How to Scale Your Business and Exit

If you’re looking to scale, you need to prepare yourself and your company for success. Proper research and planning will ensure that your business can grow without worrying about being needed again. You can fertilize the seeds that will then sprout and grow uninhibited. You’ll have the right funding, plans, systems, processes, technology, and partners. Most importantly, you’ll be able to exit successfully.

What scaling means

Scaling a business is necessary for all multi-million-dollar companies. It’s not just a fancy word that high-tech corporate people use, scaling can be a real meaningful change that keeps your business running. Scaling means being able to handle the extra demand without losing profit. It means that you can maximize profit and maintain cash flow with less effort.

Scaling also involves a new ability to respond. When you adapt to new practices and a changing industry, you’ll need to take the effects into account.

Core Values

Establishing your core values is vital to scaling your business. In an industry where everything can be up for debate, your core values are what sustains your business before growth. When you lack core values, your team becomes discouraged, your message is lost, and a cohesive corporate culture is nowhere to be found. Production weakens, and profits creep away.

According to Deloitte’s research on mission-driven companies, they have 30 percent higher rates of innovation and 40 percent higher levels of retention. Happier employees also tend to beat the competition by 20 percent.

Values need to be aligned with core human principles like gratitude, empathy, accountability, and effective communication. Reinforcing these values helps your business grow and strengthen. When everyone is aligned with these values and sees themselves as passionate, authentic, and curious, then the culture thrives.

Vision

Your vision is your big picture. This is where you connect long-term goals with short-term actions. Break down your goals into time periods. Where do you want to be in 1 year, 3 years, and 10 years? Get a piece of paper and write a stream of consciousness in the present tense, as if everything is happening now. Define where you want to go and then align your strategy with 4 action steps to reach each goal.

Scaling Up Your Business With Confidence

Employee Numbers

An expanding business needs a platform to hold it on. That’s where a substantial workforce comes in. This is the team building phase, where your team members are properly equipped to deal with large and small tasks. The tasks will become complex over time and grow in number, so you’ll need to find more people as you go along. You can hire recruiters to find the best people out there for the job.

In the growth period, you’ve probably already brought on extra staff. The balancing act then becomes how to run a tight ship while bringing on new experts. The best model is when you have a few professionals who really care at the top and who get things done.

Setting collective and individual goals as a team is important in driving intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It’s also critical to have everyone know their role and how they provide value to the company. When employees feel that what they’re giving is acknowledged and helpful, they’re more likely to produce better and more efficiently.

Aligning values and goals between the company’s decision-makers and top talent is paramount to smooth sailing. When everyone is heading towards the same overall goal, operations run smoother, and work culture becomes functional on its own. For more inspiration on what makes a great company run smoothly, check out Jim Collins’ bestselling book, Good To Great.

Tracking Business Outcomes

Knowing of all issues and constraints that are holding the company back.

Knowing all of the businesses’ issues and constraints can help you move forward. It’s important to analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) to find what’s making the most impact and what’s hurting your growth. One example of a KPI is “amount of new customers per month”. Another one could be “online visitors per month”. Most importantly, tracking income and expenses helps to provide transparency with cash flow. Knowing and tracking your KPIs on a chart can maintain accountability between who is responsible for what.

Intention

It’s important as you grow to recognize that your business is not just there to make money but also to make money long term. How do you increase revenue and market share over time? While acquiring more attention and customers, you’re potentially earning more money and customer loyalty. This can hold its own for a few years.

When it comes to scaling, your focus becomes less so on revenue and more on how you’ll be able to stay in the game. What’s the competition and how do you stand out? How can you become an industry leader that people look up to? You do this by finding what makes you unique, not trying to be like anyone else, and really understanding who your customer is and what they want. They’re your best PR people.

Making Changes to Workflow

Making changes to workflow comes with the territory as you begin to take on more clients and the orders pile up. Efficiency is key here as you will need to delegate more tasks out and promote some team members to pick up the slack and act as guides for others.

Scaling is also about optimizing your workflow as well as seeing the long-term goal and the big picture. How can you maximize productivity without minimizing profit or employee satisfaction? Your team needs to be on the same page, care about the company and see its own value inside the company.

Having the right processes installed in your company can help things run smoothly and efficiently. If you need to take on more technical applications or workflow systems, then do so. Analyzing where things are slowing down, you can see what sort of technical or organizational solutions you need.

Scaling Toolbox

To scale effectively, you’ll need the proper team, the proper tools, and the proper communication map to have everyone on the same boat, even if they’re not physically on the same boat, i.e., remote workers. Let’s dig in.

Who are your crew members?

It’s simple: Build to sell your company. Continuing with the ship metaphors here, successful scaling efforts are beyond the average business plan. It’s also your special skills that you can bust out when you’re feeling invincible. You and your team need to have the proper outlook on your trajectory to fully grow. It’s not just you who’s in your business, it’s your crew members, too. They make the boat function and get from point A to point B. They can either do it with a smile on their face or give up when the weather gets tough. No coasting here, folks. Meet your team:

Customer support

Efficient yet empathetic, detailed yet proactive, your support team is your ally when it comes to customer service. They’re essentially the face of the company. They’ll need to understand what the customer wants and needs, and even anticipate their wants and needs. They’ll need to be accessible, ideally 24/7, and from any channel–phone, email, chat, etc.

Strong IT personnel

Your IT systems are going to need to be strong and supportive in the back end and the front end. Get the best experts on the scene to install new software and hardware. When customers or employees are dealing with tech issues, these IT warriors will come out and fix them fast to avoid customer dissatisfaction or productivity.

Marketing and Sales

It’s what comes from all the work behind the scenes: marketing, PR, and sales. This is what you need to promote your brand to continue to push sales. This will continue to drive your revenue which will continue to keep your boat afloat. A great marketing and sales team is truly valuable. Especially salespeople who can find leads and close deals with reliability and efficiency.

Marketing Strategy

What’s your marketing strategy? Ideally, any member of your team can clearly and succinctly provide a one-sentence response to this question. It all comes down to this: is your market strategy driving growth in revenue and gross margins? If so, you’re on the right track. If not, take the time to see what’s not working and see where some of your platforms need help. Utilize all touchpoints on the customer journey, take advantage of all social media channels, build your mailing list, and create your personal voice.

Have Enough Cash Before You Go

Having enough money is really crucial to keep your boat running. Business operations come down to this solid question: Do you have the cash? Scaling doesn’t need to take on huge investments, but it does need to be able to cover costs. Securing funding and maintaining it can include taking out business loans, lines of credit, and business credit cards.

What’s the endgame?

You’re leaving your company, but before you do, you need to envision the big picture. Where do you see your business down the line? What’s your target revenue? What’s your market share and where do you want it to be?

Your endgame scenario is your lighthouse at the end of the sea. Make a plan and decide on what to do when you cash out. Have a clear vision for yourself, your employees, your stakeholders, and your partners so everyone can walk away happy.