Do you want to sell your business later? Or maybe you want to grow into other locations. You may even just want to free yourself up enough to go on vacation. If we want any of these things, we must scale our business so that we can reach these goals.
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When I say the word “growth”, many business owners have one of two reactions:
"Yes, of course, I want to grow my business! I want more customers now!” or “NO! Please, I cannot take on any more work. I am at capacity.”
Which side are you on? What I’ve found, from both sides, is there seems to be a misunderstanding about the concept of growth. Many people think to obtain sucess they must grow their customers, grow their team, or grow their profits. Now, this is true to an extent. But what people don’t factor into that growth equation is expenses. So even if you grow all of those things, if your expenses increase at the same rate, you won’t make a profit. This is why business owners must put more emphasis on scaling their business.
If you’re a person who says they are at capacity and cannot take on more work, odds are you grew in workload, but you did not scale your business to increase your capacity as well. You may even be experiencing a bottleneck that prevents you from delivering your product or service to customers. Or, maybe you’ve hit a plateau in your business and you’ve been at the same capacity for some time without any growth in any area. To learn more about the difference between growth and scale, watch our YouTube video explaining it in more detail.
There are a few reasons business owners should scale their business. The first reason is so that you can create a business that runs without you. So you can build your business in a way where you have enough team members to efficiently and effectively handle customers, you have enough managers to take care of the team members, and you have the time to focus on planning the future success for your business.
You may even want to sell your business down the line so that you can retire or create another business. Well, to prepare your business to sell, you must scale your business enough to make it sellable. No one wants to invest in a company that’s plateaued or isn’t profitable. They also don't want to buy a business that only works because of you the owner. They want to invest in a company that will be worth the investment. Your business has the capacity to do that. ANY business has the capacity to be successful or sellable. If you want that for yourself, I suggest the following four steps.
If you feel you’re constantly putting out fires in your business and you can never get ahead you must work to eliminate that. The first step in doing that is setting the vision for your company. Ask yourself, “What is your preferred future?”
Your vision should draw on the beliefs, mission, and environment of the organization. Once you define your vision, then you determine your mission (destination mastery). Once you’ve determined these things, you can then plan the roadmap with these as your destination. From there, you can dive into the financial planning of your business and get your cash affairs in order. This may require you to let go of things that are draining your business financially (money mastery). On the same note, you may have to let go of things that are draining your time (time mastery). Then you must assess the ways that you can improve the delivery of your product or serviced to customers and how you can get them to buy more, consistently (delivery mastery).
There are three keys to creating consistent and predictable cash flow:
This step is all about creating a commercial, profitable enterprise that works. We do this by systemizing our routines so that we can be more efficient in our business. Creating systems ensures that you are delivering the same amount of effort to get the same results every time. We can do this through the automation of routine processes or scripts for customer interactions.
Establishing systems means the business begins to operate more methodically. Routine tasks are systemized to ensure that best practices are leveraged for faster production, less rework, and better use of resources. Systems allow employees to run the business at a higher capacity.
Selecting the right people is just the beginning of building a successful team for your business. However, you cannot simply expect that your team alone will transform your business and take it to its next level of performance. You must create a winning team. In this article, we lay out the 6 keys that create a winning team.
If you’re struggling with any of these things or want to flush them out more, you’re in luck. These are actually the first four steps of our 6 Steps methodology that we teach twice a month in our monthly seminars. We cover these steps in more detail with more applicable strategies that you can apply to your business. Reserve your spot for our next event.
I am a certified Business Coach, providing business help, business advice, business coaching and mentoring services to successful and emerging business owners. I have a passion for helping businesses like yours grow and become profitable, so you, the business owner can enjoy the lifestyle you deserve.
As your Business Coach and advisor, I will help you deliver the results you desire using proven tools, methodologies and systems, tested and perfected over tens of thousands of businesses worldwide for over more than two decades. I will hold you accountable for your results and just like a sports coach, push you to perform at optimal levels. Let's schedule a complimentary Business Coaching session to get started.
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