The science of scaling shows why exponential growth requires a different business model, not simply more leads, effort, or activity. Blake Erickson explains that founders must simplify operations, give the right people ownership of meaningful results, build systems for the future, and eliminate competing priorities that keep the company dependent on them.
In this episode of The COO Solution Podcast, host Derek Fredrickson sits down with Blake Erickson, co-founder of Scaling.com and co-author of The Science of Scaling, to examine what it really takes to create exponential business growth.
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About This Episode
Blake challenges one of the most common beliefs about business growth: that more leads, more effort, and more hustle are the answer.
He explains why growth and scale are not the same and why businesses seeking exponential growth have to think, operate, and build differently. Rather than simply doing more of what already works, true scale requires a different model, the right people, simple systems, clear ownership, and a willingness to rethink how the business operates.
Derek and Blake explore why businesses plateau even when demand is there, why adding more leads can sometimes make things worse, and how founders can reverse engineer their business from the result they want. They also discuss leadership, accountability, hiring, systems, founder mindset, and the importance of saying no to what keeps a business from becoming truly world-class.
Whether you are trying to grow your business, break through a revenue ceiling, or build a company that can scale without everything depending on you, this episode offers a practical look at what it really takes to create exponential growth.
In This Episode
[03:20] Why More Leads and More Hustle Won’t Create Scale
Why doing more of what you already do may create growth but will not necessarily create exponential scale.
[05:25] The Difference Between Growth and Scale
Blake explains why scale requires businesses to reconsider their current model, not simply do more.
[06:03] What Scale Won’t Tolerate
Why mediocre teams, complex systems, and weak leadership become major obstacles when you are trying to scale.
[08:46] Blake’s PhD in People
How recruiting, leading, and training more than 1,200 people shaped Blake’s approach to leadership and hiring.
[11:47] Building for the Future, Not Just Today
Why Scaling.com built its team, systems, and processes around where the company wanted to go.
[15:00] Do You Want More Leads or More Revenue?
Why owners need to focus on the end result instead of metrics that do not directly create the outcome they want.
[16:18] Going From One-to-One to One-to-Many
How the right partnership or distribution model can create exponential growth without the same ongoing effort.
[18:30] One Person, One Result
Why every person on a team should have clear ownership and accountability for a specific result.
[21:07] The Founder You Are Today Won’t Get You to Your Goal
How ambitious goals expose the weaknesses founders must address and why humility is necessary for transformation.
[24:07] The Hidden Things Keeping You From Scaling
Why control, security, comfort, and other competing priorities can quietly work against scaling.
[26:15] Why Systems Create Freedom
Why structure, systems, processes, and accountability are necessary inputs for creating freedom and scale.
[27:53] Why Saying No Is a Scaling Strategy
Why doing too many things can keep a business from becoming world-class and why extreme focus matters.
Why This Matters
Many business owners believe the answer to growth is doing more: more leads, more activity, more people, and more opportunities. But exponential scale requires a different approach.
This episode explores why businesses need to simplify, focus on the right outcomes, build the right team, and create systems that support the future rather than constantly fixing the past.
This Episode Will Help You
- Understand the difference between growth and scale.
- Identify whether you are measuring the right outcomes.
- Build systems and processes for the future.
- Create clear ownership and accountability across your team.
- Hire people who can own results rather than simply follow instructions.
- Recognize the mindset shifts required to scale.
- Create greater focus by saying no to what does not move the business forward.
Action Steps for Listeners
- Define the outcome you want before deciding what actions to take.
- Evaluate whether your current systems can support the level of growth you want.
- Make sure every team member clearly owns a result.
- Determine whether you are measuring activity or the actual outcome that matters.
- Identify where you are still operating as the bottleneck in your business.
- Ask what you need to stop doing in order to focus on what matters most.
- Build your team and systems for where you are going, not just where you are today.
Resources & Links
Questions We’re Asked About the Science of Scaling
What is the difference between business growth and business scaling?
Growth is typically linear and comes from doing more of what already works. Scaling requires a model that can produce a much larger result through focus, simple systems, clear ownership, and the right team.
Why can adding more leads make a business harder to scale?
More leads can increase operational strain when the offer, delivery model, systems, and team are not ready. Blake recommends starting with the desired result and reverse engineering the model needed to achieve it.
How do systems create more freedom for founders?
Clear systems reduce dependence on the founder, define how work gets done, and allow team members to own outcomes. That structure gives founders more room to lead strategically.
What does one person, one result mean?
Each team member should have clear responsibility for a meaningful outcome. Ownership becomes weaker when several people share accountability or when a role is measured only by activity.
Why is saying no an important scaling strategy?
Saying no protects the focus needed to become world-class at solving a specific problem for a specific audience. Too many competing priorities create complexity and dilute results.
New episodes drop soon. Subscribe to The COO Solution Podcast so you do not miss one. Connect with The COO Solution on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a founder who is ready to stop chasing incremental growth and start building a business designed to scale.
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Full Transcript
[00:00] Derek Fredrickson: I’m really excited to welcome today’s guest Blake Erickson to The COO Solution podcast. Blake is the co-founder of scaling.com and co-author of the New York Times bestselling book The Science of Scaling written with Dr. Benjamin Hardy with a foreword by Tony Robbins. In its first eight months, scaling.com went from zero to $10 million in annual revenue built on the same playbook their company uses with the 500-plus companies they advise, ranging from $500,000 to $10 billion in annual revenue. And over the last five years, Blake has recruited, led and trained more than 1,200 people. He started his career in door to door sales in his early 20s, eventually leading teams that generated over 30 million in revenue before building wealth through real estate and sales organizations.
[00:50] Derek Fredrickson: And today he works with entrepreneurs who are serious about building something that grows fast, runs well and lasts on a timeline most people think is not realistic. And what I love about Blake’s framework is that it goes directly against the conventional wisdom that says more leads and more hustle create growth. He challenges that assumption at its root and replaces it with something more durable. Systems, leadership and operational clarity that allow a business to scale without the founder at the center. And we are talking about why businesses plateau even when demand is there and what it actually takes to scale 10X in three years or less. Let’s get into it. Hi, I’m Derek Fredrickson. Welcome to The COO Solution podcast, the show for business owners and visionary leaders who want to scale with clarity, confidence and the right Support.
[01:43] Derek Fredrickson: For over 16 years, I’ve been in the trenches as a fractional COO, or Chief Operating Officer, helping entrepreneurs align their teams, streamline operations and remove bottlenecks that slow growth. I understand the challenges. Feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, or uncertain about how to scale without burning out. I’ve helped business owners move from chaos to clarity, creating businesses that run smoothly and grow and scale. Each week I’ll bring you real world insights, proven strategies and practical solutions to help you step into your highest role as a leader. Whether it’s optimizing your team, strengthening accountability, or building the right systems for growth, this podcast is here to support you in scaling smarter. So if you’re ready to create a business that thrives without requiring more of you, let’s get started.
[02:30] Derek Fredrickson: Hey everybody, it’s Derek Fredrickson here from The COO Solution and The COO Solution podcast and very excited to have our guest, Blake Erickson from scaling.com with us today. Blake, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you.
[02:42] Blake Erickson: Thank you. Fired up, man. Fired up to be on The COO Solution.
[02:47] Derek Fredrickson: I am really looking forward to this conversation. As I was sharing with Blake earlier, we have a lot in common, not only in the message of what we’re going to share today, but our audiences are very similar. You serve entrepreneurs in scaling, we serve entrepreneurs in how to get there in terms of the COO solution and operational capacity. So we’re going to dive into a couple of things today. Talk about how to scale your framework for scaling. The idea that 10X is easier than 2X, I want to dive into that a bit. I love that some of our clients that are part of the scaling.com community have been drinking the Kool-Aid, as I say that 10X is easier than 2X. So we’re going to get into that.
[03:20] Derek Fredrickson: But I want to start off with something, Blake, that I think is really a bit challenging in terms of what people traditionally think about when it comes to growing and scaling a business is that, you know, you kind of challenge the idea that usually people think that it’s more leads and more hustle that actually creates the growth. And founders usually believe that.
[03:37] Blake Erickson: Right.
[03:37] Derek Fredrickson: It’s more effort and more opportunities that’s going to get me to where I want to go. But what’s the moment that cracks? Why is it not about growth and leads, and why is it about some of these other things we’re going to dive into today? That actually is The Science of Scaling?
[03:49] Blake Erickson: I would say, Derek, because it’s all incremental. And that’s why, meaning we spend so much of our time doing things, adding more to things that are barely even working or creating very, very small improvements, upgrades, or results. And so when you go to more of what you’re already doing, that does work if you what we call growth, and growth is linear. It’s 10, 15, 20% annual growth, which we don’t care about. We just want to create exponential scale. And if you truly want to optimize for that, it has to be different. More won’t get you to 200% growth, 300% growth this year. It truly has to be different. That’s the reason why we just did a national research study that said 36% of the average owner’s time is spent on things that actually move the needle in their business.
[04:32] Derek Fredrickson: 36.
[04:33] Blake Erickson: And so 64% of the time, we truly are just in maintenance mode or working on things that truly won’t create much of an impact to our business. And so the game that we have to begin playing is how do we actually do things that create a meaningful difference, a meaningful outcome, and most of the time it’s. It’s things that you actually are not currently doing.
[04:51] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, I mean, it’s the adage of, you know, working on the business versus working in it. So basically a third of the time is spent working on the business, and the other two thirds is working in it. In terms of just like the stuff that happens, that’s not the lever. It’s not the thing that’s going to get them.
[05:05] Blake Erickson: You got it.
[05:06] Derek Fredrickson: The exponential growth in your experience, in your lane, what’s the real difference between growth and scale? Like, if we talk about it in terms of, you know, our audience, our business owners that are looking to grow in scale, and some are in growth mode, presumably, and some are in scale mode, is there like a tipping point? Is there like a categorization that you would put different businesses depending upon stage revenue, team complexity, whatever.
[05:25] Blake Erickson: I would say it comes down to two things. The difference between growth and scale. One is what you’re optimizing for the goal that you’re going for, and then two, the level at which you tolerate things. So scale, in our opinion, is something so big soon that, that you actually don’t know how to reach. And so it might be 2X, 3X this year, 10X in three years or less. It’s something that truly forces you to reconsider your current model. Growth is: I already know the path. I can really literally not change anything and just lean in and do what I’m already doing or just do a little bit more of it. So that is the distinction. What I have found is with growth, you can tolerate a whole lot of things. You can grow having a complex system.
[06:03] Blake Erickson: You can grow with having team members that aren’t very good. You can grow with having a mediocre leadership team. None of that stuff flies when you’re going for scale. You truly have to have a simple system. You truly have to have the best team. You truly have to have the right strategy. You have to be focused. And that’s the hardest thing for entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, can they do all those things? And if they can, that’s what creates scale.
[06:26] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. Okay. I love that we are definitely talking the same language. I often say, listen, you can’t scale complexity, but you can scale simplicity. And I was just doing a podcast earlier, I was talking to somebody where I use this analogy of Bob the business owner. Bob is not one of our clients, but Bob the business owner. Let’s say he runs like a financial services Company, right. Doing, let’s say 5 million a year, like wealth management investments under retirement planning, et cetera. And when everything goes through, Bob, client onboarding, the delivery, the marketing. How do we onboard a client? Ask Bob. How do we do that? Marketing workshop where we get leads. Ask Bob. How do we close those leads into paying clients and customers? Ask Bob. What’s the referral system we have in place? Ask Bob. And so you’re right.
[07:02] Derek Fredrickson: I think when you’re in a growth mode, you can funnel things through Bob to an extent, but it’s going to start to feel like complex, like it’s going to hit that ceiling. And then if you really want to scale, this is what I love. A little bit of the 10X is easier than 2X PlayBook, which is like it’s going to push your mindset, it’s going to stretch what you’re really focusing on. So take us a little bit. Well, actually, I want to step back before we get going into this path. I’m really interested in your backstory. We’ll talk about scaling.com in a moment. But how did you get into this world? I often ask people, like, why this for Blake and why now? Like, what brought you to this field? What brought you to this lane?
[07:32] Derek Fredrickson: And what about this kind of science to scaling Mindset, if you will, is what kind of lights you up at the end of the day?
[07:38] Blake Erickson: Yeah, great question. Brief overview. In 2016, I decided to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So I was this 18 year old kid that had no knowledge about just about everything. I had this incredible experience where I lived in Peru for two years. And I had one objective, really just to like serve people. And we want as many people to learn and accept our message. And so over the next two years, I learned how to help as many individuals as possible accomplish the objective. And that led me to the opportunity to lead 200 different missionaries and watch growth grow essentially scale exponentially. And so at 18, 19, 20 years old, I had this experience of scaling something that was so meaningful, so impactful, and when I finished, I just was like, how do I do this in the world?
[08:23] Blake Erickson: I want to do this for the rest of my life. How can I go take what I learned and go apply it in the business world? And so I knew entrepreneurship was the path. So I came home, started a window washing company, a Christmas light hanging business, did a food truck. So I started dabbling in these different businesses, which was so fun, but it wasn’t very meaningful. Then I built a door to door sales organization for five years where I got a PhD in people and I just fell in love with PhD in people.
[08:46] Derek Fredrickson: Oh my gosh. Wow. I love that.
[08:48] Blake Erickson: I learned everything you should and shouldn’t do about managing and leading people and hiring the right people and hiring the wrong people. So I worked with over 1,200 individuals recruited, managed, and trained 1,200 individuals in a four year time period. And so I had this exponential learning experience that I realized two things. One, business is a people game and if you get the right people, you can go do miracles. And two, I want to go scale organizations and people. And so my business had gotten to a point where it’s pretty self sustaining without me. And I’d also gotten pretty complacent because I was really excited about where we at and we started to stagnate and it made me reconsider. Is this the game I actually like, want to play long term?
[09:30] Blake Erickson: Because of that, the idea was born of what if we could create an organization that could go impact business employees, leadership, founders and then also the people they serve. If you want to impact the world, I believe the number one vehicle to do so is through business because it has this domino effect. And so from there I ended up calling Dr. Benjamin Hardy, which we had met a couple years previous. And I just said, hey, I want to go flood the world with your work. I just read 10X isn’t 2X and I want to go help businesses scale. I want the economy to benefit from this. I want employees, families benefit from this. I want clients to benefit from this. Because as everything scales, everything improves. As you scale, everything transforms.
[10:08] Blake Erickson: The greatest transformation I’ve had in my life is when I’m trying to scale something because it forces the best out of me. So that was where the idea was born. Ben said, I’m interested. Dr. Hardy said, I’m interested. Six months of convincing him to do it, he finally said yes in August of 2024. We then wrote the Science of Scaling. July 28th of 2025 it came out. We launched scaling.com right before that. And so our other premise, Derek, was when you write book, only like 2 to 3% of people actually do something about it. We were so unsatisfied with that and we said we want to genuinely normalize scale and we know a book won’t actually make that the majority be able to do so.
[10:46] Blake Erickson: And so we created scaling.com to be able to take the minority to the majority of if you do this, we will help you apply to implement it. We will get you the results you need. That’s kind of where the idea was born. And we just want to normalize, scale and impact as many lives as possible throughout.
[11:00] Derek Fredrickson: That’s brilliant, man. I have to say, I love the story. I love the trajectory. Right. I think in entrepreneurship, nothing is ever linear, right? So you’re gonna have some high, some lows, and get to that point of like, okay, now I’m in my sweet spot. Now I’m in my zone and being able to have the gusto to how do I do this in a bigger way?
[11:16] Blake Erickson: Who.
[11:16] Derek Fredrickson: Not how, who is the person that can help me, you know, get in that vehicle in that way. So kudos to you for kind of following your. Your heart and your mission and living that dream in a bigger way to serve. You know, obviously now you got hundreds and hundreds of companies that you guys work with. So thank you for that. I love hearing the story.
[11:30] Blake Erickson: Been the biggest blessing of my life, my friend.
[11:33] Derek Fredrickson: That’s wonderful. I have a question for you. So as you and Ben were building scaling.com, did you apply the principles of how to scale a company to your own company that you then now apply to the companies that are working with you? Tell us a little bit about that.
[11:47] Blake Erickson: From the very first conversation. From the very first conversation. And so scaling.com is a laboratory for two reasons. One, it’s us scaling.com every single day. And so we’re literally going through all the same things that all the companies that we advise, which is so fun. And additionally, we have now 550 companies that we advise that they are applying this thinking and we’re seeing if there, where there’s gaps, etc. Fill in those gaps. Yeah, it’s a daily pursuit. From the beginning, our impossible that we quantified was in order to scale this mission to the degree we want to get our business to $120 million annual revenue business within three years. And so we built a model and offering that could actually sustain and deliver at that scale.
[12:28] Blake Erickson: From the very beginning, when went to hire individuals, one of the first things that we did is we actually hired a CEO before we even had revenue, because we want to apply who, not how, as much as possible, and get somebody in that could actually get us that level. And that’s been at that level. And then every single hire that’s come in, we’ve asked, oh, we don’t need someone to fill the gap at $1,000,000 or $5,000,000 or $10,000,000. Can this person get us to 120. When we build systems, processes, etc. We build to sustain. We think we’re going to need 5,000 members at that level. And so every process is built from that frame. And so it’s avoided a lot of mistakes and a lot of cleanup.
[13:04] Blake Erickson: Where most businesses, you build a system, process, or talent that gets you to here and then you have to do it, and then it gets you to here, and then you have to redo it. Nothing’s going to slow you down more than that.
[13:12] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, it’s so true. When we work with clients, we first talk about like, what’s the North Star? What’s the Y? Okay, you have 2X, 10X exit, sell, whatever it is. Why? Why do you want to do it? And some of it is like, I want to exit, I want to 10X, I want a bigger mission. You’ve got that. Clearly, Ben’s got that. Some people say, I just don’t want to work so darn hard in the business anymore. Right. But you look at that North Star, okay, that’s the why then, like, what does it look like?
[13:34] Derek Fredrickson: And I love the scientific approach that you guys use to break it down and be like, in terms of whether it’s revenue and then the metrics and the numbers and the systems and the processes, but not building them for today and not building them for 2X or next year, it’s like we’re starting with the end in mind and then reverse engineer the things that actually need to happen. So I love this. Two kids in the same school and the way that we’re thinking about this. So it’s fantastic.
[13:58] Blake Erickson: I love that.
[13:59] Derek Fredrickson: I want to go back to what we touched on earlier around marketing and leads. And again, one of the things that business owners, I believe when we speak to companies that we work with, I always say we’re going to start with marketing because I believe marketing is the driver. Without leads, what else matters, Right? So as I understand it, you guys have thought that adding more leads often makes things worse, right? So what are some of the things for business owners that are listening? What are some of the things? Like, okay, they know that marketing is important whether you’re doing online, offline, pay per click, joint ventures, whatever it might be. If you’re xing amount of your lead gen and getting more into the funnel.
[14:33] Derek Fredrickson: What are some of the things that business owners need to think about operationally that are going to need to be in place to support that? Because what sometimes I’ve experienced is business owners are like, I want growth, I want scale and they have the foot in the gas, and the same time they put the foot on the brake because subconsciously they’re like. But my back end is not poised to support that type of operation. So talk to me a little bit about that in terms of just like, the lead aspect.
[14:53] Blake Erickson: Man, there’s a lot there. So good.
[14:55] Derek Fredrickson: I know I. I tend to get a little excited and emotive around some of these things, so.
[15:00] Blake Erickson: So one of the things I consider, as you consider marketing. Don’t leave your model out of the conversation. Don’t leave your offer out of conversation. Meaning you may be getting a ton of leads for a product that you could sell for a lot more money. Do you want more leads or do you actually want more revenue? And oftentimes we’re measuring the wrong thing. It’s like, let’s just go get a ton of leads. Or my marketing team will oftentimes tell me our cost per interview. So good. I don’t care about the cost per review. How many people did we enroll? Right. So I’m always reverse engineering from the end result, and I want to know the most effective possible way to get the most of the end result. I don’t really care about anything else leading up to it.
[15:37] Blake Erickson: They’re good things to help us identify and measure if things are working. But I’m okay having 10 interviews a day instead of a hundred. If that converts 8 rather than 100, converts 5. Right. And so measure what matters and reverse engineer what matters. Don’t get caught up in the leading metrics. Just care about the end result. Secondly, look at your offer. Oftentimes, the model that you currently have could be the biggest lever to pull to actually create a significant upswing in marketing. Adjusting the messaging, adjusting the positioning, adding something in, taking something out, making it more refined, making it more clear, oftentimes could move the needle significantly more than just having a better funnel or really nice ad.
[16:17] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah.
[16:18] Blake Erickson: And then thirdly, from a distribution standpoint that I’d consider is how can I break away from selling one to one, from one to many? That’s the most exponential thing that you can consider as an owner is how do I go from, okay, knocking a door, making a phone call, whatever it might be, to this partnership brings in this person, or if I get involved in this system, I get this. Or let me give you a small example. We have an individual in our in scaling.com that has a popcorn company, and he was at $2.2 million of revenue. He wants to go to 89 million in the next three years. All he did one thing that’s going to get him to $89 million of revenue. He went and got a partnership with the highest distributor in the United States.
[16:57] Blake Erickson: And that one distributor is going to get him in 26,000 stores. And so through that one partnership, no ongoing effort needed on his end, that one partnership that’s going to distribute to hundreds of thousands and millions of people every single day, every single week. Not needed. Right. And so those are the exponential ways, when you begin thinking about marketing that come to vision that most people don’t ever consider because they’re so worried about figuring out how they get one now and one later.
[17:22] Derek Fredrickson: It’s the growth thinking versus the scale thinking. Right. Just the incremental. I’ll get 10%. If I only had, you know, 10 leads a week, as opposed to seven leads a week, then I’d get there. And then I get 10 leads a week. Now I need 14 leads a week. That kind of baby step mentality. I mean, in that example, I mean, that’s not even 10X, that’s like 40 somethingx. So you guys have already kind of proved yourself there. That’s amazing. I want to take that question a step further because you’re talking a lot about metrics and looking at numbers and tracking and dial things in. And you know, I always say the numbers, as you said, you know, what you measure matters and I say what you focus on. Like, the numbers don’t lie, right? What you focus on, you attract.
[17:54] Derek Fredrickson: And if you’re looking at the numbers that are working great, how do we do more of that? But also, if the numbers aren’t great, how do we fix, change, update, remove, improve that? Talk to me a little bit, if you don’t mind. Whether it’s in the lessons that you share with your clients or in your scaling.com business operating model. Talk to me. I always think metrics, accountability go hand in hand, right? So we’re tracking metrics, but we’re also looking at who owns the number. So how does that exist for, like, what’s your thought on that in terms of like, it’s metrics, but it’s also not just metrics. For the sake of living on a spreadsheet, it’s like, what are we doing about the metrics and what are we tracking and what are we changing about them? How does that work for you at Scaling.com?
[18:30] Blake Erickson: Yeah, I like it. One of the things you talked about, as far as accountability goes, Peter Thiel talked. When Peter Thiel was at PayPal. He said, if I went up to anybody in the company that worked there and I asked them what they did, if they told me it was more than one thing that they owned, then we have a bad system in place. Foundationally, I would just say make sure every single person on your team owns one thing and they truly own it. If there’s no full sense of ownership, anything else that you create after that is just not going to work. And so to your point of accountability, make sure that there’s full ownership of it. Additionally, make sure that they own the result that matters, rather than the results that are just contributing factors to what actually matters.
[19:09] Blake Erickson: And then secondly, to your point earlier, the who should bring the how. A lot of these things are fixed there. If you just have the right who in the right seat. Yeah, because they bring the process, they bring the system, they bring the accountability. They have experience owning that result, and then they also bring the strategy. Most times as owners or executives, we hire people and try to tell them what to do, when in reality that means that you’ve hired probably the wrong person. And if I’m just attacking the root to your question, it would be get the right person that can come in and tell you how to do it that full. And all you need to do is let him fully own the result and give him the autonomy to do so.
[19:45] Derek Fredrickson: Full ownership, accountability is everything. I just, I love the way that you’re talking because otherwise I feel like we’re just tracking numbers for tracking numbers. But at the end of the day, if nobody owns that particular number and they’re not coming to the conversation with the strategy or the tactics of what’s going to happen. Be like, damn, leads are down. Okay, I’ll have to take a look and see what that needs to be, you know, changed like, well, a week later. We just lost two weeks of bad lead gen. That’s not a scale mentality, if you will.
[20:08] Blake Erickson: And I would try to align their incentives and their pay as much as I possibly could only to that result. I don’t care about your cost per interview. You don’t get paid according to that. You just get paid upon the people that come in at the end of the day. Right. So that’s all I care about. That’s all you should care about.
[20:23] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. Okay. I want to shift gears a little bit. Let’s just hypothetically, company comes to you know, let’s say they’re doing 5 million. We use Bob the financial planner as an example. He wants a 10X in 3 years or less starts to drink, the Kool-Aid starts to get bought in and then there’s going to be blocks. And they’re mostly, I would imagine in the beginning, mindset blocks. Yes, you’re going to get to the operational, the strategies and everything else. But mindset blocks of like, is this really possible? How is this going to work? But also like, what their part is, like, who is the new Bob that needs to be in place of the business? As the CEO of a 10X company versus a $50 million company versus a 5 million dollar company.
[20:58] Derek Fredrickson: From your experience, what are those mindset shifts that you guys need to help them break through to get into that new way of thinking about how to scale?
[21:07] Blake Erickson: Yeah, it’s beautiful. Question. So we talk about psychologically, you have to let the future shape the present. So that’s why we always start with the goal, because the goal should shape everything that you do. And so I remember even when I started scaling.com, i said, okay, the person I am today versus the goal that we have is not the person that’s going to get us there. So that goal shaped me and said, I need to level up in this area, this area. Let it do the same thing for you and just recognize that the person you are today won’t get you to the goal and transformation must happen to get there. And that humility is required.
[21:39] Blake Erickson: A prideful founder is going to have a really hard time scaling actually, because there’s a lot of truths that you’re going to have to face majority of the time are things that are your fault or your weaknesses that you’re going to have to get out of the way or overcome in order to get there. Advice one is let it shape you. Number two, recognize who you currently are won’t get you there. Three, seek as much humility as possible. And four, look to expose yourself. So the goal will oftentimes expose you. It’ll show you everything that you are and everything that you’re not. So for example, for me building this, it exposed that I was not a very good systems or processes person. We had to change that.
[22:18] Blake Erickson: It exposed that I was good at leadership and hiring, but maybe I wasn’t really good at onboarding. Right. And so let the goal expose you and seek to take those lessons as soon as you possibly can and make the adjustments to them. I hope that answers your goal. But the who you are at your revenue today, if you’re at 5 million bob, the person you are at 50 will be unrecognizable because of the way that it’s going to shape you.
[22:40] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, I love that I talk about this with the. I call it the operator to owner.
[22:44] Blake Erickson: Yeah.
[22:45] Derek Fredrickson: Shift. And it’s a mindset shift. Right. I mean, in the beginning, Bob, like I said, Bob did everything. And it also, from a significance point of view. We all crave significance. It fed Bob’s significance. Right. He was the point person for everything. He liked to be needed by the clients. He liked to be needed by the team. We needed to be in those conversations. I need to be in the room. Otherwise, the clients, how can they not get value if Bob’s in the room? That’s not scalable. And so when you shift that mindset, or Bob shifts that mindset and starts to see a different way, where Bob is really now truly the owner, where there’s 10 conversations that are happening, not just one, and you’ve got mini Bobs or Bob Associates or whatever that might be the scalable model to get there.
[23:22] Derek Fredrickson: I think it’s a huge, profound moment when that starts to kind of cascade. It starts to, like, I call it these popcorn moments. And they start to see things in a different way. And then I think it fuels. I would love to get your perspective on this when that starts to happen and Bob starts to see a little bit of, like, a new way, at least from my perspective. When we work clients on the. But again, we do the operations stuff, two things happen. They get their confidence back, so they feel more excited because they’re back in their mojo. They’re back being the rainmaker. They’re back into, like, the passion of what they started this business for.
[23:51] Derek Fredrickson: But then they also have clarity now they can see a bigger picture of what they want to do, and they start to make bigger decisions, bolder bets. They take bigger actions. Like, talk to me. When you guys start to see that shift with some of your clients, you know, what does that look like? I mean, I’m sure you guys are feeling like it’s amazing, but what happens when you see that firsthand with,.
[24:07] Blake Erickson: Like, Bob, you literally begin seeing it in their numbers. I’m not kidding. You literally can look at their numbers and say, okay, I’ve seen the shift that has happened because oftentimes a lot of those, I would call them competing agendas. So Bob wants control. And until Bob gets rid of, like, that competing agenda, which is competing with scale, he’s just not going to scale because it creates complexity. You begin just seeing everything get simplified, everything get refined from scale. So as you Were talking, what came to mind is in the Bible it talks about no man can serve two masters and the first thing that’s going to happen when you go for scale is you are going to get exposed to all the other masters you’re serving, meaning control.
[24:45] Blake Erickson: It could be looking good, it could be scarcity, like security I don’t want to spend in order to grow. Could be lifestyle, like there’s 100 different masters that we serve. And when you truly go for scale, if you’re fully committed to it, those things will get exposed and you have to clear them out. It’d be like two people driving a car. Just, it does not work. You can’t go to the destination you want. And so those things must be cleared out in order to scale. As soon as you do, man, I’m telling you it in their numbers and they begin to scale and the ones that don’t, they’re lying, but really they’re lying to themselves and everybody else and they still are grappling, trying to multiple masters at once.
[25:21] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, I love that. And they kind of push it down, you know, like it’s safe to be default Bob at 5 million. Right. I know it’s comfortable, it’s in my zone. You know, I don’t want to step outside my comfort zone. But it sounds like there’s a little bit of like a snowball effect. The numbers feed the mindset. The mindset feed the numbers. And when that starts to cascade, it’s like then that ship is sailing, like it’s on its way.
[25:40] Blake Erickson: Yeah.
[25:40] Derek Fredrickson: So I believe that with some business owners, they don’t jump out of bed in the morning and say like I want structure, I want systems, I want process, I want accountability, I want a metrics driven organization. Because they feel to some extent it feels like a box, right? The word structure, system, process, it feels like it’s a box. It feels like it’s stifling. It’s I want freedom, I want growth, I want scale, I want, you know, 10X, I want vision. How do you bridge the gap from the vision and the growth and the opportunity to the nuts and bolts, things that actually have to be in place, the structure, systems and process. Like how do you get a business owner to see and believe that actually is the key to scale.
[26:15] Derek Fredrickson: It’s not just revenue streams and different markets and product differentiation and everything else. I often say it’s the how you’re doing of what you’re doing that’s the key to scale. What’s your thought on that I’m not putting on the spot. You can disagree. You could agree, or what’s your feeling?
[26:29] Blake Erickson: I fully agree. I fully agree. I believe they have to be more committed to scale than they are to their comfort or to their own desires. I’m sure there’s things that happen in my business that’s like, I, you know, I wish I didn’t have that accountability or something like that, but I’m. I’m way more committed to the company’s success than I am to my feelings. And so I always have to be gut checking myself and say, am I feeling this way because it’s. It’s about me?
[26:51] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. Or.
[26:52] Blake Erickson: And I’m putting the company second. So as long as you’re putting the success of the company first, a lot of those things go by the wayside because you know that they’re just a necessary input to go create the output that you’re optimizing for. And so I’m fully lined with it.
[27:04] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah. It’s got to put the ego to the side.
[27:06] Blake Erickson: Yeah.
[27:06] Derek Fredrickson: I mean, I say this, that sometimes. Listen, if you, as Bob, the business owner, were to see how you’re showing up in the business like other team members and valuing the return on investment for the activities that you’re spending your time, energy, and effort on, and looking at that through the filter of looking at other members of the team, be like, is that really the best use of how you’re doing what you’re doing? And are there structures or systems or perhaps processes or people that could allow that to be in a more efficient and more effective way? So good. Wonderful. Before we talk a little bit more about scaling.com and kind of wrap things up, this has been an amazing conversation, Blake. Thank you. I feel like we keep going for hours.
[27:38] Derek Fredrickson: We’re like two peas in the same pot in the way that we’re thinking. Is there anything for our audience that we didn’t talk about? Something that you felt like, well, I wanted to share this or something else that’s just like a gem or nugget that would be really helpful for audience. Before we kind of wrap things up,.
[27:53] Blake Erickson: Here’s a thought that’s been on my mind recently. Napoleon once said, he said, the way you can spot a novice is by seeing someone that does too many things. And that’s really powerful. Because what we all try to do is we try to do too many things. We try to solve multiple problems, serve multiple different types of people. I’ve had seven businesses at one time because I just thought I could scale them all. And that’s literally the definition of a novice. And so the thing I’d want to leave with you is if you’re listening to this, the greatest thing you could do to serve yourself, your future self in your company is actually being so rigorous about the things that you’re saying yes to. And begin saying no to 99% of the things that are happening in your life and in your business.
[28:39] Blake Erickson: Because that’s going to create extreme focus by solving a problem that’s really exponential, serving a really specific type of person. And that will enable you to actually become world-class at the thing you’re doing. And the reason why there’s so many companies out there is because there’s a lot of really mediocre good companies and there’s very few world-class companies. And the ones that are world-class, if you look at them, they were just the most rigorous ones on what they choose to focus on and also what they choose not to focus on. And so I wanted to part you with that. Go be world-class. And in order to do so, start saying no to 99% of things that are incremental or good when the good’s actually keeping you from world-class. Identify that. Go be.
[29:20] Blake Erickson: Go be the go to in your thing. Go be the go to. That solves your problem.
[29:24] Derek Fredrickson: Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s gold. Yeah. I mean, say no better, right? You’re gonna get better when you say no at more things. And that’s again contrarian to popular belief because it’s like, I gotta be doing more. I gotta be busy. I gotta be feeling significant with all these balls in the air. Like no, man, just do the one thing and do it exceptionally well. And that how you can 10X. That’s amazing. I love that. If people are interested about the book science of scaling with you and Dr. Ben Hardy and scaling.com I mean your community again, we’ve got a couple clients from your group that are working with us. It’s like they’re, they’re just, they’re on the train to 10X. I love it. They just, when we speak with them, they’re fired up. They’re, they’ve, like I said, they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid.
[30:00] Derek Fredrickson: They’re in it. Where can people find more about the book? And then where can more people find.
[30:04] Blake Erickson: Out about scaling.com so go to scaling.com/free-download and I’ll have Derek post as well. And that’s the free audiobook for The Science of Scaling, we don’t care if you buy it. We literally just want you to listen to it and read it. So that is the domain, that’s the URL to go for it. I promise you, I promise you if you just invest, it’s four. It’s a four hour listen. That four hours could be the most exponential return on time that you have in the next 12 months. And so that’s my gift to you as far as scaling.com goes. Like I said, we are bridging the gap between this is an amazing content to the people that are like and I really want to make sure I apply it because 98% won’t even though they think that they will.
[30:47] Blake Erickson: And so if you want the implementation. Scaling.com is the world’s authority on business scaling. We are research and advisory firm so we are constantly researching and reverse engineering what creates exponential scale, not growth. What creates exponential scale. You have a one-on-one strategist that’s been certified in our framework that gets access to our proprietary knowledge research and they’re ex founders and so they’ve been in the game. They are the ones that are one-on-one and are going to work with you individually to make sure that this system’s implemented in your business. Additionally, we have group calls each month with Dr. Hardy and I and then we have an unbelievable community. Think about it. You have to be at least a million dollars annual revenue or more.
[31:26] Blake Erickson: It’s the top 1% of entrepreneurs in the entire world and everybody in there is going for 10X growth or greater. And so there’s a lot to learn not to extract from everybody in there. If you want a 10X, this is. There isn’t another place that exists that can help you do it.
[31:41] Derek Fredrickson: Scaling.com I want to throw in one last question because I’m just curious on a personal level, please, what is your favorite thing that you do at Scaling.com like on a given day, a given week? Like what lights you up when you go home and put your head in the pillow? I’m like, man, damn, today was a good day. Like what is that thing for you?
[31:56] Blake Erickson: It is, it is having the ability, platform and space to teach entrepreneurs about the framework work. And so I love speaking, I love going on podcasts and it’s not even because it hits my ego. I just love seeing psychology change in real time and people to like literally disrupt their thinking, have breakthroughs that I know they can go home and apply right then and see change tomorrow and see massive change over 6 to 12 months. And so that’s my area of passion.
[32:25] Derek Fredrickson: Man, I love it. I love it. Well, if you’re listening, check out scaling.com. Personally, I’ve read the book. I’ve listened to the audio of Science of Scaling. It’s amazing. It’s incredible. Congratulations to you, Blake and Dr. Ben Hardy, you know, and also the book he wrote with dan Sullivan, 10X Is Easier Than 2X and Who Not How. We’ll put all of those in the show notes. I think they’re all amazing. But definitely go out, check into scaling.com. It’s a great group. You guys are doing amazing things. Blake. I’m really enthused, excited, and inspired by what you guys have done in a short amount of time frame. I started my business two years ago. I’ve got my own kind of 10X plan as well. But I appreciate what you guys are up to. It’s, it’s making the world of entrepreneurship a better place. So. So thank you for what you’re doing.
[33:02] Blake Erickson: Thanks for having me, brother. Such an honor to be with you.
[33:05] Derek Fredrickson: Excellent. Thank you, Blake. Well, that’s a wrap. Thanks everybody for watching today’s episode on The COO Solution podcast. We’ll see you next time. And thanks again. Take care. And that’s a wrap on this episode of The COO Solution podcast. If you found today’s conversation valuable, I’d love it if you could subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who’s ready to get control of their business and scale it with a second in command that they trust to handle all the daily tasks and operations they don’t enjoy. And hey, maybe you’re wondering if now is the time to bring on a trusted fractional COO or Chief Operating officer to help your thriving business scale with clarity and confidence.
[33:43] Derek Fredrickson: If you’re tired of doing it alone, visit thecoosolution.com and take our free quiz to help determine if now is the right time to bring a fractional COO to help you scale in just 25 questions, you’ll get a personalized report that helps you decide if your business is ready for the game changing support of a part time fractional coo. Let’s find out together if it’s your next step. Thanks for tuning in. And until next time, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.
