Tips for Scaling Your Service Based Business

Unfortunately you can’t clone yourself, but there are a few other vital steps you can take in order to scale your service based business. You need to save time. You need to leverage your people. You need to be able to focus more and worry less. Here’s a few ideas on how to do just that.

Saving Time in Order To Scale:

Time is your most valuable asset and the easiest one for you to lose control of. Before you can scale your business, you need to begin owning your time and spending it more wisely.

• Standardize routine processes, write them down, and stop being the one doing them. If you can do something with your eyes closed, you shouldn’t be wasting time doing it anymore.
• Determine and flesh out the less routine processes. If this then that, if that then this. Sometimes a flow chart can be helpful for discussions, thought, and decisions here. 
• Use technology to automate those processes. I’ve seen dozens of businesses invest less than $30-200/mo in new technology to help save hours per day or week for them and/or their people, while giving them peace of mind that things are done the way they want them to be.
• Delegate and set clear expectations to your team, outsourced vendors/partners, and for yourself. Let go of control, while having controls in place.
• Hire the right staff and use the right systems and partners. Don’t be afraid to make changes as you or your business situations change. Nothing drags down productivity and profitability like having the wrong people, antiquated systems and processes, or unreliable third party vendors and suppliers.
• Spend at least 20% of your time working on your business each week, instead of in your business. For example, creating a few email templates and documenting a process this week so that you can delegate and save time next week. Creating extra time to do this could feel impossible, but growth won’t be possible if you can’t find ample time to work on your business and yourself. 

Leveraging Your People to Scale:

Your people are your staff, but they’re also your customers, your friends, your family, and anyone in your life. Small business owners are always on the clock. Once you’ve worked on saving time, you can work on leveraging your people.

• Your Staff: 

• Save and respect their time, don’t just use it.

• Set clear expectations and goals person by person, along with ways to measure them and a cadence to meet, discuss and adjust the goals. 
• Incentivize staff for meeting and exceeding expectations.
• Invest in staff and their skills via training on new technologies and processes.
• Involve staff in decision making that will affect them, or at least give them heads up.
• Empower your staff to feel more valuable, and they will be more valuable to you and your customers.
• Follow through on your promises.

• Your Customers:

• Get customer feedback in writing, and reviews on Google or other platforms.
• Create a customer referral program and make sure customers know about it. Don’t be afraid to remind them from time to time either.
• Keep a current and past list of customers in a CRM system along with newsletters, blogs, social media, and other means to stay in touch with them.
• Be open and honest with customers about your growth plans, growing pains, and any changes you may make to your business, personnel, and/or services. 
• Follow through on your promises.

• Everyone Else:

• Your family and friends may care about your business, but chances are they care about you more. Leverage them to blow off steam and be sure to enjoy the things that are non work related when you can. Make sure you can give them the time and attention they deserve too.
• Your vendors can often become more than just a cost center. They can become strategic partners for delivering more value to customers, creating referrals and additional business opportunities, and learning what others are doing in your industry. Know your key vendors and speak with them, don’t just pay them. 
• Your neighbors and local and online communities may always be an untapped resource to help you grow your business. When’s the last time you went to a local networking event, or participated in any online thought leadership groups?
• You and your personal well being is arguably the most important part of successfully growing your business. You cannot afford to burnout or just keep doing the same things over and over again expecting new results. Frankly, sometimes scaling and changing your business means taking a good hard look in the mirror and changing yourself. 

Focusing More, Worrying Less:

Getting a new perspective and changing daily behavior and routines are both big steps in the right direction for growing your business and challenging yourself. 

Focusing on growth while managing the changes that need to come along with growth is stressful. You need to be able to worry less about the day to day, so that you can put more of your energy and attention towards getting to where you want to be.

That is exactly what Accounting Console is here for. Start our no cost Console process and begin tackling your growth challenges head on with someone who knows what it’s like and what it takes to make big changes.