How to Scale Your Business Efficiently

It becomes so quiet, you can literally hear a pin drop.

Followed by a sharp intake of breath.

And then… “Wait, I’m a therapist/coach/counselor/government employee. I can’t SCALE MY BUSINESS.”

Finally, a nervous chuckle.

Although we’re on the phone, it’s times like these that I want to give a little tap on the person’s shoulder and insist that, YES YOU CAN.

Truly, the only limitation is your willingness to get your figurative hands dirty and try something new.

So, here’s a short summary about what it means to scale your business and then 21 simple tips to help you on that journey. After all, scaling means you’re making it. Categorically. Empirically. Which means you need a few tools in your toolbox to make the process seamless.

And for those of you who have no idea how to make it happen in the first place, never fear. I’ll have you covered in a later installment.

What ‘Scaling Your Business’ Means

First, let’s clear up a common misconception. Growing and scaling are not the same thing.

Let’s say you hire a new employee to manage the paperwork. Or you outsource the tech piece of your company because you’re getting so much inbound traffic. Congratulations! Your business is growing.

On the other hand, scaling happens when your business can handle that increased amount of work while maintaining or increasing its efficiency. In other words, when you are making money at a significantly greater rate than you are spending it, and your current resources can handle it efficiently.

For obvious reasons, both are great points to reach in your business. For the purposes of this article, however, we’re going to touch on strategies you can implement so that when you’re ready to scale, you’ll have the foundation to do so.

Tips to Scale More Effectively

Scaling your business is all about adopting new habits, upgrading processes and paying attention to – and believing in -- your own success.

Here are twenty-one proven tips to help you on that journey.

1.    Use Style Guides and Flowcharts to Measure Quality

Upscaling requires consistency, simplicity and (paradoxically) sophistication. Give this feeling to your visitors and clients by creating and using your team-distributed guidelines, style guides and flowcharts to ensure that level of consistency in your website, social posts, content, events and offers.

2.    Create a New Facebook Page

An especially good strategy if you are rebranding or relaunching a signature program, give it the signature program’s name and invite all the current members of your other pages or groups, as well as other strategic potential followers.

3.    Create a Livestream Event

Announce your new Facebook Page by creating a Livestream Event and inviting those who have accepted your invitation, as well as those who have not yet done so. (Setting the Livestream event for the same day seems to be the most effective timing.)

Tell people what the new page is all about, and finish with an invitation to take an action you want them to take: (Join the new group you’re forming; check out your new program; get your latest new free gift, etc.)

4.    Use the Expertise of Others as Leverage

Arrange an interview or guest post from an expert your subscribers follow and admire – or be an interview subject or write a guest post on theirs. Most effective of all, see if you can entice a fellow expert to appear on a Livestream with you.

5.    Provide and Encourage the Use of Checklists

Make it a part of your team process that your team members not only use your guides and guidelines, but also checklists, to ensure there are zero omissions and mistakes.

6.    Use Content Reviewers

Assign a team member – preferably a copy editor or VA experienced in content writing – to read through all your new content; not just to catch mistakes, but also to make sure it reads fluidly and clearly to others. As in the world of Olympic-level athletes, sometimes the smallest tweaks she will be able to suggest can make a world of difference to your content quality and its perceived value.

7.    Allow for Your Ideal Client’s Journey

A mistake entrepreneurs who scale up often make is to operate under the assumption that all their new client targets have the same pain point. Find the pain points for key stages of your ideal client’s journey and create offers designed to solve these minor pain points and keep your ideal client moving through your funnel. Remember, a client’s journey is a process; not just a destination.

8.    Learn to Under-schedule

Chaos and workaholism is spawned from perfectionism, believe it or not. People take on too much or push themselves toward impossible deadlines.

Don’t just focus on simplifying your business and targeting your branding: Use this process to also teach yourself to under-schedule. Decide how long something is going to take you to complete – and multiply that by three. Dispose of other tasks to accommodate that time frame: Outsource them, delegate them, automate them or discard them.

If you can learn the value of under-scheduling your time, you will soon find you actually HAVE time for the things YOU want to do.

9.     Take the Time to Hire the Right People

If your company is just you, it will stay small and be limited by your limitations and tunnel-vision. Creating a dream team of others with expertise you can lever adds value to your business: But do take the time to check references, interview, try out and build a strong working relationship with the right people. There are millions of contractors out there, but there are only a few who are going to “click” with your business and help you grow it in an enjoyable way.

So, take your time with the process of finding the right person. When you do find them, make sure they will want to stay, and appreciate them as not just someone you pay to do a task, but as a vital member of your team who helps you keep your clients happy.

Remember, your business is as good as your team.

10. Provide Over the Top Client Care

No, this doesn’t mean you have to be at their beck and call, but do set in place top-level customer care, to go along with your upscaled business and clientele. Top-level clients expect instant service for the VIP prices they pay, so before you do anything else, arrange for clear communication on how they can get help and who they can get it from.

Set up a reliable Help Desk with Live Chat. Assign an experience Customer Care VA specifically to serve as your client care liaison. Provide clear FAQs, tutorial videos, guides and instructions. Above all, let them know how, when and where you will personally be available for their questions.

11.Split Test your Landing Page Content

Pay attention especially to images, headlines and CTAs (including button text!) The easiest way to do this is to use landing page SaaS such as LeadPages®, which automate the split-testing process for you, making it a no-brainer process.

12. Find Trigger Words that Work for Your New Upscaled Market

Using the information that you glean via split-testing will soon alert you to keywords that seem to bring the highest engagement and/or conversions. Make a not of these. Share them with your copywriter(s). Be aware of them and use them in your content, whenever there is a natural opportunity to do so.

13. Be the Captain, Not the Crew

Let go of the details: Especially if you have always been very hands-on (and even more so if, up till now, you have attempted to do everything yourself). Step back and concentrate on the overview rather than on the details. Focus on what keeps moving your business forward: Not on what single task you can get absorbed in today.

14. Make Sure Your Business Runs Full-Steam-Ahead Without You

If your business grinds to a halt because you’re sick for a day, you’re thinking too small. Make sure that things can run just fine without you: That you have assigned people to take over if you’re not available; that they know what to do and can do it.

And one more priceless bonus: When your company can run without you, you’ll really have time for self-care!

15. Get Quality Sleep by Banishing Your Mobile

When one is building a business, sleep is often the second thing to go (after free time and relationships). Talk to any top celebrity entrepreneur, and you’ll likely discover that a good night’s sleep is sacred to them. They know that making sharp decisions and being at the top of their game depends on having a great night’s sleep.

So, put your mobile in another room when you go to bed, so you’re not tempted to check it if you wake up. Turn the lights out. Go to bed at the same time — all the same problems and joys will still be there tomorrow. Buy a top-quality mattress and pillow. Make your bedroom a place of peace and order – and use dark blinds or curtains. Use an eye-mask like Jennifer Aniston in all those TV commercials. Use a diffuser to scent your room gently with lavender or chamomile.

But most of all, leave your mobile in another room when you go to bed.

16. Focus on Relationships and Retention

It’s not enough to create awesome new offers: You need to keep your new customers or clients engaged and coming back for more. Recognize that investing in the relationship is the core to business success – at any level. Never lose sight of opportunities to help, serve and enjoy your subscribers and clients.

17. Practice Perseverance

Use each “failure” as a learning tool. Be grateful for the lessons it teaches you, the “holes” it points out, the proof that you are still trying and still moving toward your goal. So, don’t beat yourself up. Recover, and keep moving forward. You WILL get there.

As Sir James Dyson (inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner) says, “You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure.”

18. Find the Strengths in Your Weaknesses

We all have weaknesses in business and in life. Instead of beating yourself up about them, see what they can teach you and use them to help your business scale up. For example, if you find a great solution, share that in your business content. And recognize that the weaknesses you have are often likely to be the secret fears of your clients. The fact you embrace and conquer those weaknesses makes you even more of an expert – and someone to follow.

19. Use Milestones Strategically

A word that people often gloss over or take for granted is “milestone”, but what does a milestone do in real life?

A milestone is not a warm, fuzzy feeling: A physical milestone along a route is a factual indication that you are moving toward a specific destination. You are one mile closer to London, or wherever you are heading — and it’s an indicator and affirmation that you’re on the right road and making progress.

So, identify changes, implementations and events that MUST happen this year for your business to scale up successfully. Set these as milestones, give them the respect – and significance – they are due, and actively and steadily work toward them.

20. Be Choosy

When other experts first seek you out and offer you JV opportunities, it can be a heady feeling! But right from the beginning, keep your focus on your brand, and turn down opportunities that confuse your brand presence in the public eye.

Keep your focus on what you are passionate about and what your clients really need and will automatically build a sterling reputation for exactly what you are aiming for.

21. Keep on Systematizing

Running a flawless business is all about repeatable processes. Don’t just systematize once: As your business grows, keep on systematizing till your business purrs along like a well-fed kitten.

Scaling your business to the next level takes perseverance, courage and, above all, action. If you’d like to scale your business seamlessly and efficiently, schedule a call to chat and we’ll provide you with a step-by-step game plan to do so.