Scaling your business refers to the ability to grow or increase the amount of work (or sales) exponentially in a sustainable, cost-effective way – and by sustainable, I mean financially AND practically speaking.

Successfully scaling your business means that you have created a structure and framework that allows you to continually grow and sell more or your service – without also having to do more work OR spend so much money that it no longer makes sense.

In the creative service industry world, a scalable business is able to increasingly make more money through taking on bigger clients OR more clients OR both without also forcing the owner to work more and more hours (which eventually becomes unsustainable) OR spending more and more money at the same rate of making more money (which wouldn’t make any sense, right?).

Here’s why scaling your business can be awesome.

First, it can allow you to step back from day-to-day operations (or performing whatever service you are doing) and give you more room to focus on the big picture and be the “visionary” for your company.

Now, I know that you already are the visionary. You started the business, you had the original idea and creativity – you have the vision. But do you ever wish you had more time to work on these big-picture ideas? Scaling could give you the space to do this without dropping the ball on clients, or decreasing quality of your work, or killing yourself working way too many hours.

Scaling can also, in general, give you more time and freedom in your life to do other things. Particularly if you feel burdened by your clients – like you’re on a hamster wheel that you just can’t slow down – scaling could give you more freedom and time. It could allow you to take more time off or have a better work-life balance.

Something else that scaling can do for you that you’ve probably figured out by now – scaling can make you more money without forcing you to work any more hours. I think that sounds pretty good to a lot of us, right? When done well, this is exactly what scalability will do for you (but again – if this is your only reason, that is not a good enough reason to scale! Trust me!).

Finally, and maybe most importantly, scaling your business can allow you to serve more people and spread your mission further than you ever could on a small scale. If you’re passionate about your company’s mission and you’d like to bring that mission to more people – more customers – then scaling can help you do that.

But, back to the original question – is scaling right for you?

Here are the 5 questions to ask yourself:

1. What is my “dream role” in my business?
2. Am I ready to add team members to my business?
3. Am I willing to spend time and money on my business structure?
4. Can I let go of perfectionism for the greater goal of scaling?
5. Am I willing to take on risk?

Of course, there are many other factors to consider before scaling, but after scaling my own business, these are the questions I have found to be most helpful when deciding if you should take the next step!

RESOURCES:
FREE WORKBOOK: 3 Steps to Creating a Personal Vision
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