221: Differences Between Growing And Scaling Your Business Whether You Are Starting A Business Or Side Hustle, A Solopreneur, Entrepreneur, Mompreneur, Freelancer, Bookkeeper, Virtual Assistant
221: Differences Between Growing And Scaling Your Business Whether You Are Starting A Business Or Side Hustle, A Solopreneur, Entrepreneur, Mompreneur, Freelancer, Bookkeeper, Virtual Assistant, Business Owner, Or Self-Employed
As a business owner, you want your business to be successful, and that may mean growing your business or maybe even scaling your business. There are many business owners who think that growing and scaling your business are the same, but in fact, there are some pretty significant differences. In today’s podcast episode, I am walking you through the differences between growing and scaling your business, as well as some of the major points you need to consider when you are ready to scale your business. While there is no one specific formula or steps to follow when you scale your business since every business is different, you will want to make sure you are aware of the common things to implement and consider when you are ready to scale. Having these items on your radar as you are running your business, whether you are a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper, or a virtual assistant or VA will help you as you progress your businesses growth and get ready to scale your business. By understanding the difference between growing and scaling your business, you’ll be able to strategically set your business for success. These tips are essential whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances; or doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document…
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Show Notes:
As a business owner, you want your business to be successful, and that may mean growing your business or maybe even scaling your business. There are many business owners who think that growing and scaling your business are the same, but in fact, there are some pretty significant differences. In today’s podcast episode, I am walking you through the differences between growing and scaling your business, as well as some of the major points you need to consider when you are ready to scale your business. While there is no one specific formula or steps to follow when you scale your business since every business is different, you will want to make sure you are aware of the common things to implement and consider when you are ready to scale. Having these items on your radar as you are running your business, whether you are a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper, or a virtual assistant or VA will help you as you progress your businesses growth and get ready to scale your business. By understanding the difference between growing and scaling your business, you’ll be able to strategically set your business for success. These tips are essential whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances; or doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document…
Welcome Back…When you started your business, did you have dreams that one day your business would be a huge success? What does that success look like for you? Many businesses have plans from the start to grow their business, but others want to take their business one step further and scale to another level of success. Having an understanding of what the difference between growing and scaling your business will not only help your business as you are growing, but it will help you to set your business up so that you are able to scale in the future.
I will start by explaining the difference between growing and scaling a business. Growing your business is when your business is increasing its revenues, but it is also increasing costs by utilizing more resources to handle the growth. Scaling, on the other hand, is when your business has the ability to grow your revenues at a faster rate than taking on or increasing your costs. You are able to bring in more money without incurring additional efforts or expenses. For example, if you are a personal trainer offering one-on-one training and you experience an increase in revenue of $25,000, you already have a full schedule of clients, which means that you will need to hire additional personal trainers to handle this influx of revenue for your one-on-one training. Your expenses will increase in proportion to your revenues which means your business has indeed grown, but it hasn’t scaled. Suppose, on the other hand, you were preparing your personal training business to scale. In that case, you may offer group training sessions where you could easily increase your revenues while maintaining your expenses since you could continue to provide the group sessions without hiring additional help. Being able to add additional revenue and increase the demands in your business while maintaining your costs will allow you to scale.
Scaling is part of growing your business, but it means your gains are greater than your losses, and you have improved profit margins. Ultimately, you want to make sure you have a business plan, a strategic marketing plan, and be able to forecast your future growth. You’ll want to have a plan in place with goals and milestones you’ll reach along the way. Create a budget for where you are now all the way through each goal you want to reach. You’ll want to make sure as you are scaling that you are consistently increasing your sales and your expenses are not increasing in proportion to your growth. Before you start, you will need to know where your business is right now and where you want the vision of your future business to be. Next, you’ll need to know how you will get your business to where you want it to be while staying true to your vision and purpose. You’ll want to have a sales strategy that is profitable, easy to repeat, and can ultimately scale. When you are scaling your business, you need to be ready to problem-solve and overcome any failures along the way. You need to use your failures as a way to improve your processes, have a positive mindset, and always be ready to pivot or change your strategy to achieve success. This is one of the areas that many of my clients want to work with me on in their businesses. Being able to utilize a failure to your advantage can be hard when you are running your business by yourself. It’s hard to not take a failure personally and see the possibilities and potential on your own. Together, my clients and I are often able to work through and overcome these failures in addition to finding solutions that continue to move their businesses forward and get them back on track. You need to have the right mindset, be committed to growth, and have the ambition to follow your plans to scale your business. Having a solid foundation is necessary before you scale your business.
First, let’s talk about the product or service you offer in your business. You’ll want to build your product or service, establish a market to generate sales, and then scale. If you have a service-based business or a business with little or no inventory and low overhead, it will be much easier to scale, but if you have a supply chain, make sure that they can keep up with your new demands when scaling and if they are unable, make sure you have an alternative or plans for your future scaling. Make sure that your product or service and the delivery methods of them are solid. If you need to make improvements, make sure you do this prior to scaling, so you don’t run into a huge problem down the road. Your onboarding system should be smooth while creating exactly the right experience for your customers. Listen to your customers, employees, and community and ask for feedback to see if there are any problems and fix them so that you can continue to have a positive customer satisfaction rate. Focus on your customer and be a leader in your industry to deliver exactly what your customer wants. You’ll often discover your business finds a niche that generates revenues for the business as you focus on specializing in that area. Take time to look at your business through the eyes of your customers. Go through every process that your customer goes through and ensure you are satisfied with the results. You never want to lose a customer due to the lack of customer service, and client retention will allow you to generate additional sales. It is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain existing customers.
You’ll want to make sure you are creating efficient processes for everything you do in your business to get more done in less or the same amount of time as you scale. Utilize technology whenever you can. You should have processes documented so that anyone in the business can complete them without needing instructions from others. This includes your customer support, IT and technology, marketing, and sales processes. Make sure you have a good communication system as well as a customer relationship management and project management or workflow automation system. Each of your processes should generate maximum productivity and should be standardized and repeatable. Make sure you test each of your processes to see if they will work on a larger scale. If not, look into solutions that will work and grow with you as you scale.
Lastly, make sure you have a team in place to help you scale. Hire or outsource your team strategically. Where do you need the most help? Where are your weaknesses? Chances are, when scaling; you won’t be able to do everything on your own. Think about the team you want to create and work with for not only sales but your vendors or other suppliers as well. You also want to make sure you have your finances covered, from your bookkeeping and understanding your financial statements to finding investors and financial institutions you want to work with. You want a team that you can work with to handle all of the major tasks in your growth stage and ensure they are ready to take on additional revenues without needing to add a significant number of additional team members to sustain the growth. Once you have an existing team that can handle future growth, you are ready to scale. Try to set your team up so that your business can run without you. This goes back to delegating and ensuring you have a team you can count on with processes that are documented. Always ask your team if there is a way to improve the process and be more efficient.
Although there is no one specific formula or set of steps to take to scale your business since every business is different, these common things to implement and consider when you are ready to scale will improve your success considerably. If you feel like you need additional help with your business finances, business strategy, or you find you are holding your business back with the wrong mindset and are unable to grow your business or scale your business to meet the vision you have for it in the future, let’s talk. Sometimes you just need someone from outside your business to look inside and help you see where you could take steps to improve.
Imagine having a system in place where you spend less time buried in paperwork and more time doing what you love. That’s where I help my clients. They are able to have proper processes in place, understand why they are following through with these processes, and they have more peace of mind when it comes to their business. Striking a balance between the demands of running a business and maintaining a fulfilling personal life is an art; it’s about creating an environment where you can thrive and support your lifestyle. By being proactive and setting up efficient processes, you can ensure a smoother, more enjoyable year-end, and you’ll be prepared to file any necessary filings with the IRS. By working with me, you’ll change more than just your bookkeeping processes. Like many of the clients I’ve worked with, you’ll go from not knowing how to get through all the stressful situations or being unprepared to being totally in control of exactly what you are choosing to get done at the time you want to have it accomplished by, all while knowing you are doing enough and you’re able to enjoy your business and your personal life. I help clients just like you with strategy, mentorship, and coaching. When you work with me, you’ll show up much more differently than you do today, and, after all, this is what you ultimately want in your life, right? You can be stress-free in both your professional and personal life. Come join me. When I work with clients throughout the year, they are able to reduce their stress and overwhelm, understand how to master their small business finances, develop solutions to grow their bottom line, and create a work-life balance they truly enjoy. I encourage you to take the next step by signing up for a free consultation where I’m going to teach you the first step in my process so that you can eliminate stress, overwhelm, or overworking in your professional or personal life while you continue to get done what matters so that you can live your life with joy, purpose and a more fulfilled life. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have; I’d love to help you on this journey. You can schedule your free consultation or sign up for a coaching session today at www.FinancialAdventure.com. As a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Life Coach, I can help you set goals and develop a plan that will allow you to lead a happier and more sustainable life in your business, career, or your personal life. I’m here to guide you through the financial aspects of your business as well as help you focus on the strategies you need to follow to reach the success you want to achieve in your professional or personal life and stay committed so that you can continue to keep pushing forward and relieve the stress, anxiety, or overwhelm you are currently feeling. Having an accountant and certified life coach like me can provide you with valuable insights and ideas to help you simplify your life, which enables you to go back to enjoying your professional and personal life. I work with business owners, accountants, and other financial professionals to create the actionable steps they need to take to ultimately achieve their goals while getting relief from the stress and overwhelm they feel from the pressure of owning a business, deadlines, and the workload they face every day. If you are struggling with this as well and would like some help developing a solution, help strengthen and maintain your emotional health, increase your well-being, create a more positive, happy, and joyful life, set and achieve your goals, and manage your relationships, I’d love for you to join me in my Balance Life Coaching program so that you can live a more purposeful life. Each week, we meet privately one-on-one, and you get to bring whatever is on your mind on any given week. I also have a daily coaching program where you can talk to me whenever it works best for you, 24/7, any day of the week. In either program, you get to work on your highest priority, whatever you want more of in your life, or if there is something that is weighing on you heavily that you need coaching on, and we’ll work through it together. Having a certified life coach like me helping you through all of this allows you to feel so seen and cared for, and the results are amazing. Everyone benefits when they work with a certified life coach. After every session, you feel energized, and you know exactly what to do for the day or week to come, and relief knowing we will meet again to go over anything that comes up after your session. You’ll gain self-awareness while you take each step toward your goals. The investment in either of these programs is an easy yes for you. I’ve set these programs up in the most supportive way. If you are ready to join the Balance Life Coaching program, you can go to www.FinancialAdventure.com and click on the work with me button. You’ll see the link to join as well as additional information about the programs. Sign up now. There are limited spots available for these programs due to the one-on-one aspect, and they do sell out. If the payment link is gone, you can get on my waitlist to join the programs when additional spots are available. I help people get results and live a more joyful life. I coach everybody on everything. I know there is something you want in your life, and I can help you get it. I know this is something you’ve been waiting for. I’ve been asked by many of my listeners to create these exact programs. The faster you get access to the program, the quicker you’ll see the possibilities available to you. I also have a risk-free guarantee. I believe so strongly that everyone benefits from coaching that when you sign up for the Balance Life Coaching program today, if for any reason you are not satisfied with your first session, you can send us an email, and we’ll refund you immediately. Are you ready to enjoy your life now? Why would you want to wait? Make this investment for yourself. Take the journey with me…make it happen for yourself. Ask yourself why you need this program in your life right now. Are you ready to make bigger, bolder, stronger life goals? I’m looking forward to meeting with you soon and digging deeper to see where you currently are in your business or career and start creating actionable steps so that you can reach your vision and goals for the future, not only in your business or career but also in your personal life. I’m ready to work with you, see all of your successes, and watch you thrive in your business or career while creating your best work-life balance. I’ll post links to this and other valuable resources for business owners and accountants where you are listening to this podcast.
And, you know I’m going to ask…what’s at least one thing you will take away from this episode that will help your business succeed and grow your bottom line? If you need some accountability, join our PRIVATE Facebook community and post your action item, we’d love to support you.
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