The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Every entrepreneur knows that the path to success is paved with both exciting wins and unexpected challenges.
Recently, I woke up to two very different emails: one celebrating a new client ready to join our biggest program, and another announcing a major payment dispute from a long-term customer. That morning was a reminder that, in business, you often have to juggle triumph and adversity at the same time.
In this video essay, I’ll share the real, behind-the-scenes journey of rebuilding Growbo.com, including the tough lessons and the strategies that help us turn setbacks into opportunities for growth.
You’ll discover how applying practical systems, maintaining a resilient mindset, and focusing on sustainable growth can transform even the most challenging moments into fuel for your business. Whether you’re just starting out or scaling up, you’ll find actionable insights and inspiration to help you stay the course and achieve your goals.
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Morning Routines and Priorities
I've realized that when I wake up in the morning, I shouldn't immediately check my phone. Instead, I go through my routine, which now includes writing down and planning out these videos. If I just start checking messages, I can get sucked into conversations and other priorities, which delays me from actually getting to the work that's the highest priority.
In this case, making these videos and activating all our social media. That's my number one priority right now because it's going to lead to massive, quick growth in lead generation. We have the team, the offer, the operations, and a great business, but things have just been neglected. I've let it get to this point, but these videos are me taking accountability for that.
Facing Unexpected Challenges
This morning, I woke up to find out that we got a new client on our largest package, which is awesome. They're super excited to be onboarded. We rolled out with the model we have today in 2020, but originally, back in 2010 when the company started, we were an agency. So, when I say 15 years, we didn't always have our current business model, which is an on-demand marketing fulfillment team for a fraction of the cost of hiring your own team.
But today, I also woke up to our largest payment dispute or chargeback—first thing in the morning. That was a bit of a slap in the face. For context, we've serviced 1000s of clients, have hundreds of 5-star reviews, and a very small percentage of transactions have resulted in credit card disputes, the vast majority of which—70 to 80%—we always win. If you've been in business for more than five minutes, you know there are clients who are not a right fit, and then there are clients who can just be a nightmare.
Dealing with Difficult Clients
Unfortunately, it looks like we're approaching nightmare territory with this dispute. This particular client has been with us for months and, due to their own financial issues, is trying to claw back everything they've paid and committed to in a multi-month period they prepaid for (and got a discount for). We've worked hard and probably been too flexible in servicing their account.
Even though I'm confident we'll win the dispute, the bigger picture is about the psychology of it and thinking about what we can do differently. As a company, you can't take responsibility for someone else's unreasonable actions, but you can control your own processes. For the future, we'll make fewer accommodations, as being too flexible can invite scope creep and unreasonable expectations. If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk, right?
Service businesses are special - there's a human element, so you have to use good judgment. But ultimately, if you want to scale, you have to productize and systemize your service. That's what we've done successfully.
Taking Ownership and Improving Systems
Allowing for less scope creep is one action we're taking. For larger prepayments, we'll default to not taking credit cards—probably just checks or ACH payments—which lowers the risk of fake chargebacks. So much of business is about de-risking.
We'll also have a green light checklist before taking on higher-ticket orders, especially if it's a smaller business putting out $5k, $10k, $20k, or $25k. We want to know: Is this business a startup, or are they stable and a clear fit? Are scope and expectations locked down? Have we set clear terms for prepayment and the benefits for the client?
We have a generous 100% satisfaction guarantee—clients can try our service for two weeks, risk-free, and get a refund if they're not loving it. Almost always, our clients stay with us for many months and years, and we're proud of that.
We've learned that expectation setting always helps lower churn and retain clients. Everyone needs to be on the same page about what's included, turnaround times, and what defines a task or project. That way, there are no unrealistic expectations.
Justice, Grit, and Turning Negatives Into Positives
As an entrepreneur, it's easy to get emotional about situations that feel unfair. But you don't want to run a company that way. You want to rely on systems. When faced with a situation like this, it calls on you to have grit. True grit—like the movie.
When you're feeling that frustration, repurpose it into fuel. Ask yourself, "How is this situation actually a gift?" In our case, it's an opportunity to be better as a company. I'm even more motivated now to make these videos and help us grow much faster. We'll make ten times more sales to replace the one that's currently at risk, and I'm sure we'll win the dispute. That's the mindset you want: stay the course, improve the machine, and convert negative energy into positive momentum.
Doing the Hard Things
The hard thing about hard things is doing the hard things—like choosing to post videos like this daily. It's uncomfortable and a challenge to make them valuable, raw, vulnerable, and honest, so they're actually of substance to you. There's so much noise out there—so much "grind, baby, grind".
If I had to choose two words to describe my journey, it's focus and sustainability. Sustainability means doing it consistently without burning out. Sure, there's a time and place for grinding, especially in survival mode as a startup, but you have to ask yourself if you enjoy the work. Why do work you hate when there's so much opportunity out there?
Moving towards discomfort, doing what's uncomfortable, and doing it consistently—that's how you get ahead. If it's difficult for you, it's difficult for others. When we relaunched this business model in 2019 and iterated on it in 2020, I knew it would be really hard.
We had to hire a full team, build our own software for project management and coordination, and provide full transparency for clients. That pulls on so many different skill sets—people, operations, tech, marketing, packaging, sales. That's why we grew so fast from 2020 into 2021—936% growth—just by getting our message out there.
Innovation and the Road Ahead
We're doing other hard things that will take time to show results. Right now, we're building Growbo Creator, our own AI creation acceleration platform for automating operations and creative work. It's going to be integrated into our current offering and will remove a lot of bottlenecks once it's up and running. I'll talk more about that and give you a demo in a future video.
A business will grow to the limit of its bottlenecks. Part of my approach is critically identifying and obsessively understanding what those bottlenecks are—because if you're the biggest limiting factor, your business will only grow as much as you can handle. Otherwise, you'll get cancellations or see quality drop. You have to open up those bottlenecks, whether it's in lead generation, onboarding, or the structure of your offering.
Scaling, Community, and Staying the Course
We're going to uncap growth by adding more channels. We'll turn these videos into reels for YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and look at partnerships to keep eyeballs flowing. The goal is to share the journey and all the lessons we're learning, keeping it raw and honest. I'd love your feedback if you like this format.
We're building a stronger funnel, faster delivery, cleaner payments (especially for high-ticket prepays), and getting closer to clients. For a short period, I'll be offering coaching as an added benefit on our higher packages—a weekly coaching call where clients can join to discuss anything, primarily marketing. This will allow me to give more value to clients and understand their businesses and challenges better, which will feed back into these videos for your benefit.
Final Thoughts: Noise vs. Signal
Today's dispute is just noise. When things like that happen unexpectedly, you need to see it as noise. Our response is grit. Focus on the system. It's part of the game. It takes process, persistence, and making your product better. That's where the signal is, not the noise.
Overwhelming success is the best form of justice and fairness to yourself. If you believe in your product, your company, and yourself, go for overwhelming success. Keep moving forward.
If you're new here, check out Growbo.com. If you're a business or agency, Growbo can help remove bottlenecks to your growth with a fully white-labeled, on-demand marketing fulfillment team with 13 skills—copywriting, design, development, ads management, video production, project management, and more. All under one roof. No need to hire or manage freelancers anymore. This is the solution I wish I had when I started as an agency, and it's unlocked so much freedom for our clients—lower stress, more time, and 10-20x more productive marketing output for a fraction of the cost.
Keep Growin', Stay Focused,
Image Credits:
1. https://spp.co/img/containers/assets/content/productized-service-success-pyramid.png/fa8abab8bcfb16adadc28c6a5253c2e9/productized-service-success-pyramid.webp
2. https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2018/high-risk-paper-checks-genie-gateway-chargebacks-check22/
3. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/13/8/101
4. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/9/3534
5. https://databox.com/common-business-bottlenecks
