Expect It to Be Tough – Because It Will Be

There’s something I’ve noticed a lot of business owners do when they’re about to launch an ad campaign, announce a new product or run an event.

They’ll try and plan everything out to the last detail to make sure everything goes perfectly.

Makes sense. No one wants unnecessary stress.

Here’s where that trips people up, though. When you’re doing something new to grow your business, it’s going to be tough.

And you should expect that.

Planning is important, and of course you can delegate and bring in experts and do various things to help make sure things run smoothly.

But whenever you try something big – something beyond your comfort zone that will take you closer to the next level of business growth – it’ll be tough.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

Because when have you ever had anything really good happen in life that was a breeze?

Probably never.

So let’s tackle the myth of ‘the perfect launch’. Or the myth of ‘the perfect growth period’. The myth of ‘the perfect scale up’.

You expect everything to be perfect?

It’ll probably go sideways. But if you expect it to be tough, it won’t be as bad as you expect.

Think about it; no one ever climbs Everest and says: ‘Oh, well I’ve done plenty of prep, so this should be a breeze!’

Nothing comes easy.

I regularly bump into business owners who want to scale to seven figures, which is great.

But they don’t want to make any calls.

And I’m like: ‘You can do it, it works, it’s been done before. Why are you putting obstacles in the way of something that’s already hard?’.

Business owners also get told to delegate a lot.

And they absolutely should.

But there aren’t many successful owners who don’t have a good idea of how to do every task in their business.

That might sound like the opposite of what a lot of business coaches tell you.

That delegation equals success.

But if there’s a bottleneck in your business and something’s not working, you have to be able to jump in and figure out what’s wrong.

Because it’s your job to do that.

You’re the person who figures out how to fix the problem. The person who plugs the holes in the boat so that everyone else stays afloat.

That’s what running a business is about.

But business growth isn’t just about launches and campaigns. It can also sometimes be about growing your team. About bringing in the right people to help you get closer to where you want to be.

And that in itself is really bloody hard.

Interviews are hard. Rejection is hard.

People not being as good as they claimed to be is hard.

Even people turning out to be amazing is hard. Because then you have to look after them and promote them and pay them well so they don’t leave.

I used to lose sleep over that stuff.

Sometimes you have to let someone go; that’s happened at Codebreak.

It just wasn’t working and I had to do what was best for the business. But I think I went into it expecting it to be tough, so in the end it wasn’t as tough as I’d thought.

Then there was the time during COVID where we lost a lot of clients.

All in one single day.

And we still haven’t fully recovered from that.

We were in such bad shape at that time that we had to let two people go that day. And that was really rough.

In fact, there was no amount of preparation I could have done for that.

But I wasn’t expecting it to go perfectly.

A good analogy is the Hyrox Race – which Codebreak’s very own Martha is doing.

For those who don’t know, it’s a global fitness race which combines an 8k runs with intense workouts, and it happens in major cities worldwide.

She knows it’s going to be tough.

So how does she plan for that?

She over-trains. If the race is 8k, she’s training for 12k.

If you can put yourself into a place of adversity that’s worse than what you’ll experience in that environment, the task itself will be easier.

Overthinkers are great at this.

When you start worrying what your boss will think of something, what your client will think, what your parent or partner will think – and you reach boiling point.

After that, it’s never as bad as you think it’ll be.

Expectations versus reality comes into play too.

If you expect everything to be perfect, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But you can change your level of disappointment with a dose of reality.

Keep your expectations realistic, and you won’t be so disappointed.

So forget about perfect.

The tough stuff, the hard things, the obstacles, the stress?

That’s the price of progress, and you’re not going anywhere without it.

Don’t miss the next episode of Stay Hungry – we’ll dive into straight-talking insights on business marketing, growth mindset, and the realities of running a business. And if you want to take the hassle out of your marketing, we’ve got you covered with our done-for-you service.