How to Scale Your Business One Step at a Time
Traction. Profit. Throughput. Innovation.
These are the four ingredients you need to scale a business. At any given time, you should be focused on one, and only one, of them.
Do you know which one your business should be focused on?
Credit: Ash Maurya, https://blog.leanstack.com/
First, let's get some definitions out of the way:
Traction: Does your business have a process to consistently acquire new customers?
Profit: Do you consistently earn profits and strategically invest those profits into growth?
Throughput: Can your business handle increased volume, and do you know where the breaking points are?
Innovation: Does your company have a focused and organized way to implement new ideas?
Now, back to my question. Which should you be focusing on?
To answer this, I want you to think back to when you first started your business. During those first 6 months, what was the thing you focused on above all else?
If you're like most business owners, you probably spent most of your time, energy, and focus on figuring out how to get customers, right? (We call that finding traction).
Nobody needed to tell you to do this. You inherently knew that your most important thing was to find sales. Otherwise this dream of yours probably wouldn't last that long, would it?
And as your business grew, you started moving your attention to other things... operations, staffing, finances, technology. The list of things to work on seemed endless.
But one thing never changed from those early days of your business - you don't have an infinite supply of time, money, and team members to build and fix all the things you want to.
You have to make a choice of where to put your resources.
And herein lies the dilemma. Because making that decision is your # 1 job as a business owner. But it's also really hard. Especially in a world where there's an endless supply of voices telling you all the things that you have to do to grow your business.
So let me make your life a little easier. You can ignore 95% of all the noise out there. You don't have to do it all.
Scratch that, you're not allowed to do it all. In fact, you're probably already doing too much.
So if you're doing too much but it all feels necessary, I'll tell you what I tell my clients. You don't have to pick one thing, but you do need to pick one area of focus. Just like you did when you first started out.
Traction, Profit, Throughput, or Innovation. Which is your weakest link?
Still not sure? Here's access to the tool that I use with my clients. Five minutes, 20 questions, and you'll have your answer.