer of What Works, Sean McMullin. We’re approaching the first moves in this company completely differently than when I started my own business almost 11 years ago. To sum it up: we’re starting with scale in mind from the get-go. To be honest, the idea of “scaling up” snuck up on me the first time around. By the time I was well on my way to scaling up in theory, I realized that my company wasn’t ready to scale up in practice. My finances were a mess. My team was disorganized. There was little—if any—documentation. Important stuff fell through the cracks all the time. Getting that stuff handled? It took years. I do not want to repeat those mistakes. And since Sean was around for that clean-up job, he doesn’t want to repeat them either. So Sean and I are doing things very differently this time around. In just a bit, we’ll have a conversation about what scaling up means to us, why we’ve started this company, and how I finally convinced Sean to start a business. We’re also going to talk about the nitty-gritty details of how we’re starting with scale in mind. Things like process documentation, planning for future hires, pricing with labor in mind, creating scripts, anticipating training, and considering our exit strategy. But this is just the tip of the iceberg for what we’re covering on the podcast this month. You’ll hear from Callie Willows who scaled up with a membership site, Marie Poulin who is intentionally choosing a path that doesn’t necessarily scale, and Carol Cox who is hiring and training coaches to help her scaling her speech coaching company. You’ll also hear from Katey Schultz who challenged some personal assumptions to scale up her writer mentorship program, Debra Giunta who has scaled her company providing