Prioritize and Scale
What to prioritize, when to scale, and how to scale, these are the questions you might be asking in the beginning, but not necessarily what you need to be worrying about right away. Either way, it's always better to plan ahead and know how you want to handle it when you're ready.
Let's talk about the options.
There's automation, hiring full-time or part-time employees, contracting, outsourcing, or simply not taking on more than you can chew.
Hopefully, the last option is really only the plan in the beginning. We don't want to overwhelm ourselves, especially in the beginning. Avoid burning out!
So let's start with
#1) Automation:
This will probably be the first stage in many processes you're currently working on, mainly to get rid of the grunt work and free up your time for more important things. However, don't let automation take over everything. ChatGPT is not full automation to write everything for you (robots do make mistakes - and they do sound like robots).
As much as it can be helpful, it can also create more work in the end when used improperly. Glitches happen and can take hours to fix.
#2) Hiring Employees:
This one can be a little more difficult.
When are you ready to start hiring on a team? Or even just your first employee.
There are a few more factors that go into this one. Especially if you want to be a good boss. Or, not even just a good boss, a boss that you wish you had before you started your own business.
Sometimes this is the right option for you, but that also depends on the business model you want. Is that the way you want to scale? Do you want a large company with full-time employees at some point? If this is the option you'd prefer, here are a few questions you'll want to ask yourself and work towards the answers you provide.
Do you eventually want an actual office or facility or do you want everything remote?
Is full-time employees necessary?
Do you want to be responsible for a large team as well as managers?
How stable do you need to be before you start hiring?
Can you afford to provide benefits?
And these are just the top 5. Hiring employees is a big step, so the biggest advice here is to make sure you're ready.
#3) Contracting:
There are several reasons to do this and it is a much easier thing to do than fully hiring on a team. Plus, plenty of people prefer freelancing over a W2.
Contracting can be done if you are realizing you're starting to bring in too much work (great problem to have), or if you want to expand services.
For example: I have always worked with social media management and content creation. But this year, I realized that that was no longer a passion of mine to offer my clients. But some of my clients needed more help than just strategy and guidance. This is where a contractor, who is interested in the work that I'm not doing can help with.
Now you have someone who can offer the service, that wants to provide the help, and you don't lose the client.
Another example is the opportunity to offer greater expertise in an area and skill that you simply don't have at all or as much in (ex. design or website building).
#4) Outsourcing:
This one comes a little more in the case of aspects of your own business. If you don't have time to manage your own business, or parts of your business, that's when you can outsource. Hiring VA's, accountants, bookkeepers, etc, come in very handy.
You need to be able to focus on the most important parts of your business that will help your growth. If you can, outsource and get help with what you either don't have time for or aren't as good at.
Lastly, not rushing into too much work.
Remember, you don't need to take on every client or every project. Let yourself breathe! There will always be clients, there will always be projects. If there weren't, taking those first clients and projects would just mean those would already be your last!
If you don't have the time, capacity, or ability for all the needs, and aren't able to learn quickly enough, don't take it on.
But, how do you say no if you need the money? If you've come to this point, it's time to re-evaluate your pricing. What are you charging? What is your capacity? How much do you need to charge and how many clients do you need to be able to handle and sustain? You should be charging enough, not just to pay your bills, but to live, save, and not be struggling with the amount of clients you need to make the amount you need to make.
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