Before You Force the Door

The Small Things That Create the Biggest Movement in Your Business

I read something recently about a door hinge.

Which sounds incredibly exciting, I know. 😂

But stay with me.

A hinge is tiny compared with the door.

Most of the time you barely notice it.

Nobody walks into a beautiful house and says:

“Wow. Look at those hinges.”

But without them, that door is not opening.

And I could not stop thinking about how much business works the same way.

We spend so much time staring at the door.

The goal.

The opportunity.

The number.

The listing.

The next hire.

The bigger team.

The thing we are convinced will finally make everything feel like it is working.

But sometimes the door is not actually the problem.

The hinges are.

I Have Tried to Force Plenty of Doors

I am a big ideas person.

I can see where something could go before it is even fully built.

Which is a gift.

It can also mean I am mentally three steps ahead while the systems underneath the idea are saying:

Excuse me. We are not ready yet.

I have had seasons where I wanted more growth while still personally carrying too much of the business.

I wanted more leads, but my follow up process needed work.

I wanted something to scale, but the process was still dependent on me remembering every little thing.

I wanted someone else to own something, but I had not actually created a system that made it easy for them to own it.

And sometimes I simply wanted results faster than consistency could realistically produce them.

That is when I have to ask myself:

Am I pushing on the door, or am I actually working on the thing that allows it to move?

My Hinges Are Usually Pretty Boring

This is the part I do not always want to hear.

The hinge probably is not a new logo.

It probably is not a prettier CRM.

It probably is not another course.

And it definitely is not one magical Instagram post.

It is usually something much less exciting.

Following up.

Doing the lead generation I said I would do.

Entering the note into the CRM.

Having the hard conversation.

Creating the checklist.

Training the person.

Setting the boundary.

Making the call.

Repeating the thing that worked last week even though I am already bored with it.

Those are hinges.

Small actions.

Repeated consistently.

Follow Up Is a Hinge

Think about how many times we say we need more leads.

Sometimes we do.

But I have learned that sometimes what I actually need is to do a better job with the people already sitting in my database.

That is a very different problem.

If I have hundreds of people in Follow Up Boss but nobody has heard from me in six months, pouring more leads into the top probably is not going to fix the business.

The hinge might simply be:

Follow up every day.

Not exciting.

Potentially very profitable.

Systems Are Hinges

This one has been huge for me.

As the business grows, I cannot be the system.

If something only happens because I remembered it, eventually something is going to get missed.

That is why I use things like Trello for tasks, Follow Up Boss for clients and follow up, Slack for team communication, and time blocking in my calendar.

Those tools are not the business.

They are the hinges underneath it.

They allow other people to see what is happening.

They give tasks a home.

They create consistency.

And they make it possible for the business to keep moving without everything having to pass through my brain first.

People Can Be Hinges Too

Sometimes the thing that unlocks growth for me has been another person.

An admin.

A showing assistant.

A transaction coordinator.

A marketing person.

A coach.

Someone on my team who was ready to own more.

Or even a relationship I had not been investing in enough because I was too busy chasing the next opportunity.

I think it is easy to convince ourselves that growth is individual.

In my experience, it almost never is.

There have been people who opened doors for me.

People who challenged me.

People who taught me.

People who told me what I did not necessarily want to hear.

People who carried something so I could finally stop carrying everything.

Those relationships matter.

Sometimes the Hinge Is a Hard Conversation

Not every hinge has been comfortable for me.

Sometimes movement came because I finally addressed what was not working.

I had the conversation.

I admitted a process was not working.

I stopped pretending something was fine when it clearly was not.

I let go of something that kept draining me.

Those moments can feel like something is breaking.

But sometimes they are actually what allows everything else to move again.

Consistency Might Be the Biggest Hinge of All

This one is probably the least glamorous.

I have had to learn to keep going long enough to know whether something actually works.

Not forever with something that clearly is not working.

But long enough to give consistency a chance.

It is easy to send a few emails, post for a month, make calls for a week, and then decide:

Well, I guess that did not work.

Maybe.

Or maybe I did not stay with it long enough.

A lot of the business people eventually see was built during the months when nobody else could see much happening.

That is the part persistence does not get enough credit for.

Disappointment Can Be a Hinge

This is harder to recognize while I am in it.

The listing I did not get.

The client who chose somebody else.

The hire that did not work.

The idea that flopped.

The plan that completely changed.

Those moments can feel like a door shutting.

Sometimes they are.

But sometimes they are actually the pivot.

They force me to ask better questions.

They make me build a better system.

They show me where I was depending on the wrong thing.

They send me in a direction I never would have chosen while everything was comfortable.

I do not love disappointment.

But I can look back at enough of it now to know that some of my biggest growth came from something not working the way I thought it should.

I Try to Stop Asking Only, “How Do I Get There?”

A better question for me is:

What has to be true for this to work?

If I want to double the business, what has to be true underneath it?

Can my follow up handle twice the leads?

Can my admin handle twice the transactions?

Can my calendar handle twice the clients?

Can my systems handle another team member?

Can I handle it without becoming the bottleneck?

If the answer is no, that does not mean the goal is wrong.

It tells me where to work first.

Work on the Hinge

There will always be another door I want open.

That is part of being ambitious.

I do not think I need to stop wanting more.

I think I need to become just as interested in what supports the growth as I am in the growth itself.

So if something feels stuck right now, I do not want to immediately push harder.

I want to look underneath it.

Maybe the hinge is follow up.

Maybe it is discipline.

Maybe it is delegation.

Maybe it is a relationship.

Maybe it is a system.

Maybe it is faith.

Maybe it is simply continuing to show up when nobody is clapping yet.

Strengthen that.

Then see what moves.

Because sometimes the door was never locked.

It just needed a stronger hinge.