We can talk for hours about marketing best practice, memes and viral campaigns, new school sales processes but without a focus on scalability even the best business processes and techniques can stall.
When I say scalability it’s about setting your baseline and ground zero to perfection so that you know whatever you intend to scale will be strong rather than simply large yet flakey.
So if success is about scalability then it pays from the outset to “Plan Small and Think Big”. By this I mean become obsessed with minimalism and working towards an MVP (minimum viable product), a simplistic yet functional process of taking products and services to market, and a tight, profitable process of serving your customers. Take everything back to the true basics. Do as little as possible to deliver exceptional value and strip out everything unnecessary, because the unnecessary will cost you when you scale and cost affects profitability. Perfection at small scale is great, but only if you keep everything simple, otherwise there’s a danger you may become too slow to scale.
Having ‘planned small’ and streamlined absolutely everything, then it’s time to press down on the gas pedal and ‘think big’.
Take care as you focus on scaling. If you are in a service business ensure you are compensated by the value you provide and not the time given. Humans only have 24 hours in a day, no matter how good you are!
Focus at least 25% of your time each week to serve your scalability. Think of things you can do, publish and market that can either be self-serviced by the customer (they download and print, for example), or where you write once but publish everywhere (your next blog post gets included in your next book, a campaign of tweets, e-book, white paper, customer presentation, etc.)
When you take the path of scalability it is about 100% commitment until you are successful. Many of the best selling business books remind us not to quite “3 feet before the gold seam”. You know you have planned for simplicity and efficiency so there is no reason why if it works at a small scale that it shouldn’t at a large or even uber scale.
As you scale and increase the pace of growth, remember that speed is king and you should innovate, develop and deliver faster than anyone can copy you. Pace of your scaling can be a USP (unique selling point) and give you competitive edge.
So try today… Plan Small and Think Big and watch those fruits ripen.
