5 Clear Signs That it’s Time to Scale Up your Business

When new members join the scale exclusive circle, it is mainly for one goal: to scale up their business. Scaling your business is one great goal to pursue. It signifies growth, and for growth to happen, you need capacity and capability. Scalability hinges on capacity and capability. Does your business have the capacity to grow? If yes, can it accommodate and sustain the growth? If yes too, for how long?

Scaling means setting the stage to support and sustain growth in your business. It requires all the proper tools that aid growth: time, planning, data, right systems and processes, execution, technology, strong team, and so on.

Take a look at 5 signs to help you recognise the right time to scale up your business.

1. You’re turning down clients

When you first started your business, you had time to attend to every client. It was easy to accept and manage each new one that came your way. Now, there seems to be a major problem, as more clients coming your way than you can handle. As a small business owner, the success of your business lies in its capacity to retain old clients and accept new ones. A large clientele base helps you expand and increase your revenue generation. It also gives your business a strong foothold in the market.

If you have to turn down clients and lose opportunities, that’s your clear sign that it’s time to scale.

2. A positive, steady cash flow – profitability

A steady cash flow means one thing: repeatable sales. But then it is one thing for your business to be profitable, and another thing for you to be able to measure your profits to help you predict and generate future income and expenses. A quantitative data that represents your profit in numbers will go a long way in projecting future profits and costs. It will also help you prepare against setbacks that might send your business into bankruptcy.

It is worthy to also note that your business is not that profitable if you have pending payments with clients. Repeatable sales and positive cash flow are telltales that you need to scale up.

3. You’re surpassing all your business goals

If you see your business attaining and exceeding the goals you set for it at the start of each year, quarter, or even month, that’s your sign to scale up. There will be a need to make modifications to your goals and reevaluate them. This will help you challenge your business to greater standards and heights.

Rob Fulton of Exponential Black, had this to say when asked about knowing the right time to scale a business and why:

“The timeline that I had set for myself when I originally started was hit in a shorter time period than I had anticipated, and I knew I had reached that point of being a “big fish in a small pond.” My goals were too big, my vision was too great and I knew I needed to expand and scale my business into something greater.

It’s just that simple. Once you’ve realized you’ve made your original goals too attainable by the standard you’ve set, then scale—expand, but make sure you have the right resources and funding to do so.“

4. A firm, reliable infrastructure

How much can you prove that your product or service will sell? Does your product/service match your quality standards? Am I targeting the right audience? What is my value proposition? What are my business ethics? Is my mission statement firmly put in place?

The answers to these questions will help you create a proven concept. They will also help you confirm if you have a firm infrastructure that can enable you to add more weight as you scale up. Your business is only as good if the infrastructure is reliable.

5. You have a supportive team

Businesses thrive when there’s a team of reliable and loyal individuals who are committed to the success of your business. But failure becomes inevitable if your staff consists of employees who are uninspired and sluggish about work.

This is how you will know if your team is ready to scale up your business with you:

• They are passionate about the future of the business
• They are proactive and go beyond their assigned duties
• The team is operationally and relationally healthy
• They work effectively to achieve the mission and vision of the company

Your business is only as strong as the people who run it with you. If you’ve got the right team who show the above points, then you are ready to scale.

Be careful not to overwhelm your staff with excessive roles that they get burned out and leave your company at the end of the day.

In the next article, we will look at the stages of scaling and how you can get started.

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