Be 1% bigger and better every day

RCS Influencer Trent Cotney says scaling a business means taking a step back and looking inward.

Editor's note: The following is a transcript of a live interview with RCS Influencer Trent Cotney, partner of Adams and Reese. You can read the interview below, listen to podcast or watch the recording.

Alex Tolle: Hello, I'm Alex Tolle with RoofersCoffeeShop.com, and I'm back with another influencer response with Trent Cotney. So today we're talking about scaling your business. So our July question is: what steps can be taken to overcome growth plateaus and build the infrastructure needed to scale a business to the next level?

Trent Cotney: So this is a tough question. Obviously, I've had businesses, I had my own law firm, I had to figure out how to scale and grow. Typically, you do reach plateaus, right? You have periods of explosive growth where you can't catch up. You need more infrastructure, you need more admin, you need more technology, you need everything. And then you plateau off for a little bit. What always helped me to get to the next level was to take a step back.

And what I mean by that is, oftentimes if I kept hitting the wall and I couldn't figure out how to get to the next step, if I just thought big picture — you know, don't focus on the trees, don't focus on the forest, but fly above it all and kind of figure out how do I get to that next level, right? And when I did that, when I went through that analysis and internal process, I could always figure out a way to get to that next step.

And there's always 25 small steps that you have to take in order to get to that big step. So part of it is just breaking it down into task oriented missions that allow you to keep taking a step forward. The goal is to be 1% bigger and better every day. So that's how I did it. And I think it was successful in allowing me to scale and move forward. It involves a lot of looking inward. It really does. You've got to think about where you've come from, where can you go next.

The other thing I would say is: when the money's flowing, it's hard to see the cracks in your business. When the money stops, those cracks become, you know, and you can't avoid them. Right? So I think part of the key thing is making sure that you're shoring up your operations and you're not letting money slip away because you've got bad practices. So I would suggest those couple of things. I think they'd be useful.

Alex Tolle: Yeah, I like that. Not getting lost in the day to day, just so focused on the growth of the business, actually taking a step back and seeing what you can do next to keep that growth going. All right, well thank you as always Trent, we appreciate it.

Trent Cotney: Thank you.