When you become an entrepreneur and start your first venture, the number one thing you must do is get crystal clear about what you’re offering and for whom. After that, as a service-based business owner, you start to market and get clients. After you’ve been at it for a while and you’ve worked with several clients, you’ll begin to run out of time, and when you do, you’ll have another decision to make:
Do I raise my rates or scale my business?
This week, I’m answering a question from Sarah who is at this crossroad in her business. Check out her question:
“Hi Darnyelle, I’m a five-year business owner in the financial services industry – I’m an accountant who is making six figures but I’m feeling a little burned out [I’m working hard with a lot of clients] and think I need to makeover my business model so that I can introduce more scale and freedom. Now that I am making great money, I want to experience entrepreneurship and leave self-employment behind. What advice can you offer to help me makeover my business model?”
Check out my response to Sarah’s question in this week’s episode:
You’ll need to focus on strategic relationship development and use that as a way to shift your focus. To build your team, you’ll want to get clear on what your ideal team consists of and the skill sets they need to bring to the table to operate on your behalf.
Here are some other ways to scale your business:
1. Focus on thinking and acting bigger. The only way to go from “mom and pop” to “big time” is to thinking bigger, globally. When you think from your vision point and not your vantage point, a world of opportunities will open for you. Because expansion creates exposure, you’ll be able to see what it will be like when you add a digit or two to your bottom line and function as the true executive that you desire to be.
Your assignment: Add a zero to the most you’ve made in a year. How does that shift the way you think?
2. Focus on you as the CEO. As the CEO, you’ll need to raise your profile, get some personal brand acceleration going and maybe even write a book. You may have never seen the value in writing a book before (and that wasn’t your focus), but now that you want to expand your business, you’ll need to let more people know about you and a book is a great way to do that. It opens up speaking opportunities, increases your credibility and will position you amongst those you want to spend time with. As you think more globally, you’ll need to think of yourself like corporate CEOs do and make the shift mentally and through PR and public profiling.
3. Boost your network. The best way to think bigger and to scale is to change your circles. I have been doing this recently. When you are a business owner hovering around low to mid six figures, you likely have colleagues in the same place. But once you cross over to seven figures, you need new friends. Friends that are at 8,9 or 10 figures who will stretch you and position you to strategically move that needle.
4. Hire top talent. In order to do this, you’ll need to consider financing for expansion. If you’ve been profitable as a cash-only business, it will inhibit your growth. To truly scale, you’ll need access to more funds so that you can hire top talent who will have a short learning curve and quickly get up to service standards to effectively and consistently move the needle in your business.
Now I want to hear from you, what’s your two cents?: What tips do you have for positioning and scaling your business?
©2015 by Darnyelle A. Jervey. All Rights Reserved. Darnyelle A. Jervey, MBA, The Incredible Factor Business Optimization Coach and Mentor, is the founder of Incredible One Enterprises®, Incredible Factor University® and the Leverage Your Incredible Factor System®, a proven step-by-step program so you experience financial and spiritual abundance in your life because of your business. For more information and a FREE audio CD “7 Critical Mistakes Even Smart Entrepreneurs Must Avoid for Clients, Connection and Cash Flow!” just fill out the form below.
