Entrepreneurs often that scalability is binary – you’re either scalable or you’re not. This isn’t actually true – scalability is more of a spectrum. This means that you can make tweaks to your business and its operations that can gradually move you along this spectrum to become more scalable.
This is particularly important for people who are selling a service or product that is handmade and/or tailored as your selling capacity is often limited by the number of hours you have in a day to make or deliver your product/service. It is possible to optimise your business operations in a way that either gives you more hours in the day to sell your service, or allows you to produce more of your products without compromising on quality. To find out where you might want to automate or use technology to improve your operations, consider the following questions:
- What brings you income? Is this product/service heavily reliant on you and your efforts? Is your product/service repeatable/standardised or bespoke? Does it require specific expertise?
- Are there other activities in your business require f2f work or take up a lot of your time?
If you answered yes to any of these, then this represents an area that you can scale using technology tools. There is a tool to automate almost everything in your business – from managing customers, to sending newsletters, to taking orders and team management. And most of these are free or very low cost! Check out Startup Stash for a comprehensive list of tools available.
So how can you improve your scalability?