Expanding your business is a natural aim for most company owners but it can also be a dangerous time when you take on more risk and bring in more new people to join the business. What’s been your experience with this? Any lessons you’d like to share?
The two biggest contributors to us scaling from being a 1 man band to a company with in excess of 100 people were:
- Systems and processes - It’s impossible to scale without robust systems and processes. Unfortunately, detail and documentation are not my strong points. When we got to 50 clients I realised that having everything in my head was unsustainable. I found a brilliant person to help me, she loved systems and processes. There is no way we could have scaled without her expertise.
- Delegation - Focus on what you love and are good at. Find people that are great at the things you dislike. Get out of their way, empower them and watch as they do things that you didn’t even think of. Delegation is a critical skill to scaling; if you have to have a hand on everything you become a bottleneck - the antithesis to scaling