Before you can thrive, you must build a business that works for you
We support Entrepreneurs all over the map, quite literally. If you haven’t had a chance yet, look at our Entrepreneur's Roadmap. We based the roadmap on the different stages we know you’re going to go through on your way to becoming a thriving business. Getting to the Thrive stage is our ultimate goal from day one. We’re going to start by reminding ourselves where we’re headed:
Thrive = Where a balanced life and sale-ready business is. This is where vacations, weekends and tech-free Thursdays exist.
Thrive is a real place, and this roadmap is designed to help you identify how far (or near) you are to this stage, and what next step you need to take to get there. Knowing where you are helps us to equip you with all the right tools and expertise along the way.
This blog post is dedicated to those who have identified they’re at the Scale Stage.
But first...
Are You Really at the Scale Stage? (Be Patient If You're Not)
If you’ve identified your business is ready to scale, then the picture looks a little like this:
- So far, you’ve had this amazing business idea, launched it, figured out your core product or service and put processes in place to sell it in a repeatable manner.
- At this point, you have a good business, but it’s not big enough yet to really cover off the fixed costs of running it and start seeing some profit.
What may seem like an unprofitable business at this stage, only requires scale of size and of revenue volume to become profitable. But jumping to this stage too quickly, without setting good foundations can be really challenging.
The scenario we often encounter is this: The business owner broadens the scope of what they’re selling in order to scale up the business, without having nailed their core product or service by building processes around it. This is the “Okay, I’m selling stuff! I’m going to sell as much as I can!” mindset. The business may grow in size quickly, but it won’t have the infrastructure for sustainability. You’re likely to:
a. Build on top of yourself by putting too much work on your shoulders.
b. Build an intense work environment where people only want to deal with the owner and your team can’t do the work they’re employed to.
Or both. Or, the worst case scenario:
c. Sink the business completely - We have seen that happen.
Don’t jump to scale, work towards it.
If you feel like you haven’t quite set the stage for scale yet, go back to the foundations. Spend more time ensuring you have repeatable processes for the way you attract and service your customers. Look at hiring for key positions that you know are important, but don’t have time for.
When the foundations are set and the time comes to scale, then you can push to get to the size you want, so you can be profitable long term and begin to work yourself out of the business.
Continual Improvement is the Key to Scaling Up
When the time comes, you’ll have a nice process manual or project management software. A central hub that says ‘this is how we do things here’.
Putting processes in place doesn’t mean the job is finished. One of the most important aspects of scaling up is maintaining and continually improving those processes. Maintenance is often overlooked, but it’s so important. If you aim to take yourself out of the business, you need a business with the stability and continuity to thrive without you.
Tips to ensure you keep building:
- Have regular meetings - uncover the weak spots in your processes so that you can find smarter ways to do things. Look at areas you can automate to increase efficiency. Then systemize the efficiencies!
- Ask for feedback from all of the team - When you’re all fired up to get processes documented left right and centre, there’s a danger you could create a process document from your perspective without involving the key people in the process chain. Ask for feedback from everyone in the team to make sure systems are accurate and methodical.
A little over 2 years ago, I attended a conference that covered the book Traction. When I came back I instituted a weekly team meeting that covered (among other things) “issues”. Issues are put into a Slack channel by team members who feel any friction throughout the week. During the meeting we go over each issue in the channel, discuss it in detail and come up with an action plan to correct it.
After 2 years of doing this (over 100 sessions and probably twice as many issues), we are stronger than ever. The team feels empowered to correct any friction they see and our customers benefit from our improved systems. We credit this one change in our routine with helping us grow the business without breaking it.
How to get to the next stage
People often ask us how big a business has to be to get to this point and move towards thriving. Do you need to be a five thousand dollar business? A million? Five? Twenty five? What size do you need to be to see real profitability?
It’s hard for a business to hit this stage, and create a business that is fit to sell without generating at least a million dollars in sales. It can be done in a smaller range, but it all depends on your goals as an owner. If you want to be very involved in the business long term, this can be a lower number.
In order to really build your business to sell, find ways to move yourself out of the day to day operational tasks. You want to try and move into more of a strategic role where you’re overseeing the business. Get the right people in the right seats, so that your team can take care of sales, marketing, and delivery without you and focus on finding good managers to take care of each area of the business.
This is where true profitability happens.
Now that you have a grasp on what’s needed to move forward, it’s time to acquire the tools! Take a look at our services, better yet, reach out and book a consultation.
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