Every business owner will tell you that they made mistakes, particularly when opening their business, which cost them time, energy, and money.
What if you could avoid the common mistakes and rapidly expand your business with minimal unnecessary expense?
Adi Klevit, CEO of Business Success Consulting Group, and Felix Velarde, Founder and Chair of 2Y3X, discussed this in their recent interview. Read on to learn five of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to scale, and discover how to avoid them.
Five Common Mistakes that Keep a Business from Scaling (And How to Avoid Them)
Mistake 1: The business owner is the only one who knows how the company works. (Also known as setting up a company that only works when you are there.)
This is a pervasive challenge that business owners run into - and it makes sense, right? The business owner created the based on their expertise, so it’s logical that they are the source of all information about the company and can tell anyone how to do anything.
However, being the brains of the operation means that the company cannot function without you actively participating. You have to be “on” 24/7. There are no vacations, sick days, time away with family, retreats, or breaks.
Solution: Knowledge transfer. That’s right, get all of that knowledge out of your head and make it transferable to your employees. They can train on it, utilize the information during sales or customer service calls, and don’t have to come to you to ask how every little thing in the business works.
Mistake 2: The business owner is a bottleneck.
As a business owner, you are tasked with developing a plan for everything in your company. You must establish the best way to do something. You must choose the right software for a particular task or the best materials for your product. It’s all up to you.
This also means you are a bottleneck. You’re not there, and a decision needs to be made? Nothing can get done.
Solution: Build business processes and delegate the work. Guess what? Building a business, hiring employees, and creating an executive team means you are not alone. You have a team available and ready to take on tasks that include planning.
But you may be asking, “How can I ensure they make a plan the way I want them to make a plan?” The answer here is to build processes. When you and your team create processes and document the existing business systems, your team not only gets a process they can use in future planning, but they gain experience in process building with you - so they can learn to create plans and strategies just as you would.
This makes you the final sign-off for big plans and allows your team to build those plans for your rapid approval.
Mistake 3: You’re juggling too many things at once.
When you are juggling too many things at once and try to add something like scaling on top of an already teetering pile of “to-dos,” you aren’t going to be able to focus on the many tasks necessary to make scaling a success.
Solution: Build and document processes. You want to start scaling right away - and you can! However, part of that scaling work will be creating processes that others can follow.
You might think, “I have built processes, and no one followed them.”
That is a common challenge that business owners encounter. We have written extensively on this topic, but here’s a summary of what you can do to create buy-in from your team.
- Involve them in the process building.
- Find out how using processes will help them - they may be encountering different challenges than you.
- Work with your team to keep the processes up-to-date.
Mistake 4: You’ve hired people you don’t feel you can delegate to.
Hiring is a common sore spot in most companies. There are many reasons for hiring issues, but most come down to a hiring process that doesn’t ensure a culture fit, skills fit, and/or excellent training. When hiring has failed, you end up with employees who don’t feel oriented or disagree with your mission.
Solution: Build a hiring process, test it, and correct it over time. Consider what process you used to hire your key employees - your “superstars,” as Felix calls them. That is a great place to start when building your hiring process.
Mistake 5: Your team has not bought into the changes that scaling will bring. Scaling your business requires massive change. And change can be scary. If your team has not bought into the changes and can’t see how scaling the company will benefit them, it will be almost impossible to scale.
Solution:
- Get team buy-in.
- Share why you want to scale.
- Ask them to contribute to building systems and plans for scaling the business.
- Utilize their valuable ideas and give credit where credit is due.
To scale, you need foundational processes, a team that is excited to scale with you, and a plan for moving forward. There is more, of course, but those are the basic factors that will help you rapidly scale your company.
Are you ready to build a strong foundation upon which you can expand and scale your business? Contact the process experts at Business Success Consulting Group today for your free initial evaluation.
