The Importance Of Scalability In Business And Wealth Building

How can I know when a business owner doesn’t understand scalability in business? One of the many complaints I hear from them is “too much work and not enough money.” Upon further investigation I come to learn that many of these business owners are doing everything themselves. They’re essentially a one man show.

This limits how much money you can make because you inevitably hit a wall. It limits how much time you can dedicate to growing your business to the next level. It requires you to tie your work to your time. Meaning, if you can’t work more hours then you can’t make more money. Literally the only thing that can do that for you is scalability in business.

For some people this is fine. They don’t have visions of building big businesses and that’s okay. However, for others they quickly learn the importance of scalability in business—if not because they want more money than because they are just tired of doing everything themselves.

The benefits of scalability in business

Having scalability in business allows you to get stuff off your plate so that you can spend time building your business instead of working in the business.

For example, I often see business owners getting stuck in scheduling, answering emails, accounting and customer service. These are all things that, while they need to get done, don’t really lead to more income or growth.

What does lead to income and growth are sales and developing new offerings. If you don’t have the time to do that because you’re so busy answering emails then you will inevitably have a very difficult time growing your business.

Additionally, scaling can also help you leverage your time better. For instance, building and selling a product offers more scalability in business than delivering a service because it doesn’t require you to trade your time for money. The work is done up front and then you sell that same product over and over again.The more products you have on the market, the easier it is to build wealth over time.

Alternately, scaling allows you to have more time for yourself. Maybe you’re satisfied with the amount of money you’re making but just need a break. Developing more scalability in business allows you to have more time for yourself.

Getting started with scaling

The first place many start developing scalability in business is in hiring help. That’s because delegating tasks to team members or contractors immediately frees up time to develop new offerings and close sales.

Granted, from a financial perspective this looks different for different companies. For example, if you’re bootstrapping you may need to hire one person at a time. Meanwhile, if you’re a startup that’s secured funding of some form then you have a little more leeway.

In an effort to keep it simple, we’re going to discuss the ways businesses initially start outsourcing and delegating. One thing to note before we get started, thanks to the internet you don’t necessarily have to hire full-time employees. For example, instead of hiring a full-time assistant you can contract a virtual assistant.

Administrative Tasks

Administrative tasks eat up a lot of time for businesses. You fire up your email and before you know it you’ve spent half a day in correspondence. Or, maybe you’re still going back and forth doing your own scheduling.  These are tasks that can be delegated to an assistant so you can instead spend that time developing offerings and closing deals.

Accounting Tasks

Not only is accounting tedious and time consuming, it’s also not the smartest thing to do on your own. Taxes for businesses are a whole other animal than they are for W-2 employees so leave it to the professionals.

Social Media Management

The rise of social media has paved the way to create jobs in the form of social media management. These are individuals who take care of the social media aspect of your business – from posting updates to managing communities.

Content Creation

Content is king for businesses. In fact, you’re losing money if you don’t blog. 81% of U.S. consumers trust the information they see on blogs. If writing isn’t your thing, or content creation takes up way too much time, consider outsourcing it.

Design and Development

Good design goes far, especially since so many businesses now need online platforms. However, design and development can also be tedious and time-consuming. It also requires talent not everyone has. At some point in your business you’ll have to start outsourcing this as well.

What You Need to Know About Delegating

Delegating is a skill that business owners and leaders need to master when it comes to building scalability in business. It’s also a skill that a lot of people struggle with. Here are some tips to make delegating easier so that you can start scaling your business.

1. Create a Manual of Operations – This serves as a document team members can reference whenever they have questions.
2. Find A Project Management Platform – If you have several team members it may serve you to use a project management platform for correspondence and file sharing. Popular and inexpensive platforms include Basecamp, Asana and Trello.
3. Educate Yourself – There are several resources available that teach people how to delegate and how to find team members. One such resource is Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker.

Building scalable offerings

The next place where business owners create scalability in business is in creating offerings that don’t require time in exchange for money.

For instance, consulting isn’t scalable because you are paid by the hour (or per package). On the other hand, that same consultant can write a book and that would be scalable. They write the book once, launch and it continues selling without the consultant having to do anything. This creates more passive income which also frees up your time in many ways.

On a recent Smart Passive Income podcast, Pat Flynn and Brian Casel talked about “productizing”service-based businesses so that they are more scalable. This episode (and the entire podcast in general) is a good place to start when learning how to scale.

Final thoughts

Scalability in business is crucial if you want to grow your company and build more wealth. Without it, you run the risk of burning out and hitting a glass ceiling. By using the tips in this in this article you can begin planning for scalability in business and implementing it.