There is a magical point in the development of any business called Scaling.

When you are scaling, you are taking all the hard work that you have put into the business so far and ramping it up. Increasing the rate of growth. Doubling down because you know, after months or years of testing, that you have a profitable concept that people want. Now the task is to create the capacity to sell and deliver as much as you can.

Most founders get even more overwhelmed at this stage. Because they think that for the business to speed up, they need to speed up.

The opposite is true. Yet it feels so wrong that most founders actively resist it.

One of my clients likes to say “The only thing getting in the way of moving from being a small business to being a big business is me.”

What he is still working on is hiring the right people and get out of the way.

Do it as SLOWLY as you can, to make SURE you hire the right people. People who know finance, sales, product, BETTER than you. People who you trust to GROW your vision.

When you do hire them, onboard them slowly, too. Make sure they understand the business as well as you do. Or as close to that as possible.

At a certain point, you can’t drive a car faster by increasing the RPMs.

You drive a car faster by shifting gears.

The car goes faster while the engine runs slower.

Your business is the same. When you are scaling, you should be running slower, not faster.

Making sure the next gear engages. Making sure that everything falls into place.

When have you sped up by slowing down?

“Uber of…”

Superhero movies.

Sequels.

Market testing.

It’s easy to create something that is kind of popular. Sort of good.

Just look at the hits and follow them. That’s why so many new singers sound like the latest sensation. Because the producers who were afraid to take a risk are the very same ones who are now jumping on the bandwagon.

But no one ever hit it big by being “just like Adele, only better.”

Is there a thing in you that you know is amazing and have dared share with no one?

What if that is the next big thing?

And what if the world never gets to experience it, simply because you were too afraid to fail?

In the movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” (EEAAO), the main characters discover that they can tap into alternate universes where they have different capabilities, and bring those capabilities to this universe.

If you are a kung fu master in another universe, for example, you could use that here as well.

I watched the movie and didn’t think, “What if that were true?”

I thought, “Finally, someone is talking about this.”

Because I have always created by becoming the person capable of doing it first. By stepping into another identity (one from a parallel universe, perhaps?) and creating from that.

Even when I didn’t realize I was doing it.

The simplest model of the universe that fits with our current understanding of quantum physics is that there are innumerable parallel universes, a multiverse, if you will, in which everything has happened that on can conceive of happening. See “Something Deeply Hidden” by Sean Carroll for a layperson’s explanation of this.

Yet most physicists dismiss this because it does not match up with our everyday experience. In effect, they want to make the world more complicated to keep themselves small.

But what if the simplest explanation is that yes, you are capable of anything?

I choose to believe in the multiverse, and my ability to influence the parts that I experience. Not because I know it is true, but because believing it, believing that I have already accomplished everything, enables me to create a version of myself that has the courage to take on my biggest dreams. Like supporting founders at every stage of creating their dreams, and creating a company to do that at a larger scale.

What do you choose to believe, not because it is true, but because it is useful?

So often, the answer is exactly the opposite of what you think it is.

The founder who wanted to stay “on top of” things actually needed to build a team and give up control to grow.

The founder who couldn’t find good people didn’t actually want them (because that would mean the founder wasn’t necessary).

The biggest provocation is the one that is least obvious (until you see it for yourself).

That you are creating both yourself and your world. And that changing either starts with you.