Business Growth Plan – Ashley Stahl
SUMMARY
Ashley Stahl is an American National Security professional turned entrepreneur, speaker, and career coach. On this episode, she shares some very useful tips and a business growth plan that you should keep in mind when your business is growing.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The first thing to remember when you’re scaling your business is look ten steps ahead.
There are moments where you can see the future of your business leaking into the present.
Where you focus is what expands.
Saying “Enough” and taking a pause is a long-term strategy.
Exploding is short term plan, and it’s not sustainable.
Most of the time, in business and life, we’re looking for answers that we already have the answer to. But we either don’t like our answer, and so, we don’t want to listen to it, or it’s inconvenient in some way.
You need to slow down because you have to think about your customers.
If you scale so fast, you can’t have a good customer support.
Listening to criticism is essential in growing and scaling a business.
Another is testing. Examine how you could go forward and implement your customers’ feedback.
Have overseas hires to help you with your business online including customer support.
TRANSCRIPTION: BUSINESS GROWTH PLAN – ASHLEY STAHL
Luis Congdon
When your business is growing fast, and you’re scaling, what do you do so your business doesn’t fall apart? How do you manage employees? How do you manage products? How do you manage the whole system involved in the business it’s growing maybe even too fast for its good? What is a business growth plan?
Today, we’re going to be discussing how to manage to scale and how to implement a business growth plan so your business can still thrive and you clients are happy.
Kamala Chambers
On this episode, we’ve got Ashley Stahl and we are excited to be talking about business growth plan. Ashley is an American National Security professional turned entrepreneur, speaker, and career coach. She coaches millennials on how to find their purpose, master the job hunt, and eventually transition into entrepreneurship.
Luis Congdon
All right. Welcome Thriving Launchers. We have Ashley Stahl.
Ashley, are you ready to launch?
Ashley Stahl
I am ready to launch.
Luis Congdon
I love it.
One of the things that you’ve done is helping out people in having a great business growth plan. And you’ve done in a dynamic and powerful way is you shifted out of the nine to five working for the government to having your own business. Then, in just this dynamite explosive kind of way, you just grew this business insanely fast, and there are some dangers to that.
When I hear people growing a business very quickly like overnight. I’m thinking, “Man, this person’s going to bomb.” It is like winning the lottery. In a few years from now, they could be back to zero because they’re growing so quickly. And I know that you have some tips and you’ve had to do some work even to slow down some of the scalings.
What have you been learning through this process of developing business growth plan?
What Is A Business Growth Plan
Ashley Stahl
You’re so accurate because I do see that.
I think that there are so many people who dream about the cash flow. They dream about what could happen in their life, and the impact they can make on their customers. And they stop thinking “Well, what do I need to do right now?”
The first thing to remember when developing a business growth plan in scaling your business always look ten steps ahead. If you focus too much on the now, you’re going to miss certain steps that you’ve got to take.
Ashley Stahl
That could be thinking about where your niche is going.
For example, I help job seekers with my online program. But at the end of the day, I can’t just focus on the job hunt right now. By the time I scale it up to where I want it to be this year through a great business growth plan. The program’s going to be irrelevant unless I’m focusing on ten steps ahead. Not just on the quality of the product but where my niche is going and what my customers are going to be wanting.
Developing A Business Growth Plan
Ashley Stahl
On top of that, I think one of the biggest things to focus on also is your integrity when preparing a business growth plan. Because I think, when you have the opportunity to blow up your business. It can be common to kind of overlook, “What kind of steps do I need to take to make sure that I’m in the clear? How can I communicate this in a way that feels like it’s in high integrity with my customer?”
Because we live in a world especially with online marketing where it’s all the big orange buttons that say “Claim your spot. One place left” and you always think the customer’s probably thinking “Is there one spot left?” Because if they’ve been in this same file, it feels like “I’m so tired of being in a hot spot.”
Kamala Chambers
You need to give legitimate reasons, right?
Ashley Stahl
Yes. Exactly.
Kamala Chambers
Yeah.
I’d love to hear how you assess where the audience is going when launching your business growth plan.
If you’re playing a game of chess, you can think a few moves ahead. That’s necessary to be a good chess player.
How do you assess where your business is going and how do you be ten steps ahead?
Business Growth Plan And Outlining Growth Strategy
Ashley Stahl
One good thing that I learned. I learned this from a futurist named Faith Popcorn, is that there are moments where the future of business is leaking into the present. And if you keep your eyes open, you’ll start to see it. Make sure to prepare business growth plan based on that.
For example, there was a pivotal period in our recent history where we stopped getting a person on the phone. We have begun getting a robot. To me, that means that the workforce is going to be replaced at least a significant portion of it by robots. What I’m thinking about is, “Okay. If we’ve got robots on the phone for the bank, we’re probably going to have robots at Staples to pick up our favorite pair of set of pencils.”
Another indicator, for example, is press. Seeing Tony Robins in the past year on the cover of Fortune magazine and I think it said: “CEO whisperer” or something like that. What it told me was that there’s an appetite for the mindset. There’s an appetite for the new age thinking, and that I want to implement that into my product because I know that my generation resonates with the spiritual side.
When Preparing A Business Growth Plan Always Think Ten Steps Ahead
Ashley Stahl
One area where I’ve been ten steps ahead is thinking, “Okay, I have a job hunting program. But it’s not just about the outside results. It’s about the experience they’re having through it. If we’re living in a world where A: robots are replacing people, and I believe that that is going to continue. B: that we’ve got spiritual leaders who are advising the chief executives and that trickles down in an organization.”
So, the first thought I’m having is, I want to stay on top of that and make sure that there’s some mindset element in all of my teachings. So when teaching business growth plan I’m not just throwing hard content at them all the time.
Luis Congdon
I think that’s great and that’s something that here at Thriving Launch and all the Thriving Launchers, we’re all on board with that.
Not only do Kamala and I resonate with that. Personally, we decided to take our podcast, the Thriving Launch show and make it a show about this more wholesome experience for the entrepreneur. And this is for people who are into self-help. We bring guests like you on. And then we bring guest like Robert Kiyosaki, Jack Canfield, meditation experts, and food experts. Because yesterday we were doing this interview and our guest was talking about how being well in one area creates wellness in another. I think you’re spot on there, Ashley.
Ashley Stahl
I love that. Wellness in one area creates welfare in another. I think that’s a beautiful way to put it.
I don’t know if it happens by itself.
Where you focus is what expands.
Crafting Long Term Business Growth Plan And Strategy
Luis Congdon
That’s very true. As we’re talking, I’m starting to think about your business started grow, did it get out of control? What has been your business growth plan through that?
Because we’ve talked to some people, who have told us that they just had to say, “No more clients. No more sales of any products and we have to slow down.” Whereas I’ve talked to other people where they just crash and burn because they just keep going.
Tell me a little bit about that process of developing business growth plan.
Ashley Stahl
I love that question because I think I can so relate to that. I think when you have a little carrot in front of you, it’s easy to want to chase this ever elusive carrot of success.
But I think people who can hold their boundary and say, “Enough. I’m going to pause here. I want to do this right.” It’s a long-term strategy.
I think exploding is short term strategy and it’s not sustainable.
So, I love that. I think my experience with scaling was one where I was iterating on an evergreen automated webinar, and it was a challenging experience for me.
I’d hired just about anyone you could think of in this business who has done evergreen funnels well. I hired them to talk to me and watch my presentation, and give me advice on it.
What I found at the end of the day is that you have to listen to yourself when creating a business growth plan.
Business Growth Plan – Slowing Down
Ashley Stahl
Most of the time, in business and life, we’re looking for answers we already have the answer to, but we either don’t like our answer. So, we don’t want to listen to it, or it’s inconvenient in some ways.
In my case, my answer within myself was I need to slow down and get a long run business growth plan. I felt that inside of myself, but it seemed too good. It’s like I’m scaling, there’s cash flow, and things are going so well. I’ve got thousands of people joining my course. Why would I slow down? But, you’ve got to because, at the end of the day, you have to give a damn about your customers.
A lot of people are like, “We’re one sale away from our next tie,” and you can’t be that way. These are real people who are buying real products. And if you’re going to scale so fast, you can’t even have good customer support for them. You don’t even have time to train people, and you don’t even have your legal agreements.
I think a good working relationship starts with right paperwork. I think if you don’t have that in place, that’s a sign that you’re illegally locked up before you move up and strategize a good business growth plan.
These are all some pieces that put pressure on me to say, “You know what? Everybody’s looking at me saying this business is crushing it. Keep going.” And I said to myself “Uh-uh, I don’t want to go to bed like that.”
Because at the end of the night, it’s just you and your bed, and you have to feel good about yourself, and I don’t feel good if I don’t have a good customer support or proper legal in place and all of those essential elements.
New Insights Into Business Growth Plan
Kamala Chambers
I’m wondering if your experience working in the Pentagon and being a leader has shaped your ability to see these things. And have the foresight and insight to develop business growth plan like this.
Ashley Stahl
Yeah.
From an intelligence standpoint, I was more logistics in operations. So I was never out in the field collecting intelligence and spying on people. But, I do think that being around so much focus on justice, perhaps played a role in my desire to show up in this space in a way that I’m proud. I think that’s so priceless.
I believe that you’re right. My first career in counter-terrorism was about saving and protecting people. So when I’m selling something on the internet, I don’t want to feel like I’m duping anybody.
I think anyone who has an online business has learned by now that customers have their guard up. They contact you with issues and a lot of times, they’ve been burned before, and if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be talking to you like that. So definitely, I want to impress and surprise people with the positive nature of their experience with us.
Kamala Chambers
I think a lot of us is about creating connection and helping people feel like you care about them, and that you’re speaking directly to them not just a mass audience. That plays a role in people putting that guard down, so they do feel that connection.
What else do you find is essential in growing, scaling, and developing business growth plan?
Business Growth Plan Critique
Ashley Stahl
I think listening to criticism. That’s probably one of the hardest things that I’ve learned, to listen to the critics. Of course, there are some that are just nothing of value that they have to say like “All right. Have a good day. Thanks for sharing.”
A lot of the time, criticism is such a gem. Apparently, it doesn’t feel like it because we all want a gold star sticker any day of the week for our businesses.
I was criticized on my first webinar I ever did. It was because I had hired many people to help me craft this and put it together. I like a connection. I don’t think about sales, and so, I had to hire a lot of people to help me put it in a way where I was also selling my product.
What I found was that there wasn’t enough content in it. It was just pitchy, and I felt it inside of myself, but I just didn’t trust myself. Because I thought “You know what? I’m hiring these leaders. They’ve got to know better than I do. Even if it feels this way, it’s got to be that way for the customer. They would know better than I do.” And I got torched. Not just in the chat box but people will post on the internet about it, and it was like my first webinar I’d ever done.
At first, I put myself into a victim mode of, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe how harsh people are.” Then I just thought, “You know what? I’ve got to own this. I got to look at everything single piece of feedback in that chat box, and I need to take it as a gift. I need to take it to grow.”
Testing Is Crucial When Developing Business Growth Plan
Ashley Stahl
I started writing down all of the negative feedback I was getting. I started testing how I could go forward and implement the people’s feedback. Testing is another crucial thing. Nobody gets successful without testing.
I think that there’s an infection in online marketing especially when you’re new. People believe that it’s one and done. You set it up, you hit it, and you quit it with your online funnels, but it’s not. It’s an iterative process, and I think part of that is listening to those critics that you can implement and be better.
I believe that it could be easy to be lazy and just say, “Wow. This is working. I’m going to throw some more cash at it and just make some more sales.” But for me, I’ve been on such a mission ever since those critics came around to stand in such a powerful place within myself where I want to feel like any criticism I could look at and be like “That’s not true. I’ve done a good job here,” and until I feel 100% that way, which I’m really at that point right now, I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep iterating. I’m going to keep testing. I’m going to keep listening to those critics.
Common Challenges To Strategic Planning And Business Growth Plan
Luis Congdon
I’ve also found that criticism is healthy as long as we don’t get too emotionally involved in it.
I recently did a project where a few people had some criticisms. They publically didn’t say it in such a nice way, but I looked at those criticisms. I was like, “This doesn’t feel very good.” But a few people commented on something similar, and then some other people liked it.
What I did with that information is I looked at what some of the criticism was, and I was like “Okay. I can tweak this. I can make it better.” I went back and shared it somewhere else. It was even more powerful with that community and that audience. But the change that happened was from the audience where there was some criticism. When I made those changes, it totally shifted everything.
It reminded me Kamala, of our interview the other day. If you guys have seen the movie Fox Catcher, it’s an excellent film. Mark Schultz is one of the characters played by Channing Tatum.
We had Mark Schultz on the show, and Mark is a two-time Olympic gold wrestler. He was fantastic to talk to and of the things he said is “You’re going to learn the most from your losses.” It’s your losses where you can come out to be a champion, and that’s what you’re talking about.
Creating Business Growth Plan For Your Online Business
Ashley Stahl
It’s true, and you hear it all the time. You see it on bumper stickers.
But when you’re in it, it doesn’t feel that way. I think that’s what the real test for how you’re going to succeed in your emotional fitness to keep playing the game. Because throwing in the towel, it could be a relief. Sometimes quitting is glorious, but if you want to build something that pays for your life and makes a difference in other people’s lives.
One thing you’re talking about with critics, I think about how important it is to honor people’s time. If you have a free guide, a free report, a free webinar, realize that that’s an hour of people’s time. I don’t know about you, but I value my time, and I guess you do too. You’ve got a busy podcast. You got many guests.
Any time you’re not working, you want to be with your family, with people you love, or with yourself. For somebody to surrender a second of their time or even their email address. You want to go into it thinking, “Well, I need to provide more value than they’re giving me with that email address.” We all know in online marketing that an email address is a lot of value.
Tips On Creating A Business Growth Plan
Kamala Chambers
Before we close out today, I’d love to hear a little bit more about what some of your tips are or the things that we need to keep in mind when we’re looking ahead to our business, and we’re scaling.
Ashley Stahl
I think overseas hires have completely transformed my business. To anyone who isn’t looking into overseas, I recommend it. If you have anything online, even customer support, and I recommend The Philippines. I know a lot of people are into that right now.
Luis Congdon
Kamala and I totally love it.
Kamala Chambers
We have our whole team there. We are so thrilled with the quality of work we get.
Ashley Stahl
That’s been probably the biggest game changer for the entire business. It has been the talent I found overseas, and I love The Philippines because their culture is just high integrity. I trust these people that I’ve hired out there so much. They want to grow, and you can get out there for $5-12 an hour. What you can get here for a $100 or $50 an hour.
When I was starting to scale up, and I couldn’t yet afford the $100/hour-hire. I just thought, “What am I going to do to get the support I need?” Queue overseas hires completely shifted my business.
So if you’re not on that right now, I recommend starting researching hiring virtual assistants in The Philippines. It’s a game changer.
Integrity In Business Growth Plan
Luis Congdon
That piece too about the level of integrity, it’s been phenomenal. We’ve had some staff that is doing amazing work. We’ve tried out a few people too because, in order to get hired by us, we hire you for an hour or two so you can do some work, and we can see how much it took you to do that and how well you took direction in all of that.
We’ve had some responses where we wrote somebody and said “Hey, this wasn’t up to par for, what we’re looking for but we appreciate your time,” or something of that sort.
One girl wrote us and said “Please don’t pay me. I don’t feel like I’ve done the work properly for you. I don’t want to get paid.” We had someone else write us and say “I’m sorry that I failed you,” and we had to write her back and say “No. You didn’t fail us. It just wasn’t what we’re looking for, but you did a great job.”
This is the level of integrity that we found, and it’s been a great experience. I think that’s a fantastic tip that you’ve given along with all the other tips. Because if you’re growing a business, you got to make sure that all the tires are on, the team is firing full cylinders, and you’re working.
Kamala and I are in the process of growing, and it’s been incredible. But it’s also been quite a process of finding new energy and finding more resourcefulness than we’ve ever had before.
Extra Tip On Creating A Business Growth Plan
Ashley Stahl
Yes.
Just one extra tip when it comes to hiring overseas is, one question I always ask is to make sure that they have a good power grid, get clear on what location they’re in. Because there are certain areas in The Philippines where their internet will be an issue for your business. Definitely, make sure to ask about that.
Luis Congdon
All right. We have been talking about business growth plan. Ashley, it’s been fantastic to have you on the show.
Kamala, do you want to close this out?
Kamala Chambers
When developing a business growth plan, and moving your business to the next level. I would love for all of us to just take these tips to our hearts because they’re so powerful.
Thank so much Ashley for coming on and helping thriving launchers grow and scale.
Ashley Stahl
It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
