Growing vs Scaling
Growing and scaling a business can be challenging, but essential if you want to build a successful enterprise. Understanding the difference between growing and scaling is key to knowing how to move your business forward.
Business growth is when your company expands without any changes to its core building blocks, such as revenue and customer base. This could include adding new customers, expanding services or products, hiring more staff, investing in new technology or upgrading existing infrastructure. The goal is to increase sales while maintaining the same level of customer satisfaction and quality service. In other words, the goal is to become bigger but not necessarily better.
On the other hand, business scaling involves making significant changes within your organization for the purpose of becoming more profitable and efficient. Unlike business growth which focuses on expanding operations, scaling requires taking an honest look at all aspects of your operation from marketing strategies to processes and systems. It involves finding ways to make more money with fewer resources by streamlining costs and improving efficiency. Through creative problem solving, management teams can create cost effective solutions that will allow them to maximize their resources while still providing high levels of customer service.
There are 3 levels of scaling you need to have in place in order to do so effectively:
Streamling
This is “trimming the fat” in your biz. It’s letting go of anything that isn’t working or making you money and focusing on money-making activities and services. Do you have a service you love but no one buys? Find a way to repackage it or scrap it all together. This part is being honest with the money you’re bringing in - and what’s going out - and being savvy.
2. Systems
Set up a system for how you can bring on more clients without adding more work. For me, it’s using Dubsado for my Client Management Tool and automating a lot of my client processes so I can focus on doing the actual work and NOT focus on a lot of the back and forth that comes with branding and website design. Systems can include: Project management tools, client relationship management, a way for time-tracking, and more.
3. Support
I view this as internal business support and external support. For internal support that would be the help you have in your business such as a VA, an OBM, a designer, etc. and building up your team to help you as you scale. External support is a coach or mentor to help give you guidance and clarity as you move to the next level. I believe both are incredibly important, but for scaling, I recommend a coach or mentor first who can really help you see things differently or give you perspective as you take this next step.
Understanding the main difference between business growth and scaling is crucial for entrepreneurs who are looking for ways to build a successful service-based business – it’s important for business owners understand which approach they need take in order optimize their business model while being conscious of potential risks associated with each strategy at every stage during implementation process.
I had a great conversation with the amazing client systems strategist, Sabrina Avellan, over on Instagram LIVE where we talked all about how we’re scaling our service-based businesses. Listen in!
One piece of streamlining that is imperative as you’re scaling is a website that works FOR you 24/7.
You cannot afford scaling your business without it. That includes making sure your site is displaying your opt-ins to grow your email list, that it is clearly laid out for new visitors so they can easily hire you (cha-ching) and showcase your personality and expertise. If this vital piece of the puzzle is missing, it will be very hard for your business to grow to the level that is possible and I wanna help!
Reach out and let’s connect and talk about how we can scale your business in 2023.
