3 Things Business Owners Need to Learn Before Attempting to Scale

There is no shortage of business owners with dreams of growing and scaling their businesses. Almost every owner I talk to has a vision of what the future of their business should look like, whether that is growing to a point where they make a significant amount of money on their exit, or maybe they want to grow their business and pass it down to future generations, or something between the two. We all have dreams. But the truth is that the majority of those business owners may never see that dream become a reality. And the difference between the ones that do and the ones that don’t boils down to three things. If you are able to do those three things well, the sky’s the limit. Today, I want to share the three things that I think that every business owner should learn to do better before attempting to scale.

Clarity.

Owning a business can be messy. You are pulled in a thousand different directions and you have to keep up with so much. It’s very common for business owners to get distracted, and spend their precious time and energy on things that don’t really make a difference in their business. Maybe you launched a product or two that didn’t catch on with your customer base. Maybe you invested money in an advertising campaign targeted at the wrong demographic. Or maybe you have failed to keep your current customers happy and engaged. Whatever the outcome, the reason is almost always that you lack clarity in understanding whom you are doing business with. If you want to scale your business and do it successfully, you need to be crystal clear as to whom you are targeting and why. You need to understand their motivations and fears, and what drives them to get up in the morning. This can be done through talking to your clients, following and engaging via social media, surveys, and customer interviews, as well as consumer journey mapping and analytics. All of this is crucial to being able to scale your business down the road.

Focus.

I talk about focus a lot, because it matters. You have only eight hours in the day and what you spend your time and energy on is important. Getting sidetracked by small projects or putting out fires from other people on your team will get you that much further away from your goal. Consider each task you take on, and pause for a moment to think about the impact that doing that task today will have on your end goal. If you don’t see yourself moving forward, delegate it to someone else and choose a task that will get you closer to the finish line.