Today we will be looking at what you need to build your business, and importantly, how to increase your capacity for growth through scaling.

Now of course achieving business growth relies on making more money, which comes directly from sales. The more you achieve in terms of revenue, and the more you keep, equals the capacity you have for growth. It’s when you start to get ahead, and it begins to snowball, that it gets really, really exciting.

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.” Andy Rooney, journalist

Excitement aside, until you lay the foundations for scaling your business, your capacity for growth will be limited. True and lasting growth comes by building a scalable capacity for your business.

Scaling is about building structures and systems, and there are four key areas that you will need to master:

RUN A TIGHT SHIP:

Running a tight ship is absolutely vital to scale your growing business. When you are scaling and building out your infrastructure, there won’t be much cash to spare. As much profit as you can muster needs to be reinvested into the company, which means keeping a close eye on your expenses. It means making sure your overheads are as low as possible, and that you’re not indulging in too many excess expenses. It also means trimming back how you operate, so that people are not wasting the most valuable resource, that of time. Of course, it also means managing their workload so your staff are not burning out.

BUILD LEADERS:

Which leads me to the second area you need to consider. You need to build your leaders. Your team is your greatest asset in your business. Build up people who can reproduce the effect you have in your own business without you needing to be there. With a competent, confident team, you can let go of the reins a little. This a great way to duplicate success. However, it’s important that the people you are building up and training are confident and invested in working independently. Make sure they can deliver services to the same standard that you would. Empower them to keep on delivering your company promises to exemplary standards.

LOCK DOWN OPTIMISED OPERATIONS:

The third area we want to get right is locking down optimized operations. So often when I’m working with my clients, the beginning is about discovering all the wasted time and effort taking place already. There’s often a lot of fluffing around before we streamline things. Lots of resources getting lost and people doing things in different ways. Often doubling up on things and leaving gaps in other areas. So find the most effective way to do the work that’s required to be done. Locking those operations down and documenting the best process is essential if you want to scale effectively.

AUTOMATE SYSTEMS:

Finally, to increase your capacity to grow you must automate as much as you possibly can. The only tasks your human team perform should be the tasks only humans can do. Automating as much as possible means using software, websites and other platforms to start doing the work instead of people. This can be both cost effective and reliable, and will allow your business to scale as technology does its job. Importantly, it also removes needless pressure from your staff, who are already working so hard to get your business where you imagine it should be!

So there you have it, four important areas to look at for sustaining and scaling the growth in your business. By getting this right, you will see an improvement across your business, and that growth will keep on going.