How to Scale a Business for Success?
What is business scaling? Using the analogy of a sinking boat with water pouring in from multiple locations, what’s your starting point for securing the boat? Which location or hole would you plug first?
Umm! You’ve got it! The biggest hole!
In his business book, The E-myth, Michael Gerber says it this way, “Every frustration you experience in your business is due to the lack of a system!”
Using our winning business plan analogy of a sinking boat, it’s not too hard to imagine the water pouring into the holes in a boat as points of frustration in your “business ship.”
So, how do you stop the frustrations in your business from continuing to pour in? You start by, plugging one hole at a time, by implementing one system at a time, until all the holes are plugged. This will ensure your “business ship” is water tight and, consequently, frustration free.
Envision having a written system for every operation or process performed in your business, until running like a well-oiled machine. More importantly, with systems in place, your business will also operate smoothly, whether you were there or not.
A Valuable Intangible Asset
What value you would have, owning an Operation Manual for an almost frustration free business; a business in which you didn’t have to be onsite for it to continue to operate and prosper. In the business consulting world, this is also referred to as “owning a business” and NOT just having a very difficult job, one with all the usual frustrations and responsibilities of business ownership.
Now visualize, with this valuable operations manual in your possession, duplicating any part of it, or all of it, at any time… i.e. duplicating a Daily Routine Checklist and Job Description for a certain position in your company, and giving it to a new hire that does the same job. No need to start from scratch, because as you grow through business scaling, you duplicate your existing system for each new hire.
Business Scaling via Multiple Locations
Now picture setting up another business location to expand your market. With your valuable Operations Manual in, growth, is not a problem. Because, all new locations will operate using the same Operations Manual as the first frustration-free business.
If this sounds like a big box franchise type business, you’d be right! In short, that’s how they get so big! They simply rubber stamp one location from another, with all systems up and running opening day. When business expands at a rapid rate, there’s no need to panic! With duplicating their written systems, growth is just not a problem.
Business Scaling for success by systematization is what “big boys and girls” do.
Did I mention? Great Systems Work!