(Newswire.net — December 12, 2019) — When you are trying to build your business, one of the most common suggestions you’ll be given by industry experts is to scale up. While some suggestions are worth considering, others are misleading and have nothing to do with scaling a business. So, how do you ensure that you don’t waste time trying to chase the best strategies that will help you scale your business?
Well, you need to know a few facts about what it takes to scale business. To keep you on the loop, we’ll try to bust some popular misconceptions about scaling a business.
Let’s dive in.
Myth #1: Go Big or Go Home
Many people believe that scaling up a business fast is the key to success. While this belief may make some sense when you are a recording artist or professional athlete, it is not the best way to scale a long-lasting business. In fact, it can lead to the untimely death of your business.
Business growth cannot be forced. And while scaling is often considered to be an indicator of recent success in business, don’t be tempted to believe that there is a causal relationship between the two variables. Businesses that scale effectively are patient enough to strike when the timing is right.
Myth #2: You Need a Lot of Money to Scale a Business
Contrary to what most people believe, growing a business is different from scaling it. When you are growing a business, you need to invest more resources to gain more revenue. On the other hand, scaling is about increasing revenue without investing an equal amount of resources, allowing you to increase your profit margins instead of the size of your business.
If you have a web design business, for instance, hiring new team members to serve more customers is growing your business but not scaling it. One of the scaling options you can adopt is creating an online web design course. You’ll need to put some initial investment in developing and maintain the course but once it picks up, you will profit every time somebody makes a purchase without committing more resources. It is a smaller investment than trying to double your client load capacity while keeping your staff counts the same.
Myth #3: Scaling Eliminates Operational Stress
Many people tend to think that when they scale, things should become easier. And that by hiring more employees to help execute various functions and bringing more customers to increase sales, the strain on the business operations will decrease. This is never the case; growth comes with more responsibilities and greater complexities for all parties involved.
Myth #4: Some Businesses Cannot Be Scaled
Although some businesses may be easier to scale up than others, every business you can think of can be scaled—at least to some extent. Scaling is not only meant for startups. If anything, there are thousands of business owners around the globe in every industry imaginable that have registered the sustainable and rapid growth of their businesses.
Myth #5: Scaling Should Be Steady and Predictable
One of the things that any professional business coach can confirm is that business growth never climbs consistently. It is never a linear curve. Instead, it comes in spurts and plateaus.
You will come across several factors that are beyond your control and they will affect your growth curve, too. For instance, your main suppliers may go out of business, costing you clients, money, and your growth goals. Additionally, your local jurisdiction may come up with a string of unfavorable regulations that can disrupt most parts of your operations.
Put simply, it is very difficult to predict everything. Accordingly, it is crucial to know your growth levers (aspects that you can push or invest in to stimulate your growth) and comes up with the best strategies to mitigate the unexpected.
Bottom-line
A bigger percentage of the world’s most successful businesses have leveraged the scaling concept to grow steadily without overstretching their financial muscles. Your business can also do the same, particularly if you adopt the right planning.
Don’t let some of the above-highlighted myths keep your business from scaling and achieving massive growth. If you implement the right strategies, work smarter, and partner with the right people, you can scale your business and ultimately increase your profit margins while keeping your additional operational costs at a minimum.