Risks & Benefits of Scaling

"I want to scale my business!"

Nov 03, 2024

“I want to scale my business!” “I want to hire people!” “I want to expand my private practice to 8 states!”

Okay cool! But are you willing to put in the blood, sweat and tears that goes into this scaling?

I hear these types of statements often and of course I think that is great that business owners want to grow! However, I think we need to consider a number of things with potential growth.

Scaling a mountain? Scaling a business? Similar Concepts. They are both difficult!

When you are a solopreneur, you have your business and this is as unique as you are. There may be some overlap with other businesses in similarities in what you offer but it’s still very unique due to your experiences, personality and the value only you can provide.

Within this small business, there are systems, patterns, & connections.

There’s a sort of map to running your business whether you have written it down or not. And you are probably the only one who understands it.

You offer services or products

If there are individualized professional services involved there is even more uniqueness involved due to the relationships only you have built. You select the services or products based on what you are trying to accomplish and deliver with your business.

You use processes & systems to deliver your services

You have likely built processes and systems and shortcuts (that you haven’t written down) such as setting time boundaries, when to call clients back, business hours, email systems, and each of these connect out into the world and impact you and others. Please see this article concerning marketing maps for more about how your system connects with the world.

There can be potential failures within systems

There can also be potential failures within these business systems. Let’s take my coaching business for example. For a while, I was trying to build our brand, get our name out there. I was working to connect with potential coaching clients but there was a disconnect. I would post content, build our email list but then I failed to connect with our potential clients, or review what was or was not working, and this was where the system was broken. If someone signed up for our webinars or to receive a guide, I did not ask them anything about what they thought or how their business was doing. This was because I kept getting caught up in all the ‘to dos’ of business and failed to do the most important part which was building relationships and finding out what potential clients really need help with.

I had to fix that “kink in the hose” as Scott Perry often1 calls it in order to allow the business to flow again.

Within my own system there were failures and potential failures.

When you scale a business, and reach another level, you open your business up to potential growth and potential failures again

Looking at the weight of scaling is important with stepping forward into the unknown.

And how do you scale successfully?

In my opinion, no one can tell you exactly. We can support you on your path forward. We can provide assessments to help with predictions with taking steps forward but you won’t know fully until you step into the unknown and try something. And you need to know where you want to go in order to step out.

Scott Perry often says you need to know “where you are to get to where you want to go”

and

“what’s the step before the step?”

In this clip, my business partner, Wayne, describes the importance of having an attainable vision (aka the name of our company). We need to determine the “stepping stones” of where to go next and these stepping stones help our employees also learn those steps forward to help build the business.

Now building a map and a vision for your business is important for supporting the leadership

Now right now you are the leadership.

Do you have a vision for how you want your company to grow?
Are you willing to put in the effort to build your company further and to take it to the next level and to put in the time and effort to manage all the moving, more complicated parts of the system?
Have you determined a way to communicate your particular business map and systems to your leadership?

My business partner says something similar that you need to “have a vision.”

Now if that end result requires hiring employees and managing them or hiring someone to lead them, great!

But considering the costs and benefits are important and how it will impact your own resources including time and financial resources.

Here is another video from a community call with Wayne, myself and our friend

Elizabeth Walker

where we talk about the costs of hiring an employee, the costs that many business owners don’t consider.

So there are financial costs as we saw above, and there are also other costs such as the time it takes to teach the employee, the emotional aspects where it can be draining to explain concepts in detail to help the person learn the new thing and the patience that is involved, the intellectual weight of determining what needs to be taught and where the person is in the process of learning. Maybe guidebooks can be written and leaders can be trained to work smarter and not harder but it still involves resources.

So yes, I think it is great to consider scaling and growing beyond being a solopreneur, but I think we need to weigh the costs and benefits of this growth.