How To Scale Your Business When You’re Knee-Deep In It
You’ve done it. Your customer base is growing, sales are up, and it seems your business is finally on the right track. But now you feel you’re being pulled in a million directions. Between vendor emails, customer inquiries, and managing employees, there’s not enough time in the day to recalibrate and focus on scaling your business.
If your business is experiencing reasonable growth, yet you feel like you’re in a rut, the best thing to do is to set aside some time to come up with a plan. Block out time in your schedule to evaluate your business, identify growth barriers, and come up with a plan for scaling. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Decide what you want to be
You know you want to grow but by how much? Do you want to be a $500k or a one-million-dollar a year turnover company? Two-million? Or more? By setting definite objectives, you can effectively plan how to get there.
Step 2: Evaluate your businesses processes and workflows
To grow, you’ll have to make sure there are no chinks in the chain. Scaling your business will expose weaknesses. Can your current operations sustain growth? How many employees will you need to pull in X amount of revenue? Take a closer look at your IT system, processes, and team.
Step 3: Organize, organize, organize
If you’re already feeling overwhelmed, it only worsens as you scale. Now is the time to get your house in order. Get rid of old paperwork, files, and make sure your offices and digital spaces are orderly. Implement helpful apps and tools that help you stay on track and get your team collaborating effectively.
Step 4: Look at your more successful competitors
Evaluate the companies at the level you strive to be at. What do their operations look like? How do they market their products? How many employees do they have? Understanding what it takes to reach a higher level of success can help you plan your growth.
Step 5: Don’t lose sight of your business values
Increased revenue is always appealing, but at what cost? Make sure you keep your business values in mind as you scale. Don’t lose sight of how you treat your customers, employees, and the quality of your services/products.
Step 6: Hire the right people
The more employees you have, the more opportunities for problems. Be sure to hire people who are a good fit for your business values and work environment. Have a clear set of objectives to guide your employees.
Step 7: Don’t be afraid to hire outside expertise
You should be no stranger to investing in your business for growth. If you feel stuck on a particular aspect of your business, such as marketing, there’s no shame in turning to an expert to get you on the right track.
Step 8: Identify your barriers to growth
This step can be uncomfortable as it requires you to focus on what’s wrong with your business. Be honest with yourself. Is the problem inadequate money flow, a particular employee, deficient equipment, or poor leadership? Identifying possible failures to growth will enable you to address them so you can move forward with your business.