Ask Candy: Overcoming Business Growth Challenges

Summary

The Candy Valentino Show: Episode Summary – "Ask Candy: Overcoming Business Growth Challenges"

Release Date: June 4, 2025
Host: Candy Valentino
Network: Cumulus Podcast Network

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The Candy Valentino Show, host Candy Valentino delves into the "Ask Candy" segment, where she addresses real-life business challenges submitted by her listeners. This particular episode focuses on overcoming obstacles related to scaling a business, providing actionable insights and motivational advice for entrepreneurs striving to grow their ventures sustainably.

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Listener’s Query: Kevin from California

Timestamp: [01:15]

Kevin's Question:
Kevin, an H VAC company owner from California, reaches out seeking guidance on the difficulties of starting and scaling a business. He expresses his struggles after two years in the industry and asks Candy for advice on enduring the challenges and understanding the realistic timeline for achieving reasonable success.

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Candy’s Response: Normalizing the Struggle

Timestamp: [02:45]
Candy begins by reassuring Kevin that his experiences are entirely normal. She emphasizes that social media often portrays entrepreneurship as glamorous, showcasing only the highs like "$50,000 or $100,000 months," while omitting the real struggles, losses, and hard work involved. She acknowledges the presence of individuals who may misrepresent their success or even engage in fraudulent activities, which can distort aspiring entrepreneurs' perceptions.

Notable Quote:
"What you're experiencing is exactly normal." – [02:50]

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Personal Anecdote: The Reality of Long-Term Commitment

Timestamp: [03:15]
Candy shares her personal journey, recalling starting her first company at 21-22 years old. She recounts a pivotal conversation with a long-term real estate investor who informed her that it typically takes around ten years to achieve stability and scalability in a business. This reality check instilled in her a focus on the long-term game, emphasizing patience and sustained effort.

Notable Quote:
"It takes 10 years to really get stable so that you can start to scale and understand your costs." – [03:30]

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Distinguishing Growth from Scaling

Timestamp: [06:38]
Candy delineates the difference between growth and scaling a business.

• Growth: Involves deploying capital to acquire more customers and increase revenue, often leading to inconsistent profitability as expenses rise proportionally.

• Scaling: Entails stabilizing expenses while increasing top-line revenue, resulting in enhanced profitability. Candy emphasizes that scaling requires a different skill set and strategic approach compared to mere growth.

Notable Quote:
"Scaling is when you start to stabilize your expenses, you acquire more customers, but you become more profitable." – [06:45]

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Essential Mindset and Discipline for Entrepreneurs

Timestamp: [07:15]
Candy highlights the critical importance of having an unshakable mindset during the initial years of business. Entrepreneurs must prioritize their dreams over others' opinions, avoid distractions, and resist the temptation of "shiny object syndrome." She advocates for doubling down on focus and discipline to stay committed to building a sustainable business.

Notable Quote:
"You need an unshakable mindset. You need to care about your dreams more than the opinions of other people." – [07:30]

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Industry-Specific Advice for H VAC Businesses

Timestamp: [08:00]
For Kevin’s H VAC business, Candy advises capitalizing on the trades industry, which she describes as recession-proof. She suggests focusing on providing exceptional customer service, developing referral programs, and engaging in grassroots marketing efforts such as door-to-door outreach and flyer distribution. Candy emphasizes the importance of mastering core skills and business acumen before investing heavily in trendy marketing tactics like social media ads or masterminds.

Notable Quote:
"Double down on your business acumen. Grab my book the 9% Edge just because it's going to teach you everything that you need to..." – [09:15]

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Grassroots Marketing and Customer Service Excellence

Timestamp: [09:30]
Candy underscores the effectiveness of traditional marketing methods in the trades sector. She advocates for:

• Door Knocking: Personally reaching out to potential customers.
• Flyer Distribution: Engaging directly with local communities.
• Exceptional Service: Ensuring high-quality work to foster referrals and repeat business.

By focusing on these foundational strategies, businesses can build a strong reputation and client base without exorbitant marketing expenditures.

Notable Quote:
"Take care of the customers, develop a referral program to grow, go do door knockers on every single door in your area." – [09:45]

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Personal Habits Leading to Success

Timestamp: [10:30]
Candy shares the personal habits that contributed to her success, including:

• Punctuality: Showing up early and staying late to maximize productivity.
• Consistency: Avoiding long vacations during the crucial early years.
• Work Ethic: Willingness to perform tasks others might neglect to gain a competitive edge.

She emphasizes that these habits helped her build and scale her businesses effectively, even without inherent advantages like intelligence, connections, or financial backing.

Notable Quote:
"I was willing to show up before everyone else. I was willing to stay when everybody else was going home." – [10:45]

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Encouragement and Final Advice

Timestamp: [12:00]
Candy concludes by encouraging Kevin and other entrepreneurs to stay the course. She reiterates the importance of focus, discipline, and continuous development of business acumen. Candy also recommends her book, "The 9% Edge," as a resource for learning strategies to acquire new customers and build profitable, scalable businesses.

Notable Quote:
"Keep developing your business acumen, keep doubling down on your focus, keep your discipline and always remember what it is that you want to build so that you don't build yourself a job that you hate." – [12:15]

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Conclusion and Call to Action

As the episode wraps up, Candy invites listeners to engage further by submitting questions through her website or social media channels. She also promotes upcoming segments on YouTube, such as the "Your Money Minute" on Financial Fridays, aiming to provide quick, valuable financial insights to a broader audience.

Notable Quote:
"If you see me in your living room, shoot me a DM over on Instagram or send us a message on the website." – [13:00]

Candy encourages her audience to follow her on social media, subscribe to her YouTube channel, and read her latest book to gain deeper insights into building and scaling successful businesses.

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Key Takeaways

1. Normalization of Entrepreneurial Struggles: Understanding that challenges and slow growth phases are standard in the entrepreneurial journey.
2. Long-Term Commitment: Success typically requires a decade-long commitment, emphasizing patience and perseverance.
3. Distinguishing Growth from Scaling: Recognizing the difference between merely increasing revenue and sustainably scaling a business.
4. Mindset and Discipline: Maintaining a strong, unwavering focus and disciplined work ethic is crucial for overcoming obstacles.
5. Grassroots Marketing: Leveraging traditional marketing methods can be highly effective, especially in the trades industry.
6. Personal Work Habits: Consistent effort and willingness to go the extra mile can set entrepreneurs apart from their competition.
7. Continuous Learning: Investing in resources like Candy's book, "The 9% Edge," can provide valuable strategies for business growth and scalability.

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For more insights and episodes, follow Candy Valentino on all social media platforms and subscribe to her YouTube channel. To submit your questions for future "Ask Candy" segments, visit candyvalentino.com/askcandy.

Transcript

[Candy Valentino]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice. Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings. When you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. Welcome to the Candy Valentino show, the podcast for founders, investors and entrepreneurs where we have honest conversations about what it takes to grow your business, build more wealth and create financial freedom.

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Candy Valentino Show. Thanks for tuning in with me today. Today's segment is going to be a fun one. We've got the Ask Candy segment and so many of you have sent in from our website from our voice recorder. So we've been getting your messages and compiling them for our next episode and and today's the day. So I'm really excited about this. I also wanted to share if you follow us on YouTube, you may be seeing some new things over there. We are going to be posting a five minute Financial Friday. Might not even be five minutes, might be two or three minutes. Super fast little bite sized pieces of information related to your money, the markets, business, whatever it may be. And the really cool part are these segments are also appearing on on the news across the country. So we're currently in about 20 markets from Phoenix to Denver to. What are some of the other ones? We've got Houston, we've got Buffalo, we've got somewhere in Florida, I can't recall. But we are going to be popping up depending on where you live. Kansas City, Oklahoma City. They're coming back to me. These are we're going to be popping up in your local news market. So you may listen to me on this podcast or see me on YouTube, but you may also be now seeing this mug in your living room. So we wanted to share those with you. It's called your Money Minute. We're going to be posting them on Financial Friday so stay tuned on YouTube. And if you see me in your living room, shoot me a DM over on Instagram or send us a message on the website@candy valentino.com I would love to hear from you and know where you live. All right, this is going to take us right into our first question for Ask Candy. This is coming from Kevin from California Candy, I have seen you on Ed Mylet a few times and think you were impressive in your knowledge and fortitude. Thank you so much for that. Would you mind sharing how brutally tough it was or is to start and scale a business, then share what one must endure and realistically, the time it takes for the average entrepreneur to see some reasonable success in business. I have started an H VAC company two years ago and I am definitely finding it brutally hard to grow the business. What advice do you have for me? Kevin? Great question. The very first thing I want to say is that what you're experiencing right now is completely normal. We are inundated with images on social media, with people saying how glamorous entrepreneurship is sharing fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars months in their business. And not only are some of them maybe changing the reality of things or not sharing how difficult it was, or not sharing the money that they lost, or some of them quite honestly are flat out frauds. That exists too. I just want you to know that what you're going through is exactly normal. In the process of starting, you are two years in and it makes me think about when I started my very first company at 19. I was about 21, 22 years old, around the same, probably two, three years in business like you are. And I remember asking friends like, oh my gosh, when does this get better? When are we going to start making money? Like when am I not going to work so hard? And I remember a long term real estate investor in my hometown saying, oh candy, you've got like 10 years. I was like, what? He's like, seriously, it takes 10 years to really get stable so that you can start to scale and understand your costs. And he went into everything with me and, and that was a brutal pill to swallow and to hear. But what it did was it really made me focus on the long term game. Do you know what's sitting in my garage right now? A Range Rover. It is the only vehicle that I have had over and over again throughout my lifetime. And that's because the Range Rover Sport blends power, poise and performance. And it's free from unnecessary details. It has this raw power and agility that can take on roads anywhere. And when you drive one, you won't want to drive anything else. Just like you, it was designed to make impact. The Range Rover Sport combines dynamic sporting personality, elegance and agility to deliver a truly instinctive drive. It has defined true modern luxury and it's a force inside and out. The Range Rover Sport was built with you and I in mind. Build your Range Rover Sport@range Rover.com US Sport.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart Choice Progressive loves to help people make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies so you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

So often because of social media and all of the things that we're inundated with, we think that it's going to be this quick thing. It's not. Not when you build it right and not when you build it to be sustained. And when you're focused on growth, you're actually focused on more. So where you are right now, you may not actually be scaling at all. You may be focused on just growing the business. Two different in order to grow a business, we need to deploy capital inside of the business in order to acquire more customers to grow our revenue. Typically when you're in growth mode, you are not maintaining consistent profitability. When you are scaling a business totally different, you are not deploying more capital into the business. The top line revenue is growing, but your expenses are not growing at the same rate. Scaling is when you start to stabilize your expenses, you acquire more customers, but you become more profitable in the 9% edge. I talk about this. It is really easy to start a business. The barrier to entry has never been lower. You can open up your laptop and in 48 hours have an ein number, an LLC and say that you're an entrepreneur. It is a totally different skill set to grow it. And what you need in the very, very beginning, where you are right now, those first three years, you need an unshakable mindset. You need to care about your dreams more than the opinions of other people. You need to tune out so much of what the world is trying to flash at you and not have shiny object syndrome like so many entrepreneurs do. You need to double down on your focus, double down on your discipline, and make sure that you're truly committed to building this, an H Vac company. The reason I went like this when I was reading your question is a phenomenal industry. If I was starting something today from scratch and I needed to build something highly profitable that I wanted to exit, I would most likely be looking in the trades. H Vac Electric, plumbing, roofing, you name it. There are, there are a lot of businesses that are being started like YouTube and online brands and all of these things. That's the flash. But really, at the end of the day, what are the trades that we know that are recession proof? And if I had skills in H vac or electric or plumbing or roofing or mobile detailing or landscape design, you name it, I would be starting businesses in those areas knowing that if I provide exceptional customer service, if I provide more value than anybody else in my industry, if I show up, if I answer the phone, if I make sure to do a great job, if I take care of the customers, if I develop a referral program in order to grow, if I go do door knockers on every single door in my, in my area, yes, I have actually done that. Pound the pavement, we call it taking flyers into other businesses, taking flyers into people's homes, rolling them up in the newspaper. Back in the day when we had newspaper boxes in the newspaper boxes and then built being able to deliver service better than anybody else in the industry, then what happens is all of these people on social media are trying to sell you the concept of marketing or Facebook ads or being in this mastermind or this network. But in the beginning, it actually takes you, it takes your time, your commitment and your focus to double down on your skills, to develop your business acumen and, and to just keep showing up. I talk about one of the things that probably made me the most successful because I, I didn't have any gifts. I wasn't the smartest person in the room. I wasn't the most connected. I certainly didn't come from wealthy parents or have some trust fund that I could start with. One of the most things that made me successful was I was willing to show up before everyone else. I was willing to stay when everybody else was going home. I didn't take a vacation. I didn't take a full week's vacation for the first 15 years in my business. I would only take long weekends so that I wasn't away too much from any one location or whatever we had going on. I was willing to do things that nobody else would do so that I could do things later that nobody else can do. That's what's most important. And you will have to say no to so many things so that you can say yes to more than you can imagine later. So stay the course. You are in an incredible industry. If it was some other industry, I would be telling you right now, Kevin, you may want to not, you know, Go all in on YouTube channel right now. You know you may want to think of something else. You are in an incredible industry. Double down on your business acumen. Grab my book the 9% Edge just because it's going to teach you everything that you need to acquire a new customer to build profit so that you can be part of the 9% who successfully build and scale and actually have an asset to exit in the end. You got this two years in. The next year is critical. It will start to get a little bit easier in years three to five. Keep developing your business acumen, keep doubling down on your focus, keep your discipline and always remember what it is that you want to build so that you don't build yourself a job that you hate. This is a great question. Thanks so much for asking it. All right guys, that's all for today's Ask Candy episode. If you want to ask me a question, head over to candy valentino.com/ask candy where you can ask your question directly there. It'll send me an email, send the team an email or you can also leave me a voice memo that we will play right here on the show. Thanks again for tuning in. Go give us a follow over on YouTube so that you can see the your Money midnight segments that are coming up on Financial Friday. Thanks again. We'll see you next time. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to this episode and if there was something that you you loved or you had a specific takeaway, share it and tag me at Candy Valentino. And if you haven't already, grab a copy of my latest book, the 9% Edge Life Changing Secrets to create more revenue for your business and more freedom for yourself. You can pick it up anywhere books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble or your local independent store. And once you do, head over to 9% edge.com and claim $1,500 in pre order bonuses, including a chance to join me on this very show. Thanks so much for tuning in and spending this time with me today guys. We'll see you next time.