The Death Of Your Scaling Problems

A grandson watched a legacy pissed away..

I got the news on Christmas 2023, almost a year ago from the day that I’m writing this.

My wife, my youngest child, and I traveled so much that I can’t even remember all of the places we went. 

But this time we were in Charleston, SC. It’s a beautiful place with lots of old buildings. It was also sixty something degrees while it was fifteen or so back home. We made it a long road trip and took my challenger. You might know that I’ve helped hundreds of business owners scale their marketing past 7 figures.. But what you probably don’t know about me is that I love muscle cars. I really love turning on some Elvis and ripping down the road in an American made V8 with a thunderous exhaust. 

My love for cars goes back to when I was a child watching my dad work on them(just a fifteen-year-old kid raising me at the time).

Then, when I was around eight, I remember seeing a giant garage with a bunch of cars. I distinctly remember seeing an old road runner. 

I would find out later that the owner of all these neat cars was my grandfather on my mom’s side of the family. I’d only met him once and did not meet him again until my grandmother was dying. To this day, I don’t fully know why he had nothing to do with me, but it bothered me my whole life.

I tried to build a relationship with him, but I was so busy at the time and whenever I got close, he began avoiding me. 

The day after Christmas, I received a Facebook message that he had passed away. So my wife and I packed up and ended our trip early, just a few days into Charleston. We headed back home, driving for hours and making few stops. We made it in just an hour or so before the funeral.

I went to the funeral because I felt it was the right thing to do. I was going to pay my respects even though they were never given to me because that’s what kind of guy I am.

The funeral was strange. 

There weren’t a lot of people there. My Dad, one of my brothers, and I carried the casket even though that wasn’t in the plan. When it was all over, my Dad shared that he had spoken to my grandfather and that he was told that I was ‘next of kin.’ He told me my grandfather had cars, land, and houses and that the way their conversation went, it seemed like some of those things would be passed along to me.

I didn’t know about his assets or success other than the cars, but honestly, I had hoped he left me something. Not because I wanted money or stuff. I have money. I can buy stuff. 

I thought about a scene you’d see in the movies where a parent or grandparent dies. Then someone shares with the main character that everything their loved one owned is being passed along to them. Then there’s usually some kind of last words, advice, or letter.

I thought maybe I would get answers. I thought he would share some last words, the advice and keys to life I never got growing up. Then perhaps it would all make sense. I thought he would leave something behind to show me that he did care all along. That I did matter, and he was proud of my accomplishments.

Instead, he gave everything away. He gave it all away to older people.

I was not even left pictures. I wondered what the hell a bunch of old people are going to do with pictures? Wouldn’t he want those to go to his great grandkids?

I begged someone in the family to leave me any pictures or items that weren't claimed. Getting those things were treasures to me: photos, trophies from car shows, a wedding planning book and photo album, and metals from his time in the military. 

It was special to me dividing up our grandparents’ stuff between my brother and me with the help of my dad.

I learned some cool things about my grandparents that I didn’t have the luxury of knowing before. 

But the whole experience was really just a turn of the knife.

My grandfather left nothing for me. I had to ask someone to have anything at all, and probably against his wishes. 

Yet, I’m writing this almost a year later on Thanksgiving 2024, and I’m thankful.

I’m thankful because it motivated me to build my own car collection, buy my own land, and promise to always have a strong relationship and impact on my family.

I will never piss away my legacy if I can help it.

It gave me perspective and drive.

The plot twist to this?

I spent a lot of time traveling in 2023 and 2024. Time pouring into my wife and son and time putting the pieces of a broken person back together who had survived almost dying, trauma, and hell.

My team ran the business. 

Sure, I did some meetings and shared guidance. I texted in Telegram and Slack occasionally, but my team took care of things this whole time.

I want to say that the lesson was, “No one is going to show up to save you.”

But the truth is the right people did show up. They were the people I carefully attracted, recruited and hired. On week one of hiring these people, they radically changed things in my business.

If you’re earning under half a mil’ annually, sure, you need to work harder. You need to work really hard and learn a lot of things.

But if you’re inching toward seven or eight figures?

You don’t need to learn a bunch of things about ads, funnels, or media buying. 

You damn sure shouldn’t be hiring people to train them all from the ground up.

You don’t need to be sifting through hours of course material.

You need to hire better people and set up systems so that they can support you and you can support them.

You need SOP’s and a custom strategy.

It takes a great marketing and sales team to scale. It took me a while to learn that. I burned myself out making bad hires, training newbies and B players, and still trying to control everything. 

I ADHD’d my way through my day every day and became disgusted with calls to the point where I just wanted to be away from everyone.

I became so burned out that I got physically ill and almost died.

When I finally let go, A team of A players took over while I recovered and worked on myself. They are the ones who can tell ME what needs to be done. They execute without having to be chased. 

If you don’t have this in your business, there’s an issue with your hiring strategy and offer. There are issues with your overall scaling strategy.

Recruiting the right people for your business, specifically for client acquisition, is tricky and high-risk. To find the right people, you have to attract them with a mission and a great offer.

Most make the mistakes of listing out demands with no real benefits for their prospective hire, not properly setting up incentives, hiring just based on a referral, not interviewing enough, not properly designing the person or the role, and, when they hire someone, using text and Slack as their management system.

For CMOs and media buyers, you should interview 10-30 to narrow down to a top 5 and then 3.

Once they’re in, have them create a playbook documenting everything they did that worked or didn’t. The best way I can explain it is that you want to have a document where if they leave, you can hire someone else who can get up to speed really fast and take over in 24-48 hours.

If you find the right people and your business grows, most of them will leave. Not everyone stays forever, even though that’s what we believe.

With sales reps just expect it to be a revolving door. That’s the nature of that position.

No sales rep will be good forever. There will be up and down months and there will also be down months that never go back up.

You have to calculate your churn % and how long they will stay on average.

Your manager should be able to hire predictably based on a math problem. 

The management and communication systems you use should close all open loops for you. It should bring you peace and allow you to shut down your phone, knowing that your money and leads are handled properly.

I’m so passionate about this side of scaling with marketing and sales because I’ve watched clients grow their biz while spending more time with family traveling. 

They’re able to help thousands of customers make their dreams come true while making all of their kids’ volleyball and lacrosse travel tournaments. 

These are the things I’m thankful for this year and this past decade.

I never got the answers from my grandfather, but that is why I found the answers myself and why there’s an emphasis on sharing them with others for as long as I live and after.

Don’t piss away your success by making bad hires, shoving your nose in learning things below your pay grade, and reverting back to the ‘thrill’ of retraction through ‘getting lean.’

Learn the lessons and graduate to better problems.

–Lance C. Greenberg