Scaling a business rapidly is a challenge that many have attempted but few have executed correctly. When a business wants to grow at an accelerated rate, every team member within the company has to buckle up and get ready for the ride.
From the outside, one might think that spending more hours working in the business and selling more products is the best way to grow; however, this leaves other aspects of the business driving blind.
To scale a business healthily, you must look at the entirety of your operation – marketing, sales, product, operations, finance and people. When we were scaling Mr Potato at an unprecedented rate, we recognised this and placed a large emphasis on building a team of people who could support one another in a fast-paced environment, along with operational systems that would complement the team’s work by tracking performance and ensuring goals were met.
Founders are often hesitant when someone suggests hiring for a role that they have traditionally done themselves. If you can put your ego and pride aside, this could be the smartest decision for scaling your business rapidly. If someone else is capable of doing the role, they most certainly should be.
Dig deep and figure out your strengths and weaknesses – play to your strengths and hire to your weaknesses. By doing this, you’ll build a superstar team of hard-working individuals that perfectly complement one another.
Hiring the right people before an expansion will make the operational side of your business transition more smoothly into full-throttle mode. It’ll also make your life easier and less stressful.
“To scale a business healthily, you must look at the entirety of your operation – marketing, sales, product, operations, finance and people.”
The people you’ve hired will build systems, reduce the risk of human error, and ensure consistency, leaving the founders to sit down and focus on the growth of the brand.
An often-overlooked part of scaling rapidly, and in my opinion the most important one, is to build accurate and automated analytical systems. Tracking performance is crucial to understanding how the expansion is affecting your bottom line, productivity, output and employee satisfaction.
The right frame of mind
Have you heard of a growth mindset? If not, you have a bit of reading to do. Adopting this strategy around your business will improve morale, work ethic and overall satisfaction – and we all know how important these three traits are for a successful expansion plan.
A growth mindset is the belief that a person’s most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and a desire to learn and develop new skills – brains and talent are the launching pad but if your mind is dedicated to achieving success, then you will.
Adopting a growth mindset across your team will help your staff members realise that no matter how stressed, how despondent, how excited they are, if they work hard to develop new skills, then all will be achieved, and success will be fulfilled.
Ultimately, as operational experts, we are always looking at how to improve efficiency within our businesses. Through education, research and hard work, our businesses can improve universally and the challenges that come along with scaling rapidly will become a thing of the past.
This article first appeared in issue 37 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
