Real Problems, Real Business, Real Talk - Episode 205

 If you've ever thought, this business only seems to work when I'm in it, you're not alone. You hire, you plan, you build, but somehow everything still runs through you. The team leans on you, the clients want you, and the pressure, it never lets up.

That's the moment when most owners realize they're not scaling, they're surviving in a much bigger box. Today, we're going to talk about how to get out of that box and what this podcast is becoming to help you do just that.

Welcome to the budding entrepreneur podcast.

I'm Randy Bridges, business advisor, consultant, coach, and trusted partner to service-based business owners who are serious about performance, profit, and progress. This podcast exists to do one thing, help you solve the real problems that stall your growth, kill momentum, and burn out the very people who built your business. So let's get started, shall we? All right, all right.

We are on episode 205 of the podcast. Today is Friday, June 27th, 2025. Now, if you've been following the podcast for any length of time, you'll notice our theme song has changed.

And there are going to be a lot of changes moving forward in how the podcast runs because I just want something that actually makes sense for people. When I started this podcast, it wasn't about clicks, likes, downloads, soundbites, none of that stuff. It was about giving real talk about ideas of how I work as an owner and how other owners don't always have a place to say what they're thinking out loud.

To say things like, I'm working harder than ever, and I'm not sure I'm moving forward. Or I hired a team, but I still feel alone. And the final one is, sure, we're growing, but we're also breaking things as we go.

None of these are comfortable things to say, but they have to be said if we're going to be real about what we do. I found myself saying a lot of the same things. So based on a challenge, this show started as a response to that honesty.

I'm bringing it back with hopefully more clarity, a sharper focus, and a simpler promise. Each episode will tackle one real problem and we'll work through it together. Before we dive into today's example, let me introduce the three people, the cast of characters so to speak, that I'm talking about in each episode and I'm talking to them as well.

The first one is Natalie. She's a builder. Her revenue is $250k to about a million a year.

Her goal is to build consistent profit, stop the chaos, and learn how to feel in control. But her pain is that everything depends on her. The business works, but only because she's always there.

You might have heard me mention before about Norman. This is our stuck successful person. His revenue is somewhere between $1 and $10 million a year.

His goal is to step out of the day-to-day and create team accountability. His pain though is he has a team, but he's still the bottleneck. Systems exist, but they don't work the way he wants.

And finally, Nathan, the scaler. His revenue is in the $5 to $25 million range and above per year. His goal is to build leadership layers, to scale profitably, and to eliminate the drag that holds him back.

His pain is that delegation breaks down at the manager's level. For him, visibility is murky. He can't see what's going on down deep inside the business.

And things for him feel very heavy. Now, you may see yourself in Natalie, or you may feel like Norman today with the hopes of becoming Nathan soon. No matter where you are, the problems are different, but the stakes are the same.

So, let's look into that now that we know who we're talking about and to. Here's how this podcast will change moving forward. Each episode will start with a real problem.

We'll walk through the root issue, the shift required, and the move you need to make to go forward. You'll get context, clarity, and one simple action you can take. Now, sometimes I'm going to share tools.

Sometimes I'll walk through a client story, as we will today. But every episode will help you untangle one problem that you face and help you to move forward. So, today's focus is on a common problem and statement.

I'm doing everything and we're still not moving forward. Now, this is more common than you might think. Last quarter, I spoke with a business owner.

We'll call her Lisa. She has three team members, dozens of SOPs. Her clients were happy, but every day started the same way for her.

She'd get Slack notifications and email pings, and everyone needed answers from her. She said something that struck me as the heart of the issue. She said, I'm the only person in the building who can make a decision.

And I wondered to myself, is that not the real problem? And is she not the person with the problem to deal with that? She created that possibility. Chances are very good she's going to be able to be the one to find the answer. So, we got together.

We unpacked all of this. She wasn't micromanaging, but her team wasn't lazy either. What she'd built, without realizing it, was a nervous system that always routed signals back to her.

Every project, every approval, every tiny gap in the process. It all circled back the same drain to Lisa. And here's where I found the real problem to be.

She hadn't built a business. She'd built a dependency. Tools existed, but authority didn't.

And SOPs were written, but no one had the confidence, or the permission, to act on them. So what changed after we worked together? Well, we made one core shift, and this is something that everyone can take advantage of. Every process had to end with a decision boundary in one of three areas.

And this is what we put in. Who owns it? What does done look like? And what happens if it goes off script? And as we put this all in place, something strange happened. Her team didn't just know what to do.

They knew they could do it without her. And that freed her up from a lot of things. And the result of this, in less than a month, Lisa's hours that she spent dealing with problems dropped dramatically.

Her team stepped up, and she was finally able to find the space to think and not react. So that's our story for the lesson here. And what I want you to try this week, to solve this kind of a problem if it's in your business, is write down five tasks you personally touch every day and really don't like.

Ask yourself, do I actually need to own this, or am I just in the way trying to catch it? Wherever the answer is, I'm in the way, you found your next system to delegate or rebuild. And that's the kind of problem solving we'll be doing right here every week. Now, if do I actually need to own this, hits a nerve, that's good.

It means you're seeing the bottleneck clearly, and clarity is the start of progress. Now, if you want to know where your business actually stands and which problems to fix next, I have something called the Scaling Breakthrough Scorecard, and you can see the link down in the show notes. It's quick, free, and it's been very good to predict what a company needs to fix in order to start growing and scaling.

Now, as a recap, this podcast started because business owners needed a space to tell the truth. I'm returning to that with the same spirit, just a tighter focus. We're going to be looking at real problems, real business, real talk every Friday.

Until next time, build it smart, run it clean, and stay aligned.

That's it for this episode. I hope you picked up some valuable insights and maybe even sparked a few new ideas.

If you want to keep the conversation going, or maybe even explore partnerships, don't hesitate to reach out. And hey, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who needs to hear it. The steps you take today could be the start of something big tomorrow.

For The Budding Entrepreneur, I wish you the best in your health, your wealth, your business, your family, everything about you. Take care, and we'll see you back here next week.