How to Scale Your Business Without Losing Control: Rocco Cozza on the 4 Frames of Growth
- Jeff Hancher
- 13 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Many businesses never fail because of bad ideas. They fail because of unseen growth traps. In this episode, Rocco Cozza joins The Champion Forum Podcast again to reveal what really keeps companies from scaling: bottlenecks, misaligned teams, and founders stuck inside their own frame. You'll learn the four frames every entrepreneur needs (Clarity, Alignment, Profit, and Freedom) and how to shift from being the doer to becoming the leader your company needs.
What are the most common invisible bottlenecks that you are seeing that founders don't even realize are holding them back?
The biggest challenges I have faced as a business owner occurred when I was immersed in the business and lacked the vision to see what was going on. Whenever I step outside of my business and look at it objectively, I see all the things I was missing. Many founders are the bottleneck in their own business because they have tunnel vision. They are inside this box or frame they created, and don't know how to step outside of it. The second mistake is having misalignment and missed expectations within a team. Specifically, there's no accountability. Everyone is supposed to do something, but no one's accountable for anything.
What is some practical advice that you would give to people who are stuck in the frame? If you don't know the status of your week, you can't fix it. You have to find the problem by auditing your time. When you actually sit down and audit your time and write down the activities that you engage in throughout the week, you'll find three things. First, you'll find a lot of wasted time. Then you'll find out you're spending time on things you're not supposed to have your hands in. And finally, you'll see that the things you love doing the most are the things you are doing the least. Even successful leaders have these blind spots.
What areas do founders struggle to let go of?
The two biggest areas that people are reluctant to let go of are managing people and managing money. They are both very personal, and people feel like they can manage them better than anybody else. To help founders let go, I have to learn how they work, how they receive information, and what makes them tick. I have to understand their fears and their hesitations. If I can understand why they are afraid of letting other people manage the people or the money, I can help them see how changing their approach could align with their goals.
Can you walk the listener through the four frames and how you apply them in real life?
The four frames are the clarity frame, the alignment frame, the profit frame, and the freedom frame.
You have to start with clarity.
The founder needs to be very clear about where the business is, what it's doing, what it's not doing, and where they want to go. We need to understand the end goal and how to reverse engineer it to achieve the outcome we want. You have to ask good questions to get them to articulate with clarity what success looks like
Next, you have to ensure your people are aligned.
Do they get along? Are they in the right positions? What are their skillsets? Does the position require those skillsets or a different set? Are they in the right seats? Do they have what it takes? Some founders try to give their people raises and bonuses, but they never really understand what their team members care about. They might care about vacation time or recognition more than even money.
Now you can look at your profit.
We look at where your revenue comes from. What are your most costly lines of business? Your most profitable lines of business? I worked with someone where we looked at some of their lines of business and realized they were putting so much effort into one piece of their business that wasn't really generating any money.
Finally, freedom.
The freedom piece is really asking the founder, "What can we remove from you?" What should be given to your team? How can we protect your schedule and get granular on their day-to-day? Because most founders want to be accessible. But then I realized that if my doors and calendar are always open, I'm not going to get anything done. So, I provide them with strategic tools and time blocks to help them see how to structure their week to become the most effective founder leading a more successful company.
What have you seen are the biggest challenges in making that shift, and what advice do you have for that entrepreneur who is stuck in that rut?
The biggest one is fear. The people are so afraid to step out of the doer role and into the leader and visionary roles because they fear it won't be done the way I do it. However, you will never know how good a person will be unless you give them the opportunity. You've got to go from being a player to being a coach. You have to watch people develop and understand their skillsets. If you have the right people in the right seats, you can let go and start leading instead of doing. If you lead the people, you're going to help them grow into the best individuals they can be. That is my goal with my business, with every business I work for. I know people will leave here, but if they leave here better than when they came, I made an impact. That's all that matters. And every founder should think about it that way.
Overcoming loneliness as a founder
You're not doing this alone. Every founder has been there, and you need to lean on the people you know for support. It's a hard road. But once you become a leader and not just a doer, life truly changes instantaneously. They get this new spark for the business because they're seeing the frame differently.
What warning signs would you give a founder to watch for to avoid overextending and becoming a victim of scaling too fast?
People just think they have to grow because that's just the next thing. Make sure you have your processes in place. You cannot scale a company with shaky processes. And I hate to sound like a boring consultant that talks about being process-driven, but there are certain fundamental processes every business needs. The fundamental operating cadences of your business must be pressure tested. Ask yourself if your process could handle 10x growth.
Application Activities
Over the next five workdays, write down everything you do in 30-minute increments. At the end of the week, highlight three things: What activities didn't move the business forward? What are you doing that someone else could own? What do you love doing but rarely get time for? Reflect on what surprised you the most.
Identify two responsibilities that you currently control too tightly. For inspiration, look at the time audit you completed in the prompt above. For each, write:
What are you afraid of delegating this?
Who could own it with proper coaching?
What would success look like if they handled it well?
Set a 30-day goal to transition one of those responsibilities to someone else and schedule weekly check-ins (not daily oversight).
Connect with Rocco Cozza
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