The idea of scaling your business is of course far more exciting and appealing, than growing your business. The latter being an increase in your income at the same rate that you’re able to add business resources. Whereas scaling results in exponential growth from what you’ve already built. According to McKinsey 22% of Companies launched in the past 10 years have successfully scaled. Scaling your business should be a key objective of any Business Owner as two-thirds of a new business’ value is created in the scaling up phase.

Here are some important ideas to support you to scale successfully:

But before you start scaling your business you need to be sure you’re Business is ready for it. The Startup Genome Report investigated over 3,200 high growth tech startups. The findings revealed that over 90% fail, in most cases due to self-destruction rather than competition. But perhaps the greatest insight was that 74% of startups fail due to premature scaling.

Recognising what stage in it’s “life cycle” your business is, is critical. Like human life cycles, each stage requires different levels of nurture and kinds of support. Each comes with its own challenges and pleasures. Different names are given to these stages, but here’s an easy way to understand them

• “start up” exciting, busy moments of pride and joy but very little profit in return (if you’ve had a baby much the same). More times than not your really just self employed, more than you have an actual business. Life is a seesaw between get business and doing the business.  
• “stand up” you’ve started to get some traction and have employed a few people to help you in the business. Your business is starting to take shape but it’s is still very dependent on you and money still seems to go out quicker than it comes in. If the start up phase was a see saw you’re now on the merry-go-round.
• “Shape up” at this stage you have eliminated the chaos and started creating systems, processes and routines that support your business. You’ve managed to build a consistent cash flow in the business and you have a leadership/ managerial team on whom you can depend.
• “Scale up” You’re able to take what you do and expand – volumes/  geographically/ different products/ new markets, using your current systems, processes, resources, with minimum further investment.
• “Mature phase” starts to resemble more of a corporate than a privately owned Business.
• “Innovation or Decline Phase” only 20% of 3rd generation Companies survive and only 0.5% of Companies are around for 100 years

Once you’ve built a firm foundation for your business ie cash flow is at least relatively predictable and stable, profits are on the up, you consistently deliver the quality that you promised when you promised it and  you have a good team managed by a competent leadership team, you might well be ready to scale.

To ensure that you scale up successfully remember

• The basics have never been more important, you have more to lose and your businesses has far more complexities than it has ever had – be very clear as to your 5 year goals and your plan to get you there. This should include your 12 month and quarterly goals. Don’t get distracted by new shiny objects. Double down on your key revenue drivers, thorough test new products/ markets BEFORE you go all in. You can have everything, just not now, you have to stack it up.
• Make sure your business is run by systems (which are documented and clearly understood by all), let your people run the systems.
• Pay close attention to your numbers which give you straight up facts as to how well you’re doing vs what you planned to do.
• Don’t even start thinking of investing in further lead generating activities until you have ensured that you are retaining 100% of your ideal customers. Lead generation will cost you money so you want to ensure that you get the best return on investment from it, which means the longer a customer stays with you and the more they spend with you the better your return. In fact go a step further - what can you do to make your existing customers raving fan who are doing your selling for you.
• Have at least 10 lead generating strategies that are consistently feeding your business with prospects that are converting into A grade customers.
• To win the A league you have to have A league players. Use a thorough recruitment process to find, select and on board them. Remember if you are not an expert in a certain field, let’s say like digital marketing, you’re not in a position to train anyone up, it will just be the blind leading the blind, hire someone who is the expert and knows more than you.
• Have Monthly, weekly, daily meeting rhythms and routines that ensure transparency and accountability.
• Have a network of people who challenge and expand your knowledge, your thinking and who inspire you. Invest in yourself.