Introducing Scaling A Business Scaling a business is what everybody talk about across the world. You can dip into any podcast, blog, or business radio show and someone will be talking about scaling a business But in this podcast episode we start with discussing whether this is actually a requirement of every business. Is it better to sometimes stay small, and not scale your business at all? Well, we will find out as we go, and like all things we do in Join Up Dots we will leave it up to you to decide what route is best for you. Ready, then lets proceed in with the first steps you need to take when deciding if scaling a business is right for you. What Is Scaling A Business Actually? In its simplest form, scaling a business is having the right processes in place to cope with an increased level of sales, whilst maintaining the equilibrium of your business. Ok, lets make it even simpler for you to get your head around. Imagine that you are a one person business owner who has started a side hustle business that is now at the tipping point. You have built the foundations to your new business, done the work, and now you are getting a trickle of customers into your life. Do you increase that trickle of customers into a torrent of customers? A tsunami of eager to buy customers would be great for your bottom line, and that is how do you cope with that increase? Well certainly you can hire more staff, but that will of course take away some of your profits and bring a level of hassle that having staff will always bring to your business. Perhaps you dont want to be dealing with training, sickness, unexplained absentees when you actually started your business to give you a freedom type liftsyle. Well then if that is the case, you will need to build in systems and processes that can help you deal with the sales influx without it taking a toll on your personal health. That is scaling a business in a nutshell. It's allowing for more sales, more customers, more profit whilst operating lean, smart and the way that you want your business to run. Sound good, or a monster? Why Perhaps You Dont Want To Scale A Business Many business decide that they dont want to get into a scaling a business and quite happy the way things are. You might have a Personal Brand type business, whereby you are expected to be part of the process. Take the host of Join Up Dots for example, who is front and centre of everything he does throughout his business. Does he want to have hundreds of one to one clients leaving him with no time to live the life that he wants? Or does he decide that instead of personal interaction he is more than happy to create courses and content that can be sold time and time again. Well we can tell you that a blended approach works well for sure, and if the sales of the pre-recorded content exceed the one to one then its decision time. But we can also tell you that he knows that the true value is by working with people hand in hand to get them the results that they want. So once again, what are your personal values as to how your business operates and its important to keep to theses. Step One To Business Scaling - Identify Your Personal And Business Values Throughout your business you will have core values that you should without a doubt stick firm too. Some people call this a mission statement, but you have to go deeper than that to create a blueprint of what a business needs to give you, For example, do you want to have the ability of switching off the business and going on long vacations when you want them? Free from distraction and beeps and notifications every five minutes? Well if you do, then you definitely need to bring in processes or staff to help you do this without letting down potential or long standing customers. What if your business supply is selling more to existing customers than new ones? How would you operate in that regard, added to the fact that you would like to take long no interrupted vacations? Get detailed and start looking at all the possible situations that could be keeping you in your current position financially and freedom wise. Get uber detailed, and dont expect this to just come flowing out of you like magic, as more often than not this will take time. Every time you come up with an idea that hadn't occurred to you when thinking about scaling a business jot it down quickly before it disappears again. Step Two To Scaling A Business - Automate What You Can As Much As Possible Now that you have your list of situations that might derail you getting your business into six figures and beyond its re-engineering time. You need to go through your list and look at what you have written, and start working backwards to find solutions to your problems. For example, you might have thought about customers contacting you when you are in the bath, bed, or away on vacation. What do you need to do to make this no longer a problem that you need to deal with? Should you simply place a sequence of automated responses in place that will direct your customer to the right sales page or product? Perhaps your business is a high-end concierge type of operation, when scaling a business definitely needs personal help and assistance twenty four hours a day. Then the auto response may not be for you, and a team of virtual assistants scatted around with the world working at different times is the key. You need to know your business and your customers requirements inside out and start making plans to automate or delegate whenever possible, whilst maintaining the quality of your connection. Step Three - Commit To Growth Everything that we are talking about here is long term, professional business thinking and not to be done on a whim. You know the kind of things, when you hear them on a podcast and then think "Ooh i better be doing this is guess" Bad idea on all levels. You have to truly want to be focused on scaling a business as if you haven't planned to do this from the start then you will encounter pain in the transition. You will need to break a lot of things, and then rebuild stronger and that isn't easy for sure. So ask yourself and keep on asking yourself "Why do i want to grow and scale my business?" Is this an ego metric whereby you feel that you aren't a success as you only need ten clients per year, and spend most of your time walking the dog, or sitting in pubs. We refer you back to earlier in the content whereby you have to define your personal values as to what you want to get out of your business. If you are perfectly happy with where you are financially and lifestyle wise then keep thing as they are and ignore the scaling a business urge. However if that isn't you set it as your major goal and focus of the next few months and i promise you you will never look back. Step Four - Never Stop Asking Are You Doing Enough For The Customer? Many business make the mistake of getting to a certain point and then resting on their laurels. Remember Blockbusters and its massive decline when streaming came into force. Most kids nowadays cant imagine why anyone would have driven to the video stores, spent ages choosing a film, only to then watch it, rewind it and then drive it back to the store. Yeah, even for me who was well versed in the back and forth of video consumption wonders why we put up with it. But put up with it we did, until we didn't have to. The same is with your business, are you operating like you always have done and aren't interested in changing as it has always worked well for you. Well i can promise you that when it comes to businesses and organisations who are amazing at scaling a business the key element to them is their willingness to change. You need to be keeping one eye on the consumer, one eye on the market place and one eye on the changing tides of technology otherwise scaling a business wont be required anymore. You simply wont have a business to scale as that ship has sailed, and it has taken all your customers with it too. Thanks for reading or listening to the Join Up Dots podcast giving you the first four steps to scaling a business. Remember everything takes time, but having a plan in front of you is so much easier than simply trying to make things up as you go along.