What does it mean to scale a business?

chances are if you're an entrepreneur you've heard or maybe even said the term scale a business as in I'm looking to scale my business but do you actually know what that means hint some of you are using it wrong so let's break it down [Music] what does it mean to grow a business let's start with grow okay so in grow a business what we're doing is generating more income in our business more revenue more money's coming in but oftentimes in order to generate that additional growth we've had to do things like add employees purchase additional materials get a new office do a bunch of other things that have incurred also a bunch of other expenses so the net-net of that might mean yeah you grew it you grew that income side of the coin but let's just say the profits didn't grow to the same degree right maybe you generate an additional hundred thousand dollars in revenue but it costs you eighty thousand dollars to do that you made twenty thousand dollars now that could still be a win for you and for your business so not to be misunderstood growing a business is still great but let's talk about the difference between that and scaling a business okay so when you scale a business you generate additional revenue additional income in your business without generating that same degree of expenses so for example let's say you were able to quadruple the amount of income coming into your business and you didn't have to add a single employee you didn't have to add much more than just a couple of little expenses ten thousand dollars worth of stuff oh dang that's scaling a business now this is not completely feasible for all businesses so I think what's happened is that many of us have heard this term scale of business and we've latched on to it like Oh well that must be what you need to do in order to be successful as scale well not necessarily it works in a lot of industries and tech is one of those where you were here this term used constantly because when investors are looking to put their money into something they want to see a business that has that big swoop yep it's taken off because once they hit certain number of users they can keep growing and growing growing they're not adding much more though in the expense side of the column that is a business that can scale but for many of the rest of you of me of us it might not be completely feasible but there are ways even if you're not a tech company to look at the things that you do and say does this have a scalability option so I'll give you a couple of examples because even if you're in the service based business this can apply for you too so one standardize the things that you offer I mean the reason for that is it helps you become more efficient so whether it's you doing it or your team you're becoming more efficient because you're repeating a process you're standardizing some of the things that you offer number two is creating some stream of recurring revenue inside of your business so let's say for example you've been working with clients one on one but none of them have been under a monthly retainer so you build something in that you can do for them monthly that doesn't have a whole lot of upkeep on your part but allows you to keep those clients in the mix and not constantly be out churning and looking for that new business right and then the last thing is really building in some automation in your business so let's say right now there are some things that you're doing manually that you're like god this takes so much time if you can find a way to automate those processes so that you're not having to touch them so much that's another way to build some scale into your business and I think most of us have options for all of those inside of our businesses so I hope that helps and you're able to learn a little bit more about growing versus scaling and just remember this there is no one right way to do this you can run a business and it can look like whatever the heck you want it to look like and so don't get too caught up in thinking there's one definition of how to grow or one definition of how to succeed it is all about what's important to you building the business that you want that helps you live the life that you want remember that all right [Music]

Channel: Hatch Tribe

Views: 4,407

Rating: 4.967742 out of 5

Keywords: entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, business, starting a business, women in business, startup, business planning, scaling a business, scale my business, how to scale a business, hatch tribe, hilary johnson, female founders, small business tips

Id: jwxaihchx_E

Length: 4min 49sec (289 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 15 2018