No matter how old you are or how much experience you’ve got – starting a small business is always an equally stressful and risky endeavor. Building something from the ground up is extremely demanding and tends to leave people drained and devoid of focus.
The endless amount of repetitive daily tasks that have to be completed, along with the almost debilitating uncertainty that comes with each new day, is overwhelming and destroys every chance of growth.
The struggle small business owners face is real, and focusing on scaling and growth is almost certainly the last thing on anybody’s mind when their business is barely afloat.
But, however unattainable scaling your business looks right now – it should be your top priority. The very reason you started a business is to expand your idea and build on it, so why not see how far you can take it?
Implementing a growth strategy into your business doesn’t require stepping back from your daily tasks or spending a fortune on high-end strategic consulting. There are a few underwhelmingly simple things you can do to successfully scale your business, with the first being building your business website.
Don’t let this intimidate you – it’s much easier than it sounds. We’ll list all of the necessary steps, so you can just click your way to a well-executed, professional website.
Here are 6 simple things you can do to scale your business:
1. Build a website for your business.
How are potential customers going to find you? How will they understand what your advantages are over your competition? How will you sell products and services?
The answer to these prevailing questions is clear and simple – a business website. A business with a solid online presence is more likely to expand its client base and subsequently grow as a company.
However, creating a website from scratch while juggling the daily hardships of owning a small business is hard, and to be honest – downright unnecessary. That’s why you should use a simple, intuitive website building platform that will make building a web page for your business breeze. Our recommendation is SITE123, a website building service created with an amazing code that allows you to have a professionally-looking website up and running in minutes.
Why choose SITE123 over other sitebuilders? Apart from being extremely simple to use and completely customizable, this amazing website builder is also completely free and will give you the best SEO result compare to other platforms (otherwise you may need the services of the best SEO company in Las Vegas to help you get there).
2. Track what you do.
As the owner (or the sole employee) of your company, you probably have a never-ending list of tasks that have to be performed every week.
We suggest you throw it in the trash and forget about it because it won’t do you any good when it comes to productivity.
Start by making a mental note of everything that has to be done in a given week, and writing down the tasks you actually accomplish. The tasks that you’d like to do, were hoping you could do, but never got the time or the opportunity to do – forget about them because they’re a productivity killer.
By writing down what actually gets done on a day-to-day and a week-to-week basis allows you to analyze how you handle your workload with a fresh perspective.
After a week or two, you’ll have a clear picture of how efficient you are at managing your time. That way, you can see how much you could improve and what you need to work on.
3. Use what you’ve learned to boost your productivity.
Once you get a clear picture of your overall performance, it’s time to work on it.
When you’re business is still at its beginning, it’s most likely that you’re the one handling most of the work. While it might seem like the easiest, cheapest and fastest option, the fact is that you can’t be equally good at everything.
Make sure you’re getting the most out of your workday by focusing only on the tasks you’re the best at. As for everything else – it’s almost certainly better for you and your business to outsource.
If hiring more people is too financially straining, you can always hire freelancers or ask for help in return for products or services.
4. Automate everything.
Learning how to be more effective at what you do is just the first step. To be able to focus on scaling your business, you’ll have to make room for it by automating as many processes as you can.
However, that doesn’t mean investing in expensive software or complex hardware. Something as seemingly insignificant as automating your email marketing and social media management should be enough to see a difference.
If you have an e-commerce store, having a system that sorts and manages your store orders, like the one on SITE123, could potentially free up half a dozen hours every week you could use to focus on growth and expansion.
Additionally, customer facing e-commerce payment processing technologies can help your business reduce costs and delinquent payments. EDocs for example, are designed to be used with any mobile device and are a great way to formalize payments and gather information like online applications and other agreements necessary for the business. Clients will appreciate the timesaving convenience and security of E-signature payment authorizations.
5. Learn how to delegate.
Having knowledge and experience means nothing if you don’t know how to implement it and share it with others. You might think that you’re the best person for a certain job, and in most cases you probably are. However, you can’t be at two places at the same, nor can you do everything all the time.
An entrepreneur who knows how to delegate is the cornerstone of every successful business – remember that. And if it seems pretty unattainable now – it shouldn’t be. Delegation is nothing more than a mixture of patience, diligence, and dedication – traits that you, as an entrepreneur, aren’t that unfamiliar with.
Growing your company can’t happen if you don’t know how to share your ideas, plans, and knowledge with your employees. Your employees and partners can’t be expected to match your standards if you aren’t clear on what they are.
That’s why you need to document the tasks you do, along with a detailed description of how you do them. Ranking the tasks you’ve accomplished by the importance of their result is a great way to give your employees clear and straightforward instructions on how to perform.
Knowing what’s expected can motivate both you and your employees to outperform even on the most mundane, daily tasks, enabling a consistent, steady growth.
6. Think outside your business.
Even if everything’s going according to plan, being focused on the internal aspects of your business can take a toll on you. Not being able to focus on the external factors that can contribute to your growth is pretty damaging to a company’s success.
If you’ve done everything right – enhanced your productivity by focusing on what you’re good at, and automating or delegating everything else – you should be able to take a bit of time off to focus on the outside.
Growing your business from the inside is necessary, but it can’t be successful if it’s limited by outside factors like location, competition, and the current state of the market.
You’ll be addressing these issues from the inside, but taking a minute to analyze the environment your business is in and how you can take advantage of it will inevitably lead to growth.
Conclusion.
No matter how old are you or how much experience you’ve got – starting and growing your small business is always an uphill road.
But, despite all the hardships and struggles that come with it, it’s certainly neither impossible nor unattainable.
A simple track-improve-automate-delegate-perform sequence is enough to get your business on the fast track to success.
