11 Things You Need to Know Before Scaling Your Service Based Business
Scaling a service-based business is a special kind of feat. As a service provider, there are only so many hours in the day that you can dedicate to client work after all. This can definitely make scaling seem impossibly difficult or out of reach.
After starting off as a service-based business for years and then working directly with service providers to scale their own 1:1 services, we’ve learned that there are 11 things you absolutely need to know before scaling. We’re going to dive into what those are in this blog post!
1. What Your End Goal Is
Before you start to scale, you must have a clear understanding of what your end goal actually is. This is going to help you calculate how much money you need to make, which sets off a domino effect of other factors and actions that need to be taken to get there. There are a couple of end goals you might set for yourself as a benchmark so you can reach them in phases. For example you might have your first goal as “replace income from full-time job” then it would be “grow to $X with 40% profit margins”. Knowing your end goal (no matter which benchmark) is critical because it defines your price point, your client capacity, when you can hire, what to offer and so much more.
2. The Why Behind Your Why
Understanding your “why” is one thing, but untapping the “why behind the why” is crucial for growth. We all have different reasons for waking up every day and putting in the work, but it’s important to identify yours so you can have purpose beyond the surface level. We’re talking about the why behind financial reasons here! So really tap into the “so that” of your goals. State your goal then follow it up with “so that…” and really dig deep into the impacts of what will happen when you hit that goal.
3. What Brings You Happiness Outside of Your Business
All too often, we can get lost in our work and lose touch of the things outside of our business that bring us joy. It’s important to take the time to connect back to those things, and to do it often. The quickest way we see so many service providers become discouraged or reevaluating their business as a whole is because they’ve allowed themselves to be completely immersed in their business without making time regularly in their schedules to participate in the things that make them happy. The only way for you to show up in your Zone of Genius is to serve yourself holistically! And if you’re not finding the time to focus on you, we can help with that ;)
4. How to Set Boundaries with Clients
Just in case you needed to hear this: It’s okay to have set office hours in your business and stick to them. It’s okay to read a message a client sent at 5:15pm when you stop working at 5pm and not reply until the next business day. It’s okay to tell clients “That’ll be a $X additional charge” when they start to scope creep. It’s up to you how your clients treat you. Listen to this podcast episode on boundary setting for more help.
5. How to Delegate Properly
It’s simply unrealistic to believe that you can handle every moving piece of your business and still be able to scale successfully. You have to learn how to delegate properly, whether that’s learning how to put things on autopilot through automation or looking into hiring an extra pair of hands (or multiple pairs of hands). But the key here is to understand the process of first creating the solution, then delegating the fulfillment of that solution to the right person. We go over this is much great detail with our clients inside The Incubator, because it’s truly a big missed opportunity for small business owners!
6. What Scaling Means to You
Similar to understanding your why behind your why, you also need to really dig into what “growing” and “scaling” means to you. We each have our own definition of success and it’s super easy to let other expectations and goals taint yours. We’ve known too many small business owners wake up after years of putting in the work to realize they hate the life and business they’ve built. There is no right way or only one way to grow and scale - you just need to find yours!
7. How to Ethically Lead a Team
Once you start digging into building a team and stepping into a leadership role, you also have to understand how to ethically lead a team and what that means. This is where ethics comes into play and figuring out the difference between what might feel “wrong”, what isn’t wrong, and what is. We’ve worked for decades in unhealthy corporate or work environments so most of us are just trying to create something that isn’t that. But a lot of small business owners just go the direct opposite end of the spectrum and still aren’t finding the balance. There are nuances to what it truly means to ethically lead a team (financially, workload, in regards to psychological safety, etc).
8. How Much You’re Paying Yourself
You know what they say, right? If you don’t prioritize yourself no one else will. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve worked with small business owners who have a martyr complex when it comes to sacrificing everything about themselves for the sake of the business or team. This means we’ve seen people who have near 6-figure employees on their team when they aren’t. even. paying. themselves. a. living. wage. This ends now (and we help you create that game plan inside The Incubator).
9. What Your Zone of Genius Is
You might feel like in order to justify charging higher prices when scaling, you need to broaden the scope of your work and the services you offer to include things that you don’t even like and aren’t really that good at. You should create your service around the things you are good at, A.K.A. your zone of genius, and stick to it!
10. What Your Zone of Focus Is
Your zone of focus is the aspects of your environment and physical wellbeing that need to be in alignment for specific tasks to be accomplished. It’s the area in which you work the best, and it’s what we help our clients identify. We prioritize the zone of focus above anything because, ultimately, the best way to scale your services is by creating high quality work faster.
11. You Don’t Have to Scale Alone
No one ever said you had to do this alone! In fact, you shouldn’t be. Is it possible? Yes. But it will take you longer and be much harder without a community of support around you. Why make things more difficult on yourself when you could feel confident knowing you have experts and cheerleaders in your back pocket to depend on?
That’s what we aim to provide inside The Incubator. We help 1:1 service providers take their premium services to the next level by developing a High-Touch Signature Service™ and putting streamlined, solid systems in place that will allow you to work less, make more, and work only with your dream clients.
Go ahead and apply and then let us know on Instagram, so we can chat and move you along quicker in the queue!
