The Scaling Paradox

Episode Guest – Jhana Li

In this episode of The Scaling Paradox, Jhana Li (Founder of Spyglass Ops) breaks down why most scaling founders are stuck not because they lack grit, but because their strategy is broken. She’s helped over 200 B2B startups and agencies uncover operational debt, simplify strategy, and rebuild margin by fixing what’s upstream.

If you’re stuck in the $50K–$300K MRR stage, constantly solving the same fires, or questioning why growth feels harder, this episode hands you the audit, the framework, and the mindset reset you need.

• How to tell if your vision and model are misaligned

• The 3-layer framework to fix fragile operations: Strategy → People → Systems

• Why your team might be executing chaos (and how to realign them fast)

• How to self-diagnose with the Spyglass 5-Point Audit

• What to do when profit flatlines despite growth

00:00 – Open

“Most founders are playing business on hard mode.”

01:00 – Jhana’s Journey
From vanlife COO to fixing ops for 200+ founders scaling lean teams.

05:00 – The Pyramid Framework

• Strategy: clarity, leverage, outcome alignment

• People: org design, leadership layers, trust-building

• Systems: automation and support that scale with less
  💡 Case: $120K MRR agency with no strategic clarity → 28% margin lift in 90 days.

10:00 – Diagnosing Strategy Failures

• Vision Mismatch: you’re building a job, not a business

• The Operator Void: founder buried in delivery = no scale
  🛠️ Fixes: rewrite the north star, eliminate low-ROI services, place internal operators

25:00 – The Spyglass 5-Point Self-Audit
Rate your business from 1–5 across:

1. Vision Clarity – Can you explain where you’re going in one sentence?

2. Leverage Map – What are your three highest-ROI activities?

3. Role Alignment – Are your A-players in the right seats?

4. Operational Gravity – What breaks if you take 30 days off?

5. Strategy Simplicity – If it’s not simple, it won’t scale

”Below 15? You’re scaling on hard mode.”

40:00 – Playing Business on Easy Mode

• What happens when you remove 40% of your initiatives

• The difference between grind culture and leverage culture

• Why doing less = scaling more

55:00 – Final Takeaways

• Everything breaks without strategy clarity

• SOPs and systems won’t fix the wrong business model

• Profit hides in the operational gaps you’re not seeing

”Growth feels like quicksand when your strategy's unclear.”
”Leverage is a ratio. Most founders are stuck chasing volume.”
”If your systems break when you step away, they weren’t systems. They were duct tape.”

• B2B founders scaling

• Agency owners stuck in team chaos or delivery

• Leaders trying to fix margin problems with tools or talent (not strategy)

• Founders overwhelmed by growth that doesn’t feel sustainable

Keywords – scaling a business, strategy audit, operations framework, founder bottlenecks, business leverage, operational debt, agency growth, systems thinking, team alignment, MRR plateau, margin growth, time freedom