Many clients come to us because they’re stuck; they have achieved reasonable growth, but have hit a glass ceiling. Others lack knowledge of scaling up, some even feeling slightly scared by the prospect.

This week I’m sharing my 5 top scale tips, useful for wherever you are on your scale journey.

1. Focus on what you want to be – not what you are

Don’t limit yourself and base decisions on where you are right now, base them on what you want to become and have definite objectives. One of the first questions I ask is what type of company you want to become – £1m a year turnover? £2m? £5m? £10m? The decisions you make as a £200k a year turnover business are different to one that turns over £5m. And if you want to become a £10m business then start thinking like one.

2. Get you environment ready for scale

As your business starts to scale, you’ll become more exposed and things will start to creak. It can often be too late to start band aiding or fixing your business once you’ve started your scale journey, as everything could fall apart. You must think very carefully how scaling will affect your business – do you have the right structure with the right people in place? Are your processes defined and are your systems robust? Are your team aligned to your vision?

3. Protect your values when scaling up

Things can change massively when your business is scaling and many things will compete for your time and attention. It’s important to safeguard and continue to be consistently living your business values; they’ve helped you to be successful up to that point.

4. Ask your business the right questions

Your business in a living entity, it has all the answers, you just need to ask it the right questions. We come across too many business owners who expect their business to magically change. They know their sales have plummeted for the third consecutive month, or that their star member is less willing than they were 6 months ago. But they don’t know why. Consider the following: why did you lose that contract? How do your staff feel? How many of your clients are fans? By asking those questions most important to your business, on a regular basis by introducing simple tools and measures such as the Net Promoter Score®, will mean you are constantly learning and evolving and not making the same mistakes over again.

5. Learn lessons from successful competitors who’ve scaled

Because I’ve helped businesses in over 55 industries, I can take learnings from each sector and apply them to others. And it’s the same for you; think about how other companies in your market have scaled. What made them succeed where others have failed, or remained stagnant? Look at the number of staff they needed, how and where they sell, what their business model is.

Have a great week.