I’m doing a lot of thinking about scaling and where it goes right and horribly wrong.
When scaling your business, always be keenly aware of operational capacity. If you are selling 10 widgets but can only reliably deliver 7 widgets, you have a problem. Always be sensibly ahead of operational capacity – or get good at slowing demand by raising prices or saying “no.”
PS – You also have a problem if you can deliver 10 and only sell 4. Lots of approaches here: Stay disciplined and say “no,” or opportunistic and say “yes.” Lower prices trying to attract more volume or raise prices to create exclusivity and lessen the financial gap through increasing margins. Depends on your appetite and approach.
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The same goes for priorities. We have a disease in business. It’s a horrible epidemic tackling too many priorities at once. As a result, we gain little meaningful traction. I call it the “Priority Drain” when we try to do too much. The most successful companies I know stay focused and disciplined. They drive real revenue growth by making bigger bets on fewer opportunities.
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Some people unthinkingly go after the wrong market. Would you offer haircuts to blad people? No. Find a market that is starving for your product or service.
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When you’re scaling, there are two ways to grab help. You can borrow people’s hands or you can borrow people’s brains.
Give that some thought. Which do you default to in your business: asking for hands or brains? One scales linearly; the other scales exponentially.
What challenges are you facing that I should know about?