Sustainable Scale: Growing Without Burnout - EP 052

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What if scaling your business didn’t have to come with stress, exhaustion, or burnout? 

After taking a summer break, I’m back and reflecting on what it really means to build a business that grows without draining you. In this episode, I share key lessons from my own journey that highlighted how essential business foundations are for long-term sustainability. Growth without burnout isn’t about doing more—it’s about doing what matters most. 

I walk you through practical ways to bring clarity, create supportive systems, and build capacity so your business can scale with ease. Together, we’ll explore how documenting processes, prioritizing well-being, and practicing strategic patience can help you avoid the trap of short-term wins that lead to long-term stress. This conversation is all about creating steady, sustainable growth that supports both profit and pleasure.

Episode Takeaways:

• Building foundations is key to sustainable growth.
• Short-term wins can lead to long-term chaos.
• Clarity helps in making better business decisions.
• Systems thinking allows for efficient task management.
• Capacity building prepares you for future challenges.
• Invest in your well-being to handle stress better.
• Every choice impacts your long-term sustainability.
• Document processes to create scalable systems.
• Strategic patience is essential for long-term success.
• Focus on foundational work alongside revenue-generating activities.

Resources I Mention:

• Youtube Channel Rachel Anzalone

Connect With Me:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @RachelAnzalone
• Facebook: Rachel.Anzalone
• LinkedIn: RachelAnzalone

Questions for Your Reflection:

What systems or processes can I document today to support sustainable growth? How can I prioritize my well-being while still moving my business forward?

Did this episode resonate with you? Share it with another visionary leader who needs to hear this message, and don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps other impact-driven entrepreneurs find their way to our community.

Remember: Your pleasure is your power. 💫

Ready to step into the pleasure revolution and transform how you do business? Let's explore how to maximize impact, profit, and pleasure in alignment with the new paradigm. Schedule a time to connect with me right here >>>

Episode Transcript

I don't know what's happening on your Instagram feed, but mine is just fully inundated with the latest and greatest, one trick that you must do, just promotion after promotion after promotion of people telling me what I should be doing with my marketing and my business.

And what's really fascinating is, you know, even with the background that I have and the experience that I have and the wisdom that I have about really how to grow a business in a way that's sustainable, it is so enticing to think like, one of these things maybe is like the missing piece. And if I just do this one thing, right.

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anzalone, and I'm so excited to be back with you after a little bit of a break this summer. We took off, gosh, almost eight weeks, I think, and during that time period, it was really nice to just slow down, enjoy the summer, not be in production mode, and we were able to get our YouTube channel launched, which is something I've been wanting to do for a long, long time.

And kind of realized that there was no way I was gonna get that done while simultaneously creating new episodes every week. So it was a nice little project to work on over the summer. And now it's up, it's there. And there's a bunch of videos there. We're releasing old episode videos in batches, including some really fantastic interviews.

Those will be dripping over the next four five months. You'll be able to watch old episodes on there as well as our new episodes getting released on there weekly. So go check out YouTube channel, under my name, Rachel Anzalone, and you'll see the Pleasure and Profits podcast on there. We'll share the link for that in the show notes for sure.

So I'm really excited to be back with you. It's been an interesting and exciting summer. One of the things that I did recently was host a workshop for a group of entrepreneurs that was all about integrating both long-term and short-term marketing strategies into your business and really how to determine which of those things should be your primary focus based on your unique situation and your individual constraints at this specific time.

So this workshop evolved out of numerous conversations that I've been having lately with entrepreneurs who are feeling overwhelmed, as so many of us are, by all of the information coming at us ⁓ about the sort of countless things that we could be doing. And these things are often framed as things that we should be doing to grow our businesses. And I totally get it.

Instagram is, I don't know what's happening on your Instagram feed, but mine is just fully inundated with the latest and greatest, the one trick that you must do, just promotion after promotion after promotion of people telling me what I should be doing with my marketing and my business.

What's really fascinating is, you know, even with the background that I have and the experience that I have and the wisdom that I have about really how to grow a business in a way that's sustainable, it is so enticing to think like, maybe there is, you know, one of these things maybe is like the missing piece. And if I just do this one thing, right. But so many of these pieces of advice are really focused on individual tools and tactics that you could use, and maybe they will have an impact.

But what I know to be true is that the secret to sustainable individual tactics or tools. It really is about what you do before you're ready to grow. Not whether you're using Reels or Carousel Post or whether you're selling micro offers or high ticket or whether you are using a particular piece of AI, that there seems to be 20 new ones every single day coming out.

I really believe that the secret to scaling without burnout centers around building foundations that make growth a natural and inevitable progression of your business and not something that you're chasing down or trying to finagle into existence on a wish and a prayer and probably not enough sleep or that there's some magic tool that's gonna appear that's gonna just make it all work suddenly. 

It's really about the core, the foundation, the systems, the processes, how you're setting yourself up for success to become an inevitable outcome of what you're doing.

So in this episode, we're gonna be exploring what it means to play the long game in your business. Things like, how do you build those solid foundations now that will support you as you grow? How do you prepare now so that when growth happens, it feels natural and easeful rather than overwhelming and chaotic?

Here's what I have observed watching entrepreneurs over the last decade. There is a huge difference between a business that looks successful and a business that is built for sustainable success. Businesses that look successful often have really impressive revenue numbers, big teams, fancy websites, lots of activity going on. But often when you look closer, they're sort of held together by sheer force and will of the founder. They often have built beautiful facades on very shaky foundations.

Whereas businesses that are built for sustainable success might look quieter from the outside, but they have something much more valuable. They have systems, they have structures, they have practices that can handle growth without requiring the founder to work exponentially harder. The difference comes down to this. Are you building for the short term or for the long term? Are you optimizing for what looks good now or what will serve you five years from now?

And I know how tempting it can be to say, well, I'm just going to do this for the short term, and I'll figure that out in the long term.

But the problem is that as momentum grows, you don't get more time, you get less time unless you've set up the systems to support you through that process. And so inevitably, you will find yourself getting busier and busier and busier. And then it starts to feel like it's an impossible task to slow down and go backwards and set up those foundational structures that really are key to the success of a sustainable business.

I have known over the years entrepreneurs who worked really hard and had an early success, some win in terms of their marketing, in terms of their sales, in terms of their offers or an opportunity. And I have seen some of those entrepreneurs with those big wins celebrate and step on the gas by hiring big team, by launching into the next thing and the next thing and the next, and suddenly getting lots of visibility and lots of traction. And it looks really, really impressive.

And I've seen entrepreneurs who've taken that big win and invest in the systems and the structure and the foundation of preparing themselves for what's gonna come next, preparing themselves for even more big wins in the future, getting really simple and really clear and really dialing in the one thing that they want to be excellent at.

I have seen this in the online business space. I have seen this in the restaurant industry. There are so many examples of people who have tried to scale too quickly before they had the systems in place. And what they end up with is a really, really big business that is chaotic, messy, has a bad reputation, it's something that is more intensive and taxing them in a physical and mental and emotional and financial way instead of something that was built thoughtfully, intentionally and carefully with growth in mind.

And what happens when you never slow down to create those systems and structures is that you never get to slow down. You just continually have to work harder and harder and harder. 

And I don't think if you're listening to this podcast that that is your desire and your goal is not to continue to work more and more and more, but to find better ways to leverage your business, to leverage your excellence in bigger and bigger ways while also creating a life that you love, that you enjoy, and that you're not just a slave to your business.

Okay, so let's talk about the three foundational qualities to sustainable scaling. These are not tactics. These are ways of building your business that create the conditions for easeful growth.

And they're qualities that I believe you should cultivate early on before you think you need them. I know how tempting it is, again, to say, I'll figure that stuff out later on. But what I've seen time and again is that it just gets more difficult later on. It doesn't get easier.

Quality number one is strategic clarity over opportunistic growth. Most entrepreneurs start building their business by saying yes to opportunities as they arise. But the entrepreneurs who scale sustainably develop crystal clear criteria for what they will and won't pursue. And they stick to those criteria even when tempting opportunities arise.

Now, this is not about being rigid or missing out on opportunities. It's about really understanding that every time you say yes to something that's misaligned, you then have to say no to something that would have been a better fit for you. And when you're building for the long term, those aligned opportunities are worth waiting for.

I personally have learned this lesson again and again. Sometimes we have to learn lessons many times and I'm so happy to share my mistakes with you so that you don't have to make them too. But I've learned this lesson again and again,  taking on clients that really just weren't a good fit. Sometimes I knew that even in the vetting process that they weren't a great fit, but there was something about it that seemed like, well, I should say yes to this right now. Like, I'm going to take this on just for a little while.

And that might have been for financial reasons. That might have been because of a relationship or something that I perceived as a potential opportunity down the road, thinking I'll take this sort of short-term difficulty or stress or challenge because I think there might be a long-term payoff to this. 

One, deep down inside, I knew that wasn't the case. I knew that I was saying yes to something that probably was not going to serve me in the long term. And ultimately, every time I have done that, it has ended up taking me more time, more energy, more effort, more stress, and prevented me from pursuing things that I really, really wanted or just prolonging sort of the inevitable, taking things that I could have and wanted to be working on and pushing them farther down the road because my time, my energy, you know, everything was sort of consumed by this ill-fitting opportunity, ill-fitting client, and it really pulled me away from my zone of genius multiple times, pulled me away from the things that I was really passionate and excited about working on.

So what I have learned over the years is to really slow down in those opportunities. Before I say yes to anything, I ask myself, does this align with where I want my business to be in three years, in five years? Does this align with a long-term vision, or am I just trying to solve a short-term problem with this? I ask myself, is this going to energize me? Or is it going to drain my capacity for the things that I'm really meant to be doing? And I ask myself, is this moving me towards my vision or is it just keeping me busy, making me feel productive because my calendar is full, my client load is full? 

The practice here is developing strategic patience, the willingness to say no to good opportunities so that you're available for great ones. 

Quality number two is systems thinking over task completion. So most entrepreneurs are focused on getting things done. But entrepreneurs who scale sustainably are focused on building the systems that get things done without them or with less and less effort on their part.

So here's the key distinction. When you're thinking about tasks, you ask, how do I do this? When you're thinking about systems, you think, how does this get done consistently and well, regardless of my daily involvement? Or how does this get done consistently and well without me investing the same amount of time and effort every single time? How can I make this easier and simpler the next time and the next time and the next time?

This shift in thinking changes everything about how you approach business. Instead of just creating a marketing campaign, you create a marketing system. Instead of just delivering a service, you create a service delivery system. Instead of just managing your finances, you create a financial management system.

So here's an example for my own business. Every quarter I deliver a strategic planning session for the Prosper Network members. And the first time I did this, I was picking up something that the founders of the Prosper Network had delivered once. I was looking at what their process was, what their information was and then adapting it from my own perspective, my own approach. And so the first time that I delivered the quarterly strategic planning, I did everything myself. 

I created a new slide deck, I created a new workbook, I built landing page forms, the emails, like all the parts and pieces that went with this, I created them myself. When I finished delivering it and realized this is something really fantastic, I actually would like to do this on a regular basis and that would like to use this in some other places as well, I realized that I could not spend the amount of time every single quarter or every single time I delivered this doing all those pieces myself. 

And so the second time that I delivered it three months later, I probably spent double the amount of time getting myself set up to deliver it. But in that double amount of time, what I did was document every single step along the way. And create checklists and make sure that I was being really clear in my direction so that somebody else could do it the next time. And so then the third time that I delivered it, my assistant was able to do probably 70% of the work. And now we've delivered it five or six times, I think. And at this point, it is so turnkey, so easy that it takes very, very little time, not just on my part, but also on her part.

That she's not investing the same amount of time and effort and energy as the first time because we've gotten the system so dialed in that now it's super turnkey and it could also then be adapted and used in other places in a very, very simple way.

So the beautiful thing about systems thinking is that it creates leverage. Every system you build now multiplies your capacity for later on. The first time that I delivered that, it took a huge amount of my time. And every time since then, it's taken less and less and less. So now I can deliver the same quality, the same amount of work in way less time. So then that opens me up to deliver something else as well, to create something else, or to pursue some other opportunity. 

This way, when growth happens, you're not scrambling to figure out how to handle more volume. And if you focus on building systems this way, then when growth happens, you're not scrambling to figure out how to squeeze more in, right? You're not scrambling to try to figure out how to handle more volume. You've already built the systems. You already have the infrastructure in place so that you can say yes easily and confidently.

Okay, quality number three, capacity building over output maximization. Most entrepreneurs are focused on doing as much as possible with the time and energy that they have. But entrepreneurs who scale sustainably are focused on expanding their capacity to handle more with greater ease. Capacity is not just about time management or productivity hacks. It's about building your ability to hold more complexity, make better decisions under pressure and maintain your wellbeing even as demand increases. 

This might look like investing in your own development before you think you need it. Things like taking a leadership course while you're still a solopreneur, things like building a support system for yourself before your problems feel urgent. Building the community, building the emotional and energetic team and support that you need, building practices that support you in your mental and physical wellbeing before you're stressed and depleted. 

Anyone who invests time and energy in wellness practices will know that when they do that and they commit to that, that their ability to handle stressful situations or anything that's going on in their life that's out of the norm only increases from those practices and doing those practices actually prepares them for those sort of challenges that come along the way. The practice here is asking, what capacity do I need to develop now so that future me can handle what's coming with grace and with ease?

I have a client who is such a phenomenal example of all three of these qualities. So I'm going to share a little bit about his story here with you. I started working with this individual, which was about eight months ago, in our initial conversations, he was really excited about growing his business. He's very motivated, very driven, has a business where not only is he delivering a service, but he has a team of people delivering his service. And he was really excited about the potential for the growth of this business.

And so we started to assess some things like, well, if you did start marketing in a more significant way and you suddenly got 10 new clients, how would you handle that? Do you have the team to take those people on? Do you have the ability to integrate them into your current flow or would 10 new clients suddenly just completely overwhelm you?

And pretty quickly we recognized that there was some foundational work to be done. And so we set about that. We started with finances. Then we moved from a financial system into operation systems for one piece of the business and then operation systems for the next piece of the business and we started to talk about leadership in a different way. And over a matter of months, this client did really the most incredible, amazing work that I have seen, which is to overhaul his entire business with a vision for growth for the future.

And so over about a six month period, he went through every single piece of this. He started to think about strategic growth, started to get clarity on the strategic vision for his business instead of just jumping on or initiating opportunities for immediate growth. He started to think about creating systems instead of everything happening in the business is just a thing that gets done every day, a task that gets completed. What are the systems that need to be created so that those things can be getting done at a higher level and with less effort, both from him and from his team?

And then he really started to focus on capacity building, really understanding what his capacity is, what his team's capacity is, raising standards for both himself and the team. And instead of focusing on short-term revenue growth, has really started to focus on building his own capacity by bringing in the right team members, investing in his own well-being, anticipating the growth that's going to come. 

And what's really amazing is that as we have focused on those things, the business has also grown. Revenue has increased, customer satisfaction has improved. There are all these markers for improvement in the business. Costs have gone down, so profitability is up. All these markers for improvement in the business that happened as natural byproducts of building the systems and getting the business ready to grow in a more meaningful way. 

And so now eight months in, when we look at the timeline, really the trajectory is getting some key team members in place for this over these next few months, getting them trained and up to speed in anticipation that going into the new year that we’ll able to turn those marketing jets on, and not only will he have the capacity to focus the time and energy on the marketing, which frankly he didn't before, but now he'll actually be able, himself and the team, have the capacity to handle the influx of clients that comes in. 

So this is the foundational work that needs to be done to set up for a long-term sustainable growth. If eight months ago we had just launched a marketing campaign, he would have gotten really busy really fast, probably made some great cash for three or four months and then found himself burned out, have unsatisfied customers, and then just be continually trying to work to maintain that revenue level and in the midst of sort of some chaos, right? And so he truly is a phenomenal example of building these systems and setting himself up for sustainable growth in a really, really meaningful way.

I want to give you a framework for assessing whether your current choices are building for long-term sustainability or just meeting short-term needs. For every significant decision that you make in your business, I invite you to ask yourself these three questions. Number one, is this building a foundation or is it creating a dependency? Foundations are the things that make your business stronger or more independent over time. Dependencies are things that require ongoing effort or resources to maintain without adding real value to them.

For example, hiring an assistant to handle administrative tasks is building a foundation. Having that assistant document what they're doing and create SOPs and checklists and templates so that you could hire somebody else in as well so that that person then has the capacity to grow isn't dependent on individuals but is dependent on systems that survive team changes, that survive vacations, that survive sick days because somebody else can step in and take over as well. This is all really solid foundation building activities that set you up for a higher level of work down the road. 

Taking on a client who requires constant handholding might feel like it's a win. But maybe it's a short-term win because it really ties up your time without building anything lasting. Now, the exception to this would be if taking on that client in the process of doing so, you also are testing some processes, you are documenting certain things so that you can use them down the road. That may turn that short-term client challenge into a longer-term investment, but you have to shift your perspective and approach it that way and not approach it from the perspective of, I just need to do this short-term and it doesn't carry weight for the future of my business. 

Everything should be carrying some weight for the future of your business if you're investing your time and your energy in it now.

Question number two, will this make future growth easier or harder? Some decisions that seem smart in the short term actually make scaling more difficult. For instance, offering custom solutions to every single client might increase immediate revenue and it also makes it harder to systematize and scale later on. 

This is a challenge I faced in my own business for so many years. I did bespoke work, one-on-one, very, very custom and so many times I reached my own capacity at what I could deliver in that way. And then I had to weigh my options of like, how could I or would I bring other people in to support the process? How could I potentially grow my revenue if I'm doing it this way? You can continue to raise your prices but there reaches a point where you only have so many hours a day and there's only so much people are willing to pay. 

And so if there’s one thing that I could go back and change, again, I'm so happy to share mistakes that I've made with you so that you don't have to make them too. If there's one thing I can go back and change, it would be many years ago to have been looking at every single thing that I was doing in terms of a longer term vision instead of the short term, I'm just dealing with this client, I’m just solving this particular issue, but looking at everything as something that could be documented and systematized for future use.

So what I encourage you to do is invest time now in creating standardized processes. Even though that might slow you down initially, it will make future growth so much more manageable for you.

Question number three, am I optimizing for this quarter or for the next five years? And it doesn't have to be five years if you feel more comfortable with one year or three years or 10 years, whatever feels right to you. There’s no qualifying timeline, but this is just checking out what your particular timeline is. Short-term optimizations often conflict with longer-term sustainability. 

Entrepreneurs who scale gracefully are willing to make choices that might not maximize immediate results, but set them up for long-term success. And I totally understand that sometimes we have to make decisions and do things for the short term, you know, for a variety of reasons. And if that's the case, again, I just encourage you to look at it through the lens of how could you use this down the road or how could you deliver the work now in a way that's going to set you up for something better down the road?

Instead of just treating it like a stopgap, you can do a practical foundation audit on your own business. First, make a list of all the major components of your business. Your service delivery, your marketing, your sales process, your operations. your financial management, and for each of those components, ask yourself, is this systematized or am I the system? If you are the system, then that's a bottleneck waiting to happen when you try to scale.

Ask yourself, would this work if I needed to step away for a month? If not, then you've identified an area that needs some foundational work. Ask yourself, is this energizing my capacity or is it depleting it? Things that consistently deplete your energy are not sustainable for the long term, regardless of how profitable they are in the moment.

And finally, ask yourself, does this align with where I want my business to be in three years? Again, one year, three years, five years, whatever feels right to you.

If not, it might be time to phase that particular thing out, even if it's working right now. And taking the time to slow down and be thoughtful about it can allow you to phase that out a very intentional way, so that you can be phasing in something that is more aligned with your long-term growth, instead of waiting till you reach the breaking point with that particular thing and call it quits. 

So the goal here isn't to have perfect systems for everything immediately. The goal is to identify where you need to build foundations and to prioritize that foundational work alongside your revenue generating activities. Just like the example I gave you of my client, we went piece by piece, starting with finances, then operational stuff, then customer delivery systems. We haven't even gotten to the marketing piece yet because there's no point in focusing on the marketing until the other things are ready and in place.

Now let’s talk about building your long game strategy. Entrepreneurs who scale sustainably understand that building for the long game isn't about sacrificing short-term success. It's about making choices today that compound over time. Every system you build now saves you time down the road. Every boundary you set now protects your energy for what matters most.

Every skill you develop now expands what's possible in the future. Think of foundational work as an investment, not an expense. So yes, it takes time and it takes resources now, but if you make that investment now, it'll pay off in dividends down the road for many, many years to come. 

Here's what I invite you to consider. What if you spent just about 20% of your time working on foundations instead of the day-to-day operations of your business? What if you viewed every challenge as an opportunity to build a system that would prevent that challenge in the future?

This is how you create compounding sustainability, where each improvement makes the next improvement easier and each system supports the development of better systems down the road.

As we wrap up here, I want to give you one simple but powerful action step. Choose one area of your business that currently requires your constant attention or an area that you maybe have been avoiding because you know that it's messy. And ask yourself, how could I build a foundation here that would allow this to run in a more easeful way or even run without me in it at all? 

Don't try to solve the problem immediately. Just start thinking about it differently. Instead of asking, how do I do this better? Or how do I avoid doing this? Ask, how does this get done excellently without requiring my daily or weekly involvement? This is all about a shift in thinking from doing to building, from tasks to systems. This is the foundation of sustainable scaling. 

And the beautiful thing is that you can start building these foundations right now, regardless of where you're at in your business journey. I know how tempting it can be to look at other entrepreneurs, at other businesses, and see what from the outside might look like a really incredible facade, and see their growth, and see what looks like outrageous success on their part. And it can be really tempting to compare ourselves to that and to go chasing after whatever it is that we think may have gotten them to that place, particularly if they're selling something that they say has gotten them to that place. 

I know how tempting that can be to think like, maybe that one thing is the answer. But I'll just remind you that shiny facades are not always built to last. That sustainability is really about having strong foundations and worry about the shiny facade later. And that entrepreneurs who scale gracefully are not necessarily any smarter or more talented than those who burn out. They just understand that the long game isn't about working harder. It's about building better foundations that make everything easier.

If this resonates with you, then I would love to hear what foundations you're gonna focus on building first. Send me a DM on LinkedIn or on Instagram or email me at [email protected] and let me know what area of your business is ready for some foundational work.

Remember that every choice you make today is either building a foundation for sustainable growth or creating a dependency that will limit you later on. So choose wisely and trust that the long game always wins. 

Until next time, remember your pleasure is your power. Take care.