What do you need to scale a business? You need to have fundamentals in place.

You need to be able to make sure your business is growing and has the fundamentals of processes and workflows, including a proven revenue engine:

• What market strategy turns a cold prospect into a warm prospect?
• What strategy takes someone from a lead to a close?
• What strategy makes sure a client is a successful customer?

These are the key elements of the revenue engine that’s needed for scale.

But wait a second . . .

What’s the difference between scale and growth?

Many people think scale and growth are the same things.

Not so fast.

They don’t mean the same thing.

Scale and growth have fundamentally different operational and financial requirements.

“Scale” means adding revenue at an exponential rate while adding resources at only an incremental rate.

“Growth” means you’re adding resources at the same rate you’re adding revenue.

Further, “Growth” means that you’re moving forward from the early stages of your business of proving the product. You are nailing down your revenue recognition. The early days of growth are all massive action with massive investment while building out marketing and sales delivering customer success.

Without growth, you don’t have a business that can scale.

Why is it so hard to scale a business?

Most of the time, the problem is informational overwhelm.

Sellers of “how to grow your business” programs are offering you all sorts of different pieces of the puzzle.

The problem is, you don’t know which pieces you need and how those pieces connect to one another.

Without this knowledge, you don’t act—and then you’re stuck.

The solution is to avoid informational overwhelm and keep this process simple so you can connect all the pieces together seamlessly.

The rule of three

To avoid getting stuck, we want to use the rule of three in a manner that gets results.

Here’s how the rule of three breaks down:

1. Think

2. Collaborate

3. Propel

In the thinking stage, we want to think about the problem facing us and the opportunities to solve it.

In the collaboration stage, we are creating, and we want to collaborate with others on those opportunities.

The propel stage is about executing those opportunities.

Step 1: Think (15 days)

The goal of this step is to think and brainstorm—not to judge any idea.

We’ve got to reflect on our past. Let’s not be negative about it—we need to find the positives.

Reflecting involves a mix of art and science. Why art and science?

Because the science part is data based; we look to see where we’ve been successful, and we recreate that success.

The art part is future based; it’s experimenting to see what works as we move forward. It’s that intersection of wisdom and gut.

Essentially, we need to map our successes to build a strong foundation.

Next, we need to decide where we want to go. If we don’t know where we want to go, and we’re reading resources or we’re just going based on gut instinct, then we usually don’t have a true target.

Then, we look at why we haven’t been able to scale. Maybe it’s information overwhelm. Maybe it’s the fear of scaling. We look at the things that are holding us back and causing our business not to move forward.

The thinking phase captures insights from multiple disciplines to think through the ideas.

Such as using MVP framework, using SWOT analysis, defining your customer personas, and various other data points such as looking at data on market sizing, traction, the customer base, the industries our customers are in, and more.

Lastly, we look at some possible plans to move us to the next step.

But we can’t know what those plans are unless we move away from overwhelm and have a comfortable conversation without any expectations.

Remember, the goal in step 1 is to think by brainstorm, gather insights, use frameworks, interviews—not to judge any idea.

Step 2: Collaborate (15 days)

Collaboration demonstrates the culture of the business.

Collaboration demonstrates the ability of a team to adopt ideas.

We want to work out the ideas we came up with within the thinking phase and work through the ideas for strategies in day-to-day planning.

What does that mean?

Maybe it’s a CEO planning everything but he or she needs to collaborate with everyone because most of the time a CEO has to work with teams in order to execute to get to step three.

To work out the ideas and processes, the CEO needs to strategize and drive it back down to the tactical, day-to-day planning. These two actions are fundamental to the collaboration process.

It’s also important to make sure that the key members, the people that will own these strategies, buy into them.

You want to collaborate amongst teammates, so your key individuals don’t just accept the strategies, but own them.

Step 3: Propel (90 days)

Propel means action—moving forward.

This step is about execution.

If you’ve done your work up to this point, this is where it gets fun. Why? Because now you get to demonstrate your work. You get to demonstrate success.

It’s about executing tasks chosen from the collaboration phase at step 2 and measuring the results of the tasks.

In other words, whatever you’re doing is working, and if it’s not working, fix it.

The propel step is measuring the results to fix what’s broken, what has you stuck—to adapt and adjust accordingly.

Summary

No matter where you are in your business, what phase you’re experiencing (Idea inception stage, Startup, Upstart, Growth…), you can always scale your business.

You may think it’s just too hard and it takes too much time.

And you’d be right: it’s hard and takes time.

If you want to scale your business, you need a mental mindset that says you are going to go after it—You’ve made the decision.

Once you tackle this mental beast, the rest is easy.

Scaling is like cooking: it’s following a recipe to execute a path to reach your goal.

“Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day.” ~ Jack Canfield

Your next step

Have you tried scaling your business but failed?

Scaling is damn hard, isn’t it?

Guess what. You’re not alone.

If you want an actionable plan for how to ignite growth in your flatlining business—as well as strategies to market your business, create personalized customer personas, get dollars in the door and learn the skills to scale your income—let’s talk.

Our conversation will uncover:

– What’s preventing you from growing your business?

– What have you tried before, and why didn’t it work?

– Where do you want to go or be? What’s your vision?

– What resources do you currently have available?

– What’s your timeline?

What are you waiting for? Contact me