Are you ready to make more money with your work-from-home business? We’re going to give the steps to scale your business, so you can bring in more cash!
Whether you’re a blogging business with affiliates, an e-commerce store selling products, or a mixture of both, there are key steps you can take to move your business forward without sacrificing all your time.
Below is your go-to guide for easily scaling your business so you can make more money without losing your sanity.
Scaling Your Business vs. Growing Your Business
Like many new entrepreneurs, I used the terms growth and scaling interchangeably. When you grow, you scale and vice versa, right? In fact, in the entrepreneurial world, they hold two very different meanings.
How is scaling different from growing, and which one should you focus on?
Here are the primary distinctions between these two terms:
- Growing your business often increases revenue and resources but can also increase the owner’s workload. You’re getting new clients or new requests for products but are working more than ever to keep up with demands.
- Scaling your business is more strategic. It increases your revenue faster than your expenses and resources and helps create a sustainable work-life balance. Also termed “sustainable growth,” scaling produces optimal results, requiring fewer resources and less effort while increasing product demand or client intake.
A business, for example, might scale using an email marketing system that sends one email out to over 20,000 people with one click. Minimal effort, maximum impact. Processes that have the maximum impact like this but require the same effort are deemed scaling.
Growing and scaling are both important in business; the differentiating factor here is that scale is done by increasing profits without taking on significant costs.
Below we cover exactly how to do this.
When Should I Scale My Business?
One of the perks of being a business owner is that you decide when your business is ready to move to the next level.
Scaling your business will be a personal decision and will take a little bit of planning. Essentially, if you’re ready to move your business to the next level (think outsourcing a team, expanding products, or operations), then you’re ready to scale.
While there is no specific path to take for successfully scaling your business, the actionable steps below will help you to start scaling your business so you can begin making more money.
Here Are the Best Tips for Scaling Your Business
1. Focus on Your Core Audience
Understanding your target audience is key to scaling your business. Here are a few critical components in nailing down your ideal customer (aka your core audience):
- Choose your target market. Remember, if you sell to everyone, you will sell to no one. Think about your business and who you want to serve with your products or services. It could be women, men, parents, etc. By choosing a specific audience to target, you’ll create products, messaging, and branding that resonate with them.
- Message your products and services well. Ensure that your products or services communicate the benefits to your ideal customer.
- Remember your brand and business culture. As you grow your business, remember to stay connected to your brand, company culture, and audience. Your audience will come to you for your business, not for someone else’s idea or voice.
2. “Fire” Yourself from Doing the Little Things
Outsourcing is crucial for scaling your business. It’s the simple way of asking for help when you know you need it. When I got started, I did everything in my business, from emails to social media posts and more. As I set my sights on scaling my business, I knew it was time to release some of those smaller, albeit still necessary, tasks so that I could get back to doing the things I absolutely love to do in my business.
Some smaller tasks you may consider outsourcing include:
- Email marketing
- Creating schedules
- Project management
- Social media posts
Getting back to the things you love to do in your business can not only propel you forward faster, but it also allows you to hand off those other tasks to an individual who might be able to perform them more efficiently. Here are some spaces where you can look for new talent when building your very own team:
- Fiverr
- Facebook Groups
- Craigslist
- Fancy Hands
Just as a heads up: Some of the platforms above will charge you a fee for posting a job. Personally, I’ve had some of the best experiences outsourcing directly from Facebook Groups. I simply put an ISO (in search of) posts in specialized groups. I found some of the best individuals to outsource smaller tasks to that way.
3. Create Systems That Scale
Creating systems is another essential step in scaling your business. Mapping out a list of things you can delegate will help you to move your business forward.
There are different systems for different stages of your business. For example, in the beginning, you might find that creating an outline or calendar for how you’ve managed things in the past for implementation by your team would be helpful.
A reliable system could also mean investing in a program to create timelines and a better way of organizing projects.
Essentially, these systems need to work for your business’s tempo and flow, which will vary from business to business.
Below are some examples of organizational systems you should investigate to help organize your business while you scale:
- CRMs: Customer relationship management systems are great for organizing projects, instantly communicating with your team, and more. I personally love Asana or Slack for their ease of use and more.
- Contracts & Invoicing: I went through a number of different invoicing and contract systems before I found one that fit. There are all-in-one programs that offer everything from contracts to invoicing and payment options all built-in. Dubsado and Honeybook are two of the most popular right now.
- Bookkeeping: Bookkeeping is another area you may want to delegate but definitely something you’ll need a system for. Quickbooks can easily track your revenue and expenses is essential in taking your business to the next level.
4. Cashflow for Scaling
Worried about cash flow when scaling your business? This was a concern of mine when I began thinking about the growth of my business. However, what I found out was that scaling strategically doesn’t necessarily mean doing everything at once.
Outsourcing smaller tasks slowly and focusing on new clients to cover those costs is how I got started.
You can continue moving in this direction until you’ve built enough revenue through your business to cover an entire team and the other systems you need to organize as you scale.
Depending on your business, there might be circumstances where you need to make extra capital as you move forward.
Any one of these suggestions will work, but they need to be the best fit for you and where you are within your business!
- Working Capital Loan: PayPal offers a business working loan that can work for businesses that are starting off and looking to scale. You pay this loan off every time you get a payment via PayPal.
- Conventional Business Loan: Check local banks for small business loan opportunities.
- Small Business Grants: The Small Business Administration features grants and loans for small businesses and can be a great way to get some extra capital as you scale your business.
For more financial funding ideas, check out this post.
Growing, Scaling, and Succeeding
Moving your business forward in a strategic way will help you continue serving your clients and increase your profits while helping you maintain a business and life you love.
As Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, famously said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
Scaling your business requires a bit of trial and error, but at the end of the day, your business will thrive because of it.
Remember to consistently stay in tune with your business as you grow. The heart of your company is you, and the more you connect back with your customers and team, the faster you’ll scale and succeed at doing so.
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