When you scale your business, it’s simply referring to meeting the demands of more clients by doing less or the same amount of work. For service-based businesses this usually means moving away from one-on-one client work and for product-based businesses, it means leveraging your marketing and production capacity to produce more at a lower unit cost.
Scaling is being set up for growth that won’t impact the time you spend on it. Also think of scale rulers: each 1cm represents 1m. So, with the same effort you can increase your income by a larger factor.
Sounds easy, right? But the issue is that there’s so many ways to scale your business that it becomes confusing. The approach that one person takes to scale their business, isn’t necessarily the right way for the next person.
So, let’s have a quick rundown on some of the ways that you can scale your business and whether it’s the right option for you.
Automation
Think about all the touchpoints that you have in your business that doesn’t involve servicing your clients. These are the opportunities that you have to automate processes to save you time and be able to serve more clients with the time that you do have available.
Some examples include:
- Using templates or a system to automate onboarding questionnaires, invoices, contracts and terms and conditions.
- Having a central place to record questions and answers for clients, so that they can help themselves first before coming to you
- Accounting systems that pull in transactions from your bank account
- Chat bots that can help potential clients find the answers they need
- Booking system that allows someone to find a time that you’re available, book, pay and automatically be sent video conferencing details
Whilst all these options may include a cost and an investment of your time to set up, not only will you free up time in the long run, but it increases your perceived professionalism too.
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is a great way to scale your business if you’re looking for more time to concentrate on making sales and bringing in new clients.
This is the option for you if you find that there’s tasks in your business that you dislike doing (hello procrastination), that aren’t in your zone of genius or that simply don’t make sense for you to be spending time on.
It can be difficult to find the right person to outsource to. And sometimes it may need to be more than one person to ensure that all your needs are being met. Some ideas on where to start with outsourcing day-to-day tasks include:
- Bookkeeping
- Social media management
- Virtual assistant
And then there’s the option of outsourcing a particular area of expertise to create accountability and focus for your business as you scale, such as:
- Business coach
- Strategist
- Facebook ads expert
- Wealth coach 😁
You’ll need to spend time refining and documenting your processes so that it’s easy for team members to follow and complete the required tasks. But once again, this time invested up front will be well worth the time that you save in the future.
Agency
An agency is about building a team who do what you do. This allows you to take on more of the same work you’re currently focusing on
This option has an added layer of complexity to outsourcing as using your team members are brought on as staff, not contractors. Therefore, there’s a higher training and hiring cost to factor into your scaling. An agency is not for you if you don’t like managing people.
One to many
This option to scale your business could include a range of alternatives such as:
- Courses delivered live or evergreen
- Membership
- Group coaching
One to many scaling often includes a launching portion, so could be considered time consuming and intense. You’ll need to be prepared! But you do get to impact a greater number of people, at a lower cost for your clients.
Digital products
Scaling using digital products is a great way to use your knowledge and turn it into passive income. You could choose:
- Evergreen courses
- Digital downloads
- eBooks
This is about ‘earning money whilst you sleep’ but there’ll always be requests for refunds or technical glitches that you’ll need to deal with.
As you can see, there’s so many different options to scale your business. I encourage you to not be swayed by the latest trend or what your business friends are doing as it may not fit your values or strengths. Try and avoid that FOMO on purchasing a big course in one of these scaling options and instead look inside to what’ll really work for you and your life.
I am running a Workshop on Friday August 19th with more detail on the scaling methods, how to chose, what numbers you need to think about. (A replay will be available for a limited time) It includes a free follow up consult with me and early bird tickets are only $19 + BF (prior to 12/8) or $35 + BF from the 12/8. = Tickets available here.