4 Savvy Strategies to Scale Up Your Business

The most driven and motivated entrepreneurs want nothing more than to scale upgrow their revenues and profits at a hugely fast rate. But that path to potential greatness is fraught with pitfalls that can quickly bury a company.

The good news: Allison Maslan is here to help. An entrepreneur since age 19, Maslan built a whopping 10 successful companies before she decided to focus her efforts on helping other entrepreneurs navigate the rocky road to rapid results. Today, she runs Allison Maslan International, a business mentoring firm that helps entrepreneurs around the globe multiply their incomes.

She recently shared four of the most crucial steps to scaling up. Here they are, without further ado:

1. Gain clarity of vision. Many of us start a business because were great technicianswere really good at doing one particular thing. And that skill allows us to muscle our way forward and achieve some decent success. But eventually we hit a hurdle that slows our growth as we conduct business as usual. Or we have so much success that we start to spread ourselves thin and pursue every opportunity that presents itselfeven if many of them take us away from what we do so well.

To combat this, its crucial to gain clarity of vision--the deeper why behind what we do. This involves asking what our business is really all about, what kind of team we want to create, what the revenues streams are, and where we want to be three years down the road. A clear vision not only helps you know where you're going and remind you when you have those stressful times, it also helps you attract high level people to your team and motivate them, notes Maslan. And It makes your clients feel like that they're part of some bigger mission.

PRO TIP: Step away from the day-to-day to gain this clarity. You cant craft a long-term future for your firm if youre stuck working in it all day. And a 30-minute brainstorming session in between meetings wont cut it, either. You need time and space to really think through the issues. (More on that later.)

2. Hire forward. Most business owners will begin to hire when they have maxed out their bandwidth and after mistakes start happening. Bad idea. When you hire out of desperation, you don't take the time to really find the right peopleand you usually regret it later.

Instead, try hiring forwardwhich means to think about questions like "Where do I want this division of my company to go? What is a revenue stream that we really want to take off? Is there another level of care we want for our customers so that we can increase our retention?"in advance of your employee hunt.

Says Maslan: Hiring forward means even though you don't necessarily have the business there yet, you hire the person and we put them there. Its like watering a floweryou hire someone for a job and goal with the intention that they are going to grow.

I know first-hand the value of hiring forward. In one of my previous companies, we were growing so fast that we hired without a lot of proactive thought. It went so poorly that we actually hit the brakes on our own growth to sort out the problem. Eventually, we hired more intelligently, with a focus on hiring to grow the right areas of the company, and we ended up going full cycle.

3. Be a leader, not a boss. Inspiring your people instead of simply telling them what to doleading, not bossing aroundwill yield enormous benefits that help you scale up. Let your people and key partners into your brain. Communicate your vision and what can happen for everyone if they all work together toward it. When I finally helped my staff understand my growth vision for the company and how important their role was in it, everybody then can come together to build it, marvels Maslan.

SMART MOVE: To supercharge your inspirational leadership, give your people stretch goals by asking them to take responsibility for tasks they dont think theyre capable ofbut you know they are. Stretch goals help staff grow as employees and as people, and thats what you want to really scale up, says Maslan.

4. Step away from your business. As noted above, when youre buried deep working in your businesstaking phone calls, meetings and emails all dayyou simply dont have the necessary bandwidth to work on your business meaningfully. The big leaps happen when you literally are away from your company in a creative bubble with other entrepreneurs who want to grow like you do, says Maslan.

Amen to that. I can tell that by taking advantage of coaching, mentoring or mastermind groups that last for 2-3 days at a time, you begin to see your company is a whole new wayone that allows you to reengage, identify new ways to solve problems that have been dogging you, or see new opportunities for revenue growth that werent clear before. You end up saying things like "Now I get what I can do. All I got to do is move this over here," or, "I didn't even think about this whole other revenue stream. We're missing thousands of dollars over here."

Stepping into a creative bubble has another big benefit: You connect with other business owners who are smart and driven, and work together to address your issues. When you team up with another entrepreneur who isnt emotionally connected to you or your business, you can get amazing ideas that you never considered, says Maslan.

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