Every entrepreneur wants to scale their business. From the first day, many are already thinking about getting a second location and continuing to sell. Scaling in business comes in many forms: a new branch, a new office, additional staff, etc. The decision to scale may come up at the six-month mark, the two-year mark or the 10-year mark. While the timeframe doesn’t matter, for a business to be successful, it must scale in a strategic and controlled manner.
After 10 years of running my own marketing agency, I’ve learned that scaling a business requires numbers. Yes, hard numbers. The alternative is too risky. For a business owner investing in a new location, hiring new staff or buying new equipment, scaling on a gut feeling or an assumption is just as good as betting on the weather a year in advance.
As a young entrepreneur, I was overly optimistic and excited to grow my business. In just two years, I quadrupled my clients and revenues. At the same time, I doubled my staff, took on a new office lease, increased employee benefits, and upgraded and doubled my equipment costs. All I saw were growing client numbers, which I thought meant I needed to scale to meet the needs of the business.
In just a year, however, I realized that the newly added costs of staffing, benefits, rent, and equipment were eating away at the profit from the newly added clients. I was at exactly the same place as I was previously, but with increased overhead. Scaling based on revenue alone is not enough.
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As the founder and CEO of OneIMS and Clickx, Solomon Thimothy has built his career around his passion for helping other businesses grow an online presence and thrive in the digital world. Solomon works with clients big and small to develop uniquely customized and highly effective marketing strategies that meet every company’s individual goals. Follow him on twitter @sthimothy.
BusinessCollective, launched in partnership with Citi, is a virtual mentorship program powered by North America’s most ambitious young thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives and small business owners.