How to scale your business

There are basically three ways to scale your business and make more profit:

• Enterprise
• Licence
• Products

An enterprise is where you grow and employ people. This is the most common way of developing a business and (depending on your situation) it can require you to look for business funding/investment.

You can run your enterprise as a lifestyle or management style business. Lifestyle is where you work alongside employees doing some of the operational work. Or, you can have a management style enterprise where you take yourself out of operations and become a business manager. It is common for the founder to become the Managing Director, even though this may not be the best option for them.

An alternative to building an enterprise is to licence what you have developed. An example is a franchise, but it doesn’t have to be a brand. It can be know-how.

The products option includes writing a book, training or CD/video resources. A good example is Paul McKenna who doesn’t charge £25 an hour as a hypnotist…he has a business empire of training and products.

When thinking about these options keep in mind that they are not mutually exclusive. You can have your own business, grant a licence and sell products.

When choosing what to do, think carefully about what you want. Perhaps you love what you do, in which case an enterprise may not be the best option for you personally.

Whatever one or combination you choose, you can create a financial model. When you do this you will know:

• The different types of customer
• The number of customers
• How much each type of customer will spend
• Different revenue streams
• Net profit
• Business value

You can do all this in the planning stage so you know what your exit plan is.