The concept of scalability is one of the most important factors to understand if you ever want to transition from “good” to “great”. Scalability directly correlates to success in many aspects of life like starting a business, mastering a hobby, or achieving financial freedom.

In general, it’s relatively easy to achieve minor success in life. This is mainly because you can achieve minor success simply by working hard and applying yourself. But, achieving major success and entering society’s top 1% is much more difficult. To achieve major success, you need to master the art of scalability.

With that in mind, let’s examine 5 reasons why people fail to scale.

1. Limiting beliefs

While it sounds cliche, the most important aspect of achieving success is your mindset. If you do not believe something is possible then you’ll have a hard time ever achieving it. Around the time we enter high school, society tells us over and over again that many things are impossible:

1. You can’t play professional sports
2. You can’t start your own business
3.  You can’t learn a new hobby later in life
4. You’ll never be a millionaire

For many people, this constant pessimism seeps into their subconscious and holds them back. Let’s unpack this a little bit further using one of the most common metrics of success: income.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median weekly income for full-time workers is roughly $54,132 a year. Additionally, only 18% of individuals earn over $100,000. Despite all the talk of being successful and reaching financial freedom, most people are closer to being broke than they are to being a millionaire.

For someone living on $54,000 per year, earning a million dollars would be roughly 20X their current income. From this perspective, earning a million dollars sounds nearly impossible. After all, how are they supposed to start earning 20X their income? Instead of trying new strategies, they start to assume that it’s impossible to earn a million dollars and stop trying altogether.

This is where building a concrete plan comes into play.

2. Lack of a plan

The second reason why many people fail to scale is that they go through life without a plan. For example, if you want to scale your income upward then you need to learn from others who are currently where you want to be and then create a plan that can help you match their success. Remember, a goal without a plan is just a dream.

If you do not have a concrete plan in place to help you scale then you will just amble through life without ever making meaningful progress. When making a plan, here are a few factors that should always be included:

1. Milestones: To reach your goal, you need to set monthly, weekly, and daily milestones that will keep you on track.
2. Time-based: Without a timestamp, you will never have the incentive to reach any of your milestones. Similarly, if you don’t give a student a deadline then they will probably never do their homework.

Once you’ve established your plan and broken it down into milestones, you’ll start to learn what you need to do each day in order to succeed. This is the beginning of your system.

3. Lack of a system

When it comes to scaling, your system will serve as the daily rules and regulations that you follow to help reach success. You can bet that, behind every successful organization or individual, is a system.

For example, let’s say that you want to build your income through real estate. While this is an admirable goal, it doesn’t just happen without additional action on your end. You need to set aside time each day that you can dedicate to evaluating properties, raising money, and closing deals.

Without a system or a set of daily rules that will help you reach your goal, then you’ll likely lose steam over time and slip back into your normal routine.

4. Lack of time management

If you cannot manage your time then you’ll eventually work for someone who can. When first attempting to scale, you will need to put in a ton of work by yourself.

• If you want to build a company then there will likely be a point where you are doing everything yourself.

• If you want to successfully invest your money then you’ll need to teach yourself about different asset classes.

• If you want to get in incredible shape then you need to start exercising each day.

All of these things require time. So, if you can’t find free time in your schedule, then you won’t reach your goals. Luckily, there is a simple way that you can free up time in your schedule by leveraging the 4 D’s. The 4 D’s are:

• Do – When examining your daily or weekly schedule, prioritize your top 3 tasks and do those immediately.

• Delay – For any task that is not an immediate priority, delay it and make a note to circle back at a more appropriate time. For example, if you need to prepare for a presentation that’s 3 weeks from now don’t spend your time today preparing. Instead, delay this task till the week of the presentation and then make it a priority.

• Delegate – If a task should not be delayed, but is not a priority, then delegate it to a member of your team.

• Dump – Finally, if a task is not worth delegating to someone else then just eliminate the task completely.

Following the 4 Ds is a very straightforward way to streamline your decision-making and clean up your schedule.

5. Lack of Execution

The final reason why people fail to scale is simply that they fail to execute their goals.

You might be passionate about reaching financial freedom using real estate. You’ve read every book on the topic, listened to podcasts, and created a plan to reach your goal. But, without execution, all of this passion and planning is meaningless. You won’t actually start inching towards financial freedom until you execute your plan and put it into action.

In this sense, creating a plan is only the very first step toward reaching a goal. Anybody can create a plan. The real challenge is consistently taking action on this plan every day to create real-world tangible results. For example, you could spend hours creating a detailed outline on how you want to leverage real estate investing to create passive income. While this is a good first step, it doesn’t actually move the needle for your finances.

Instead, to execute this plan, you’ll need to start assessing properties, making offers, lining up financing, and closing deals. Only once you commit to executing your plan will you start getting closer to your goal.

We hope that you’ve found this article on 5 reasons why people fail to scale to be valuable! If you’re interested in learning more please subscribe below to get alerted of new articles as we write them. Also, please follow along with Avatar Equity and Sachin Maskey on social media to get alerted of any updates.

Sachin Maskey is a physician, real estate investor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He has over 17 years of expertise in the medical industry as a family medicine specialist. Outside of medicine, he is the founder of the commercial real estate investment firm Avatar Equity as well as the Dhana Yoga Foundation. You can follow along with Sachin on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and LinkedIn.