You’ve finally done it. Ever since you can remember, it’s been your goal to not only have your own small business but to be successful at it. You’ve visited a ton of helpful resources, and now you’re ready to scale your business. What’s next?
You might be surprised to learn that scaling your business isn’t like cutting and pasting. There are no cut-and-paste methods of success, and you’ll learn that quickly as you try to scale your business. With that said, however, you can take the principles that you learned and use them to scale your business.
Create a business plan that mimics your current business
Long before you scale your business, you need a plan. You can’t wing it and hope for the best. You need to sit down and write out your entire business plan from start to finish. You can use a piece of paper and a pencil or your computer, but you need to come up with a plan that you can follow.
Your business plan is what you will follow as you move forward. There will be times when you fall back on your business plan and, at times, run on autopilot. You already have one business that takes up your time; your second business is going to be just as time-consuming.
The plan you create will guide not only you but also anyone who works with you during the scaling process. As you probably already know, any time that you don’t tell people exactly what to do, they go astray. Your employees will also need to be well aware of what your business plan is so they can take action.
Build a team that you can trust
Unless you’re a one-man show, you’re going to need to build a team of people who will help you build your business. Most of you can’t rely on yourself or your family to get this job done. As you build your small business, you need to identify the strong people on your team.
Take some, not all, of the strong people on your team and move them to your new business. Just remember that you can move people around, and no one is stuck to a specific location unless there’s a reason to do so. If you have an employee without transportation or have a reason why they must stick close to your business, it’s understandable that they can’t move to your next business, but barring anything like that, playing musical chairs with your employees is a good idea.
Find new avenues of advertising
If you are scaling your business and opening a location in another city, you’ll need to find out which advertising channels work best in that city. You can’t rely on the same advertising methods to work if you’re using local mediums to promote your business.
Those of you who use social media paid online ads or another form of online advertising can do what you’re doing for your existing business and just change your geolocation. If your business is more advertising-driven on radio, television, or print, you’ll need to see what popular avenues exist in your new locale.
You can’t rely on word-of-mouth advertising or hope you get lucky when scaling your business. You’ll need to take a hit and lose some money in the early stages just to get known. It’s okay because, in the end, it takes a little time for people to get to know about your business.
There’s going to be plenty of bumps along the way
Think back to when you first started your business. It wasn’t easy to get where you are today. It’s not going to be easy scaling your business, and you’ll have plenty of speed bumps that make you question whether or not it’s worth the effort. Not all businesses are scalable, and sometimes the magic that made you successful to begin with isn’t something that you can replicate. The one thing that you don’t want to do is put your original business at risk of failing if the outcome of your new venture is anything but desirable.