Last Updated on November 28, 2018 by Dave Schoenbeck
Scaling your business is essential if you want to grow and prosper as an organization, but what many people don’t realize is that this growth starts from day one of your company.
It’s essential to plan to scale your business from day one.
There are a few key areas you can focus on in order to ensure organized growth as your company learns to walk on its own two feet. Here are 5 actionable tips to scale up your business early on.
1. Define Your Business Culture
Culture is the cornerstone of any company, and you can’t leverage your time if you have to teach every new hire how to act and what you’re all about. Your company culture should be clearly outlined in a guiding core values document, so there are no surprises.
Work on defining and documenting your organization’s culture statement, guiding principles, and behavioral expectations now instead of later. You will need to use these written documents as the touchstone for growth.
2. Design Your Future Organization
When learning how to scale your business, it is critical to building out a functional organizational chart in the first year. You need a box for all of the current and future functions of each role, even though those responsibilities will be shared among the early hires. Clarity on a new organizational design helps you evolve the company in a more structured way.
3. Document Your Business Processes
Document and archive all of the work processes of the business. You can expect that you will change them frequently, but establishing the discipline now will help you handle fast growth later. Not to mention, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel every time an employee leaves—you should have every detail of their duties outlined in your records.
4. Hire Strategically for the Future
Look for high-potential people in your first hires for critical roles. The problem with most new companies is they hire more affordable, less-experienced people early on and then need to upgrade the talent as the business grows and becomes more complex.
If that’s how you operate, the people you hire in the beginning may not have the capacity and horsepower to lead a much larger organization. Keep growth in mind as you hire your first employees. You want people who can stay on and grow with you as you scale your business.
5. Work on the Future You
Finally, be aware of your role and how it will change over time. In the very first days of your business, you’ll need to be working on every aspect of your business. As you scale your business, though, you need to delegate those tasks to your employees. It’s hard to surrender control, but you need to accept that you can’t do every task once your business starts to grow.
Growth can be intimidating, but if you put the right structures in place from the very start, it will come easy and feel natural to you. After all, scaling up your business early on is essential for long-term growth. If you’re stumped about how to plan for growth at this early stage, click on my contact form and I will teach you how to build a plan to scale your business.
Coach Dave
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