Episode 6

Are You Ready To Scale?

And you ready to Increase Your Business's Profit Margins And Efficiency that comes with scaling your business? we'll let you find out.

And you ready to Increase Your Business's Profit Margins And Efficiency that comes with scaling your business? we'll let you find out.

Scaling varies on the business that you’ve got.

For instance,

Our CEO Jesse Flores came up through a tech startup community in Atlanta.

They built software, which is fundamentally about building systems. So they talked about scaling all the time.

However, scaling is often a little bit harder for local businesses.  

Why is that?

Because there are more inputs required.

What does this mean?

As a tech guy, when you code a piece of software, you can sign up a fairly large number of people to use the same software, and all it costs you is maybe a little bit of server space.

But let’s say you’re an attorney, roofer, or a moving company , and you double or triple the number of customers, you’ve got to double or triple the number of resources to satisfy those customers. And those resources are not as easy to scale as say a server.

So What Does Getting Into The Scaling Phase Of A Local Business Mean?

When you start getting into the scaling phase of a local business, we’re starting to talk about $750,000 to a million in sales.

And again, it varies tremendously based on the industry. 

What should you have at this point as you get ready to scale?

  1. Clarity on who you’re serving.
  2. Clarity on your messaging and on the channels that are profitable.
  3. Systems in place to
  • Deliver your operations consistently
  • Attract customers consistently
  • Generate referral business consistently
  • Facilitate consistent follow-up.

It’s all about consistency, and as I said, in the very first episode, you can’t scale people you can only scale systems.

What’s Next Now That You’re Ready To Start Scaling Your Systems?

Often at this stage, one of the challenges is that a lot of business owners find it very difficult to ask for help.

But you’re at a stage where you need more help than you’ve ever needed before. You need good people.

Why?

Because you can’t do everything on your own.

What Is Going To Help You As You Get Ready To Scale?

  1. Hire a business coach
  2. Leverage the help of your employees
  3. Invest in more resources to facilitate you through the scaling process
  4. Scale your profitable advertising channels
  5. Invest more in SEO

1. Hire A Business Coach

Hire a business coach if you don’t already have one, and figure out how to surround yourself with people as you start learning how to ask for help and getting the feedback that you need to be able to grow to the next level.

2. Leverage The Help Of Your Employees

Start leveraging the help of employees, independent contractors, and vendors, and start evaluating their competence too.

Say you have an employee who was a great asset when you were only $20,000 in sales. But at this stage now, she or he is just not keeping up.

So as you scale, start evaluating your team to see whether these are the people that you can scale with.

3. Invest In More Resources To Facilitate You Through The Scaling Process

Below are a couple of resources to consider as you get ready to scale.

  • Literature
  • Your website 

Literature

There’s a book by a guy named Vern Harnish called Scaling up, I think that’s a phenomenal book. 

Gino Whitman’s book traction is excellent as well.

Both of these will give you some different frameworks for how to start scaling, your customer attraction, your operations, your HR and recruiting, etc.

Your Website 

Think about your website a lot more, not just as a place to convert prospects into customers, or to broadcast what you’re doing and showcase your work, but also making it a helpful resource for customers at this point.

You should probably have a couple of lead magnets, a few resources too that are available for someone who comes either through a referral channel or through an organic channel.

Since you’re now investing in SEO which is a great way to figure out how to solve some of their problems on their own. Which in turn decreases the cost of your help desk and the incoming phone calls.

4. Scale your profitable advertising channels

Scale the profitable advertising channels that you identified during the sale phase, and start to test new channels as well.

Revive some old ones too, that may have failed before for one reason or another. Hire experts to help you convert them from failed channels into profitable ones.

5. Invest more in SEO

From an SEO standpoint, focus on doubling down on your backlinks and your business blog and ensure that you’re starting to drive down the cost of customer attraction and that you’re getting organic traction at this point.

This is the best time to start investing in those kinds of services because cash flow is no longer the issue since you’re starting to extract more profit from the things you are doing.

And this is where a little investment in SEO in the present will drive down the cost over time.

Are you ready to scale?

Without forgetting constant communication with your email list every couple of weeks at most, I would recommend you to get those books scaling up and traction.

And I suggest you use your resources to figure out where the gaps are in your particular business. 

And again, scaling varies from business to business.