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From side hustle or start up to scale — it’s the dream, it’s the vision, and a lot of times it’s where we find ourselves getting stuck. How do we take what we’ve courageously started and throw gasoline on the fire of our results, so to speak?
The legit definition of scaling in business is to increase your revenue faster than you increase new costs, so it’s important we don’t miss the critical components that are necessary to set up before you decide to scale so that the process can be as silky smooth as possible and not add more work or stress to your plate.
Whether you’re adding on new services, releasing a new product line, taking on more clients, changing up the experience you’re offering or expanding your selling market, choosing to scale is a big decision that takes planning, prep, and intention in order to do it in a way that lasts and feels manageable for the long haul. So let’s break down the 5 things that you need to have in place as you move on up and scale your business! Ya ready? Let’s go.
Generate and Serve Your Leads
Email lists are the best way that you can generate and serve your leads, they are also the #1 way you can drive results and sales. It’s important that you not only have an email list but that you have a plan for consistently growing it with new leads and serving it well.
Keep in mind, for someone to sign up for your list, they need to be interested in something you can deliver to them, whether it’s a free resource, a discount code, a cheatsheet, a template, an exclusive opportunity or simply the promise of free value every week in a newsletter.
When you’re scaling, you need something like this in place to be consistently sharing your free offer or opt in to get new leads but also a plan for you to easily keep in touch with your full list! The growth and the serving of your list will be a great indicator of your businesses health and also will help you grow and serve a list so that when it comes time to launch and scale, you have a list to launch to.
This is important because the more smart processes you set up to nurture your audience, the less time you have to spend day in and out holding their hand. Your email list will be a huge results driver for you, so make sure you get your systems in place as you get ready to scale. Your email list helps ensure that your community is taken care of from the jump when they hop on your email list, and trust me, that’s comforting for you to know as you focus your efforts on the revenue building tasks.
A Tried and True Offer
When it comes to scaling, the idea is taking something that’s already been working and then adding gasoline to the fire or really maximizing the results without requiring a ton more effort! This means that in order to scale, you have to start with something that’s already proven to work.
When we’re talking about scaling, that means you already have SOMETHING that people are wanting and buying, it’s been a proven hit, you’ve worked out the kinks, you’re getting good results or testimonials, and so to scale your offer, you have to figure out how you can deliver it or increase your sales without increasing your time, effort, or money spent to get those results.
One of the BEST places to begin when it comes scaling is to really take a deep inventory of what is driving the greatest results for you. Most of times, we scale too quickly horizontally having too many offers which can lead to consumer confusion or overcomplicated purchasing decisions for customers, and so when we think about scaling a lot of times we want to go deeper, not wider. You want to really look at your numbers and figure out what is driving the greatest results, what is selling consistently, what is resonating, and how you can either add to or refine the offer to make it scalable.
Before you can scale, you want to make sure you are crystal clean on what is scalable, any changes you need to make to current offers to make them more scalable, and what it’s going to take for you to increase your results without needing the same amount of time/energy/effort in order to get those results.
Consistent online presence and strategy
If you’re looking to scale, then we want to focus on your strategies and systems. These two factors will be the linchpin of your success and scaling requires solid systems and proven strategies that work. One of the places you need to have a sound strategy is on social media.
While our main marketing focus will be on growing and nurturing an email list which is an asset you own, it’s important that you’re also consistently showing up on social media and building that know/like/trust factor. Social media is the handshake where you can introduce people to you, your brand, your offers, or expertise before you extend an invitation to cement your relationship in a more one-on-one place like your email list.
It’s important to be visible online so that people understand who you are and what you do and so that you can build a community of people based on connection. Social media is a pivotal piece of scaling but it can also be systemized in a way that doesn’t take over your life. It will just be one component of your efforts as you build out your bigger system.
Not only is social media a place where you can promote your business, it’s more importantly a place where you can build a recognizable brand that is built on connection. You better believe people want to do their research before they purchase from you and they will be more likely to purchase from you if they like you and trust you.
Start to build out your system for what it will look like to consistently show up online and serve, and start small with the goal of working bigger. Whatever you are able to commit to, do your best to stay on top of that rhythm so that your audience builds trust and reliability in you as someone committed to showing up and leading conversations in your industry and so that it feels like a natural and even an obvious segue into your launches that allow you to scale since you already interact as a leader and communicator in your space.
Support with Repetitive Tasks
If you want to scale something and you don’t want it to take over your life, you need support. Whether support comes in the form of having automation set up to help you scale with ease or it’s in the form of hiring a VA, an assistant, or other team member, support is a critical piece of the scaling puzzle. If you truly want to get bigger results, you’ll want to make sure you have the systems and support that will allow you to do so without adding a ton of work to your plate.
Do you write the same emails in response to new client inquiries or common questions? Do you spend hours cataloguing expenses or preparing invoices? Do you get sucked into Canva for hours on end trying to design graphics but never really loving them? Seeing your time audit helps for you to identify weak places where you can bring in help and also allows you to see gaps that might hinder your ability to scale successfully.
If you’re spending way too many hours on minute tasks that take away from the real needle moving work in your business or hinder your ability to truly be the visionary or take up the time you need to work on new products or services, it’s likely time to hire someone to take those tasks so you can focus on the bigger picture strategies and systems required to scale.
Autopilot Marketing Strategy
Literally the best way to pour gasoline on the fire is by backing your strategies with ad dollars. There are many places you can advertise whether it’s google or yelp, facebook or instagram, Pinterest or youtube, however, you want to make sure that before you try to turbocharge your results with paid traffic, that all the other steps we talked about before this are completed and solid.
According to Hubspot, ad placement and audience targeting are the top ways that advertisers drive more demand for their products, and 68% of marketers stated that paid advertising is “very important” or “extremely important” to their overall marketing strategy. What does that tell us? Well, it lets us know that there is a place for paid ads in the scaling and business growth process. I strongly believe that investing in your business in this way can pay off tenfold once you have the right systems, processes, offers, and team in place to support that growth. When the infrastructure is set up to support scaling, paid ads help you amplify the message of your offer to get in front of more eyes and in turn, make more conversions.
The Big Picture
Well, there you have it, the 5 must haves for scaling your business without it taking over your time, energy or life. Seeing how scaling has not only impacted my business but my freedom of time has been life-changing for me and I’m so grateful that years ago, I started the slow pivot away from trading time for money in exchange for a business that can run while I rest and that can scale and grow my impact as well as my income!
At the end of the day, my goal for you is to keep taking incremental and consistent steps toward that next milestone of growth you want to reach, and I promise to keep delivering resources that help you amplify your progress along the way!
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