Steps To scale Your Business

 Two of entrepreneurs’ favorite topics are growth and scaling in business. The words are thrown around a lot, but the enthusiasm with which they’re used often outpaces the accuracy. Many people use these words to mean the same thing: A company getting bigger, gobbling up more market share, and making more money.

But there’s a crucial difference between growth and scaling in business terms, and it’s an important distinction to understand what really happens when businesses grow and what kind of growth you should be looking for.

If growth causes your company to stumble because of confusion, orders falling through the cracks, insufficient staff, miscommunication, not enough manufacturing or delivery capacity –you’re going to have unhappy customers. The manual processes that were fine when you were small but now won’t let you move fast enough. You’ll either be putting out fires or desperately trying to keep your head above water. All of which is stressful.

Scaling a business means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your company. It means having the ability to grow without being hampered. It requires planning, some funding and the right systems, staff, processes, technology and partners. 

Steps To scale Your Business

Think Big; Act Bold

Of course, again it’s of no value to just sit there and ‘think’ about it. You have to take bold action. Surround yourself with the right team, mentors and connections; build strategies to reach your ‘big thoughts’, then pull the trigger. As the British SAS live by; “He who dares, wins.” Ulukaya started with an abandoned factory, some old equipment and a dream. Eight years later, he’s the proud father of a $1 billion dollar yogurt business. Nicely done Hamdi. Thinking big and acting bold.

Build A Public Profile

Steve Jobs or Apple -- which has the bigger imprint on your brain? Even if your answer is Apple, it’s only by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin. Jobs was a master at creating a bigger than life public profile. You need to do the same. We no longer live in a B2B or B2C world. It’s people-to-people (P2P) and because you’re the leader of your company, other people (read: customers, investors, advisors, strategic partners) want to know you. I cannot tell you how many business websites I come across where you cannot find even the basic information on the founder/leader of the business. If this defines your approach, shame on you.

Work On Your Business, Not In It

Most struggling entrepreneurs I know fail in this one area more than others: they’re focused on the wrong things. Yes -- we must get the work done inside our businesses. And yes -- it’s important to focus on the details. After all, it’s small connected steps which get the climbers to the top of Mt. Everest. But here’s the rub -- if you don’t focus on the key activities which move your business forward in a strategic way -- you’re doomed to stagnate. Forever.

Grasp the importance of this point, get clarity on what core activities you need to be laser focused on as the leader and visionary, and then protect your boundaries around these actions. In other words, the house better be burning down for anyone to interrupt your actions of working on your business.