Ali Hasan
When it comes to scaling a business, there’s no hard and fast rule on how to do it in the most sophisticated way. You can scale your business fast or you can scale it slowly as well. It all depends on you and how you want to do it. But you might have a question in your mind about what is the ideal pace for scaling a business and how does one scale his business?
Well this is quite a topic in itself and today we will uncover the best methods to scale a business. Starting and running a business is one of the most difficult and exciting things that you’ll ever witness in your life. After starting a business and gaining some traction, it makes perfect sense to scale it to the next level but beware as many entrepreneurs have failed miserably when it comes to scaling up.
While they failed to scale up, their businesses went bankrupt and they lost almost everything that took so much time, effort and money to build up in the first place. So what should you do in order to scale your business without losing your precious business? Follow the mentioned points to scale smoothly without any major hiccups.
Here are few points which will help you to scale your business. They are as follows:-
- Premature Scaling – There is a video on YouTube which explains the single biggest reason why startups succeed. When I saw the video in my feed, I thought that the reason might be having a good team, a new product or maybe a new business model but I was highly wrong.
The single biggest reason as to why startups succeed is “Timing”. If you scale at the right time, you could produce the maximum results. In simple words, please don’t scale your business when you aren’t ready for it. Premature Scaling is highly cancerous and you’ll do more harm than good.
Many companies have failed and gone bankrupt when they tried to scale prematurely. Don’t be one of them. When young entrepreneurs are building their new startup, they’re very eager to scale up and reach new heights but scaling when you’re not ready isn’t optimal and can damage your entire startup.
So it’s advisable that you should only scale your startup when it’s the right time. But how the hell will you know if it’s the right time to scale? Read along to point number 2 to know more.
2. Have the Basics – If you want to scale your business, then you need the basics which are basically 2 things. The first is “Systems and Processes” and the second thing is “Predictable Income”. Systems and Processes mean that most of the tasks in your business are delegated, automated or outsourced.
There should be a Standard Operating Procedure for each and everything and your employees must know what to do in case an issue arises. If this has been already achieved, then you have to focus on the next thing which is having a predictable source of income. If this hasn’t been achieved then you still need to work in your business.
If you’re scaling a business and you don’t have access to external funding from venture capitalists, then you have to work extremely hard to earn a predictable source of cash flow from the business itself. When you’re scaling up, you would require funds as you have to spend in various areas such as hire more people, advertise more or maybe acquire new tech to work more efficiently.
You can only scale up when you’re confident that your business is going to produce a predictable income every month. When this happens you can go out and scale up in proportion to the funds you have without thinking twice but for this to happen you should at least have all the systems and processes in place as well as have a predictable source of income which can sustain the scaling process.
When you started your business, you used to work on most of the business by yourself. But then you have to hire employees so that they can do some of your work and you have more time to think about the future of your business. This is a gradual process and you can’t do it in one stroke.
Initially you spend most of your time working in your business but then you spend most of your time working on your business. When you start spending more time on your business rather than in your business, then it’s the right time to scale your business as you have delegated, automated and outsourced some of the business activities to run independently.
3. Have a Vision – When it comes to scaling a business you must have a vision and a plan about how you will scale your business. If you have a million dollar business, then you can make it a 10 million dollar business but if you think big and have a grand vision, then you can also make it a billion dollar business or even a trillion dollar business.
When it comes to scaling up, always think big as it takes the same amount of effort to make $50,000 as it takes to make $1 million. How you scale up will depend on your plan and vision. Hence, think big but plan carefully and if possible have a team meeting where you can have a discussion with your employees about how you’re going to achieve this distinction and what are the things that everyone is responsible for.
Scaling up without enough planning can be extremely disastrous and this will result in you falling short of your audacious goals. Hence, decide about how much you want to scale up your business and then break down the goal by reverse engineering the process. Just because a company showed a 10x growth in 2 years doesn’t mean you have to do the same.
When it comes to scaling, I think it’s better to decide for yourself to which level you want to scale. It’s because if there’s a person who will think the best for you, it’s you. The more you scale your business, the more resources you would require. I think it’s better to scale your business in a sustained manner in the beginning, once you’re comfortable in your approach you can then aim for more and scale rapidly in the future.
4. Learn from the Process – If you have been successful in scaling up your business, then congratulations. It’s time for round 2 of scaling. On the other hand, if you have been unsuccessful in scaling up your business, then it’s time for you to learn the lesson as quickly as possible and move on.
Life will give you a lot of chances to succeed if you keep learning from them and keep adapting. As of writing this, I can say that I am an aspiring entrepreneur that failed in 3 businesses back to back but with all that failures, I got wise and now I am trying my level best to get it right with my 4th business.
This shows that if you keep on learning then you can possibly do anything, even scale a business successfully. So if you want to succeed, then all the best to you and if you have already succeeded, then more power to you.
Conclusion
Scaling a business is quite a tricky task in itself but if you plan accordingly and you know when is the right time to scale your business, then you can hit the jackpot and scale your business to new heights. I hope that your business may become the next trillion dollar company if you have read till here.
