To Scale Or Not To Scale... That Is The Question.
“Are you ready to SCALE your business in 2020??”
Probably not.
Really? A business coach telling you not to go for it?
Yep.
Let me explain:
When you’re in small business, there’s a lot of pressure (especially in the era of online marketing) to scale your business as fast as possible—so that you can make millions while lying on a beach somewhere, umbrella-drink in your hand.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that trying to create something huge, and reach lots of people as fast as possible, has some major problems:
*It’s a TON of work to create all that content. You will curse the term “passive income” as you sit bleary-eyed in front of your computer at 1AM on a Thursday, having barely seen your loved ones all week.
*You’ll compare yourself to others who’ve scaled and are making it look easy, try too hard to make something that appeals to the masses—but not your soul— (not realizing a lot of the “successful” people you’re comparing yourself too are also struggling behind the scenes), and then feel pretty bad about yourself, which may mean…
*You might just give up. -Especially if you didn’t take time to nurture relationships along the way, and essentially launched a scaled product to no one.
“Don’t get big fast, get important soon.”—Seth Godin
What if, instead of focusing on reaching as many people as possible, you focused on creating something special, well-crafted, and important— for a smaller group of people who truly need and appreciate your work?
What if you savored the process of growing your business: focusing on the fun of the actual work, and the joy of individual-interaction and creating something with care? What if you became the most remarkable [insert profession] in your community?
(Hint: and what if that was actually the secret to creating something more profitable in the long run?)
I love the Slow Food Movement— They realized that by scaling food-production to “billions served”, fast-food had put out nutrition-poor food that was killing food-culture, tradition, and the environment. So Slow Food focuses on farm-to-table, high-quality food, soulful food-traditions, and bringing pleasure back to preparing and eating food. Ironically, the focus on “slow” has made the movement spread all over the world.
Sometimes in my coaching work, I think I may be starting a “Slow Business Movement.” As I work with people to create a soul-filled business that is focused on using their unique gifts to help their ideal clients, I increasingly find that the more they just focus on doing excellent work with a core group of people, the faster the business comes alive.
I’m not saying you can never scale— but it helps to scale with *soul* rather than just scale for the sake of growing. As you serve individuals, you can take note of the ideas you find yourself teaching over and over, and the unique words/stories/analogies you use to teach them— and you may just be slowly creating scale-able content as you do the actual work. As you streamline your systems, you can be setting the business up so that it’s easier to scale/replicate later.
The attention and care you put in when your business is small prepares the way for it to grow naturally later— and you’ll have a more authentic, and enduring voice once you grow to a larger audience.
So for now, focus on:
*Savoring the process of building your business,
*Serving the people who really need and appreciate your work, and
*Enjoying quality vs. quantity.
If you have thoughts or comments , please share them below. I may not always be able to respond, but I savor the chance to read every one :)
Jane
p.s. For a great metaphor for “slow business” creating something more fruitful in the long run (plus a million other wonderful analogies), check out the the sweet, beautiful documentary The Biggest Little Farm. A couple striving to create a thriving organic farm learn that first, they must focus on nothing but nutrient-rich soil. Their months of compost-spreading is agonizing at times, but pays off amazingly.