On Wednesday November 12th, I attended the inaugural Scalerator Association of Trinidad & Tobago live Zoom session: From Seed to Scale: The Role of Capital, Customers & Community in Scaling.

It wasn’t another “entrepreneurs talk and share how they’d reached to the top”…instead everyone on the panel felt real and accessible, running businesses right here in Trinidad and Tobago, and sharing the wisdom of their experiences—raw, honest, unpretentious.

Moderated by Nadia Byer-Thomas (800 TECH), the panel brought together four people who have built real things, survived real storms, and learned from mistakes they paid for in sweat and sleepless nights:

• Keith Belgrove — 137-year legacy funeral director, innovator, and culture-builder
• Allison Demas — regional scaler, Media InSite founder, recovering “family-culture” leader
• Rachel Renie-Gonzales — food systems pioneer, wellness advocate, co-founder of D’Market Movers
• Tarquin Joseph — engineer turned accountability evangelist, ICONS Co. Ltd

I sat there listening first as a participant and then the make-sense strand of my DNA kicked in. I started to sense the deeper pattern underneath the ongoing conversation.

Whenever we hear scaling, what we hear is growth or expansion. They feel similar but really, they are worlds apart.

Everything these panelists shared—alongside the research in Sutton & Rao’s Scaling Up Excellence—confirms it.

This is my attempt to make sense of that difference.

The difference between more and better

• Growth requires more—more people, more tasks, more hours, more output.
• Scaling requires better—better systems, better habits, better clarity, better culture.

And the more I listened, the more I heard that distinction emerge in every story.

Keith spoke about the evolution of funeral services, and how customer expectations changed—and how his business had to mature with them. He said something simple but deeply instructive:

Sometimes, yes, we like what we do, we’re doing it right, but you might be doing it right and losing money and put yourself in trouble.

This is the heart of scaling. Scaling insists that good intention is not enough.
Scaling asks whether the excellence you’re delivering is also sustainable.

It reminded me of Sutton and Rao’s argument that bad is stronger than good—that a single inefficiency, a single weak margin, a single tolerated inconsistency can undermine everything you’re trying to build.

Scaling is the discipline of strengthening your good so it can withstand pressure.

Where scaling really begins

Another pattern emerged as Allison’s work was referenced throughout the conversation—particularly around the notion of teams, culture, and talent. Her message was clear:

At some point every founder must confront the limits of “family culture.”

Family gives belonging. But high performance gives clarity.

• Scaling requires clarity.
• Scaling requires accountability.
• Scaling requires structure you can repeat, refine, and teach.

This is what Sutton & Rao call the balance between Catholic (standardized, structured) and Buddhist (principle-based, adaptable) approaches to scaling. Every business eventually faces this crossroads. And it’s the same crossroads where Caribbean businesses often hesitate.

Listening beneath the obvious

Rachel’s contribution was about the quiet wisdom embedded in her story—how digitizing early helped her business survive, how customer behavior shifted, how people kept talking about not feeling well, and how their palate changed faster than their habits.

She spoke about being the only woman in the room with the expectation that she would take notes, in the male-dominated agricultural spaces she navigated and how important it was for her to learn everything quickly. She talked about how digitizing early meant she could adapt when expectations shifted. It wasn’t framed as “scaling,” but it absolutely was. Scaling is adaptation wrapped in clarity.

• Scaling is noticing when customer needs shift before your own systems become too rigid to respond.
• Scaling is the capacity to serve more without losing the essence of why you started.

Execution is everything

Tarquin offered a truth so many leaders live but rarely admit out loud:

We had a lot of plans… but one of our biggest issues was execution.

He said, “Sometimes you get so caught up in the business that some of the strategies that you have, you don’t implement.”

This is the universal entrepreneurial struggle. And this is where Scaling Up Excellence is blunt: most scaling efforts fail not because the ideas are bad, but because good ideas never get implemented consistently.

• Scaling is not a Planning Day performance.
• Scaling is what happens on Monday morning.

When Tarquin spoke about making time to execute their own strategies, he was pointing to the real engine of scale—accountability.

The deeper truth beneath it all

As I listened, I realized the conversation wasn’t about growing businesses.
It was about growing leaders.

Growth is linear.
Scaling is nonlinear.
Growth stretches you.
Scaling transforms you.

Scaling demands identity shifts:

• from doer to designer
• from worker to teacher
• from hustler to architect
• from being reactive to being intentional

Scaling forces you to confront the gap between what your business does and what your business needs to become. And this is where Sutton & Rao’s research meets Caribbean reality: you can grow accidentally, but you can only scale intentionally.

What it really takes to scale (my sensemaker’s view)

1. Scaling requires naming your pocket of excellence—what you do exceptionally well and must protect at all costs.
2. Scaling requires deciding your non-negotiables—what cannot change even as everything around it evolves.
3. Scaling requires eliminating the small “bads” early—because small dysfunctions silently multiply.
4. Scaling requires making behavior the strategy—people imitate what leaders do, not what leaders say.
5. Scaling requires choosing rhythm over speed—because speed burns people out while rhythm expands their capacity.
6. Scaling requires clarity—language, expectations, culture, systems, and accountability people can feel and follow.
7. Scaling requires bravery—the courage to confront what is no longer serving the excellence you want to spread.
8. Scaling ultimately requires becoming the kind of leader whose actions can be repeated by others without losing their integrity.

A simple way to tell whether you’re growing or scaling

Ask yourself: If demand doubled tomorrow, would my business break—or would it hum?

• If it breaks, you’re growing.
• If it hums, you’re scaling.

If you don’t know, you need clarity.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

1. Where in your business are you adding more instead of becoming better?
2. What small misalignment have you tolerated that silently limits your ability to scale?
3. And what pocket of excellence have you yet to define—so you can finally build around it with intention?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — writer, possibility thinker, musician, Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, and MCODE Legacy Coach. I help leaders and soul-driven professionals decode the deeper patterns shaping their business, work, identities, and results especially when it look like a performance issue but it’s really misalignment in disguise.

If something in your life or business feels off and you can’t quite name it, message me. Sometimes one conversation is all it takes to see what’s really going on.