Tom Bailey 0:07
Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.
Hello, I'm Tom Bailey and in today's episode I'll be getting to know Veronica Kiran, who is an anthropologist, a serial entrepreneur, and a coach to this disruptive entrepreneurs, who is also recognised as a 20 2040 LGBTQ leaders under 45 business equality magazine. So Veronica, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.
Veronica Kirin 0:46
I Tom, thank you. So nice to see you.
Tom Bailey 0:49
Thank you so much for being here and just out of interest and whereabouts are you in the world right
Veronica Kirin 0:52
now? I'm currently in Berlin, Germany.
Tom Bailey 0:56
Amazing. Thank you for sharing. And I just want to share one last thing about you before we do get started. So Veronica's coaching business was the first in Grand Rapids to be certified with the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce. And her client work heavily focuses on scaling for exponential and sustainable growth. The title for today's episode is scale your business in three easy steps. And Veronica is gonna show us how to do that in just seven minutes. It's a question of one today is, who is your ideal client?
Veronica Kirin 1:27
My ideal client are millennials and Gen X, who are entrepreneurs, who feel like they are hitting a wall to some extent, which we'll get into a little bit more.
Tom Bailey 1:39
I'm sure we will. Fantastic and, and I guess this wall may come up. But when you first start working with your clients, what's the biggest challenge that they typically face?
Veronica Kirin 1:47
Yeah, so they have a vision for the future. They're impact driven. So they really want to make an impact for their clients, customers, communities, etc. But they feel like you're hitting a wall, they can't seem to get the growth that they want, it feels like they have to hustle. They're constantly on the edge of burnout. And they can't seem to grow past a certain place, no matter what they try.
Tom Bailey 2:11
And then just not be interested that certain places that normally revenue, like how much I can make in a month, for example,
Veronica Kirin 2:17
it can be many different avenues in their company. So it can be revenue, it can be clientele, it can be reach, it can be adding different resources to the company. And they feel like they don't have the time or the energy to take the next step, even though they had the vision for the next step.
Tom Bailey 2:35
Yeah, got it. So yeah, so whatever the metric is, it's that you've hit that that that ceiling, I guess you can't do anything. Yeah, exactly. That's great. And I guess, by reaching this plateau, this this ceiling, what impact can that have on either them? Or their business?
Veronica Kirin 2:49
Yeah, so I am my own case study with my tech company several years ago, I was at that edge, and I kept burning out, I was constantly overdrawn my account, I couldn't seem to get out of bed. Some days, I felt like I had to work so hard for so little. And I never knew where the next dollar was coming from, it felt like I was on a hamster wheel. And that is what is happening to my clients where they have brilliant ideas. They have all the tools that they actually need, they just don't realise it. And so they're not having the impact that they want to have on the world. And then the world suffers as well, because there's such goodness available,
Tom Bailey 3:28
and that you're not able to share it as wide as they possibly wanted to. Exactly. So what would you say is one valuable piece of advice that you might give to somebody in this position that really wants to solve this problem?
Veronica Kirin 3:39
Yeah, so that's where I come back to my three pillars of business scaling. So first of all, small businesses don't get the startup ecosystem, that intensity that startups receive, where everyone's teaching them how to scale and tell them them to do what, what the next steps are. And so took me a while as a small business owner to discover this myself. And I've distilled it into three steps to make it easy for other small business owners to take action in order to scale. And scaling means exponential growth without adding to your own workload. So can you imagine what it would be like to expand like that, but without adding to your workload? Should I get into the three steps in particular?
Tom Bailey 4:17
Let's dive in? Yeah, well,
Veronica Kirin 4:19
the first pillar is automation. I'm actually teaching the workshop this week with automation, because it's such a critical part, especially these days where technology can do so much for so little, often for free. So we're talking making money in your sleep, who doesn't want that? The next pillar is systems. And so I'm talking about making sure that every step within your business is clearly defined, especially if it's something that is repetitive, because we can't study what we don't know. And if there's a hole in your business, if there's a blind spot if something's missing, which there probably is, if you're feeling like you're burning out all the time, then we need to study what's going on. We need to find it and We can't find if we don't have systems. Yeah, the third pillar is hiring. So that's where we start outsourcing all the way up to having full time employees, hiring a CTO cmo, you know, the sky's the limit, and it should be for entrepreneurs. Automation means that you don't pay another human for something tech can do for free. Systems mean you can train faster and better. So you make the right hire the first time and spend less time getting them into the company, and have them take over where it's so critical for you. And through that your time expands, your reach expands, your income expands. It's fabulous.
Tom Bailey 5:37
I mean, it all happens exponentially as well, which is what we want.
Veronica Kirin 5:41
Yes, yep. Just keep doing the three steps over and over and over throughout the business,
Tom Bailey 5:47
automation systems hiring. I love it. And the next question is, what is one valuable resource that you can share with people to help them move forward with this opportunity?
Veronica Kirin 5:56
Well, as I said, I'm all about demystifying this process of upscaling, because there are so few resources given to small businesses for scaling. And so I created an in depth guide, called find your scaling blind spots, because you probably don't even know where in the process you are. For example, I have a colleague who just asked me, How do I hire an assistant, I'm so ready. I told her about the three pillars and turns out she's a pillar one, she hasn't even started the pillars yet, but she's trying to hire. So this guide will help you find where you are in the process and tell you what to do next.
Tom Bailey 6:30
And just out of interest on that point, then would you say you need to do step one before you do step two, and then do step two, before you do step three as well. I recommend
Veronica Kirin 6:37
it. But I know a lot of entrepreneurs and have had many clients who are way down the line, and we have to kind of go back a little bit and that's okay.
Tom Bailey 6:47
Yeah, but if you're starting out, you know, start with that automation, then systemize, then hire so fantastic. Okay, so, on your journey, then obviously, you've had a lot of great wins in business, what would you say is one of your greatest either learnings, mistakes, or failures that you've made personally, either in life or in business? And what did you learn from it?
Veronica Kirin 7:06
Yeah, definitely. So I think one of my greatest feelings actually was in one of my startups. Because before you even get going, you should be talking to your co founders about who's doing what, when, and why. And we didn't have that conversation. And so when one of our co founders left, the whole thing collapsed, so if you do have co founders, or if you have employees, you need to make it really clear, who's doing what, when are they doing it? Why are they doing it? What tools do they need? And how are they doing it? And if you don't have those, that clarity, you're going to find yourself at a collapse point at some point, and it will rip the rug out from under you. And it's awful. Absolutely, yes.
Tom Bailey 7:45
But that clarity and roles, responsibilities, and then I guess, trying to capture what it is they do as a process as well. That'd be extremely helpful. Exactly. Okay. And the last question about you today, then is what is the one question that I should have asked you today that will also brings some great value to that audience?
Veronica Kirin 8:02
Tom, I think that's a great question. I love that you asked that. So I think that a lot of people listening will think that my case was a special case, because I took my hours from a 70 Hour Workweek of burnout to 10 hours a week, which I think most people are going to think is just unique. And it was a special case, because I ran a tech company or something. I've been coaching for five years, I sold that company in 2018. I had some overlap and coaching while I had that company, and I've been working with entrepreneurs around the world since then, and I can tell you definitively that I've not met a company that cannot be scaled. So take the steps, get the guide, this will work for you and get yourself out of burnout.
Tom Bailey 8:42
Awesome. Absolutely. And what are those well Veronica's I'll post links in the show notes to both your guide and to your website as well so people can just dive in and reach out to you if they want. Perfect. So wanted to just thank you again so much for your time today and bringing such great value to our audience.
Veronica Kirin 8:57
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
