Why "more of the same" won't help you scale your business

10 minutes ago
5 min read

Turquoise upward arrow over a blue business word cloud with terms like growth, strategy, finance, marketing, and startup — Scaling your business? You have to think differently

Do you think about scaling your business in terms of doing more of what's already working?

More clients, more people, more of the same products and services…just bigger?

It sounds logical, and you’re not alone in thinking that way... except it's pretty much the opposite of what’s needed. As you grow, you’ll start to notice that what got your business to its current stage doesn’t work so well anymore.

In fact, they could be the very things holding your business back.

Key Takeaways:

Scaling isn't about "more of the same, only bigger". You need systems to support growth, a change in your decision-making mindset, and refocused structure, not simply a bigger version of what you already have
As a founder, it's easy to get in your own way just by continuing to do what worked when the business was smaller
Scaling isn’t all about you. Your capability and expertise are important, naturally, but when scaling, your business can quickly outgrow your personal capacity
Your team is likely to notice things changing before you do. Recruitment, retention and engagement issues are often the first signs that something needs to change

Surely scaling a business just means doing more of what's already working?

It's so tempting to think that way.

What you've been doing has worked, so your natural first thought will be to do more of it.

But think about it this way...a large part of what got you to where you are has been you. Your ideas, your judgement, your relationships, your ability to make the important decisions when it mattered.

Honeybee flying against soft green blurred background, carrying pollen. — You've been flying solo...that won't scale

That doesn't scale. It can’t. There's only one of you, and a business that runs largely on your personal involvement has a physical limit, no matter how many hours you're prepared to put in.

So then what changes?

Three things, mainly.

“Working harder” isn’t one of them.

The first thing is decision-making. During your start up days, every decision was yours. It was fast and efficient. It worked because your business was small enough for that to make sense. It may also have been the reality simply because you were, quite literally, the business.

Logically, you can see this becoming a key constraint on growth. Every decision that has to wait for you is one that isn't getting made when it should. And that can create all sorts of flow-on effects.

The second thing to change is systems. When your business is small, you can keep plenty of processes and systems in your head. For example, how a job gets quoted, what "good" outcomes look like, who can help you fix something when it goes wrong.

That's fine. Until it isn't.

Your business will at some point get to a size where you can’t be directly involved in everything. When that happens, whatever isn't written down or built into a process won’t happen with the consistency needed to maintain quality. Things will be done differently depending on who's doing them and how well they remember what you'd normally do. Two clients can end up with completely different experiences of your business, and that’s not a great brand outcome.

Bright green door in white wall with hanging wooden sign reading WE’RE HIRING, suggesting a cheerful job opening announcement — As you scale, recruit for tomorrow, not just today

The third change is what you're recruiting for. Early on, you’d hire for capability...can this person do the job in front of them right now. As your business grows, you need people who can operate with some autonomy, make reasonable calls without checking everything with you, and grow into bigger roles as your business does. That's a very different way of recruiting, and sticking with a “recruit for the current job” as the only focus will constrain growth.

More revenue will solve most of this, right?

It helps, but no…it’s not the solution.

You can generate more revenue in your business but if it gets harder and harder to run because you’ve not addressed what we’ve just talked about, growth will still get bogged down.

Here’s what will happen:

Meetings will take longer without clear outcomes.
Things that used to “just happen” increasingly get missed.
Your team will be busier, but the important, value-added work is moving slower than it should.

These are all signs that your business has grown past the structure that's been making it work.

Why this catches owners off guard

There’s no “big bang” that tells you it’s time to recalibrate. There's no obvious warning sign telling you that things need to change.

It creeps up on you slowly. So you’ll accept a few particularly busy weeks, or a recruit or two that don’t quite work out, as tickets to the game.

But the reality is your business is outgrowing what’s made it successful. The gap between how your business operates and how it needs to operate is slowly getting bigger. Owners who build resilient, scalable businesses that grow sustainably tend to recognise this early. And rather than fight it, they work on closing the gap, so that it doesn’t become a crisis that forces their hand.

Businesses that get bogged down are the ones where owners struggle with the idea of stepping back from being involved in everything. They don’t (or can’t) make that shift from “founder to CEO”.

How do owners minimise the risk of this happening?

Many owners, try to solve their growth challenges with more effort. Longer hours, maybe more micromanagement, and getting more involved (rather than less) in everything that happens in their business. For them, this feel like the only responsible approach, but it simply reinforces the very growth barrier they’re trying to break down.

So that’s the first thing…don’t just do more of the same.

The harder, but generally better move, is counterintuitive. At the first sign that this could be happening in your business, begin to step back from some of what you’ve always done. You need to create an environment in which your business can function without you always being “in the room”.

Chalkboard with the word delegate in white chalk, surrounded by arrows pointing in multiple directions on a dark textured background. — Scaling means stepping back and empowering others to run the day-to-day

Those are hard adjustments for most owners to make. It’s hard to accept but what got you to $1M is rarely what will get you to $5M and beyond.

What does clarity have to do with any of this?

It’s at the very core of all of this.

Without a clear sense of where you want the business to head, it's hard to know which decisions need you involved and which don't. Without that clarity, the “feel safe” option is to not change…be across everything.

Owners with a clear sense of direction find this mindset change easier, because they have a filter for it. If a decision clearly fits where the business is going, it can be delegated with reasonable confidence. If it doesn't, that's usually obvious too. Without that filter, everything looks equally important, to the point where nothing is.