For many business owners, the decision to start out on their own came from being really good at what they do.
Sound familiar?
Technical expertise is critical in a business. Without it, why would people come to you to solve their problems? They might as well look in the phone book.
At Acuity, we work with amazing technical experts every day. The challenge is helping those experts to achieve scale in their businesses. To take a business beyond one individual with a great skill.
There are three key elements to scaling your business. Systems. People. Client management. Your business coach needs to help you put each of those elements in place.
Systems
If you’re not on the premises, can business go on without you?
Does everyone understand what needs to be done, by whom and when?
If you were out of the business for a few months, what would happen?
Systems help you answer these questions.
Just as a business coach can help you understand what, how and why to do something, systems provide that certainty for your business.
Systemisation is the process of taking a great skill and making it deliverable by your entire business.
It’s really, really hard. What is innate to you, what you just know, is not often not obvious to others. Have you gotten the keys to your business out of your head, onto the page and trained into your staff?
People
How do you attract, train and retain great people?
We strongly believe that training people has to cover more than just technical skills. You should always hire for attitude not aptitude and train people on the behavioural aspects of your business. It’s about making sure that people coming into the business are a great fit culturally with your team.
It goes both ways – your existing staff need to make the person you hire today feel welcome and part of the team. And that person must be prepared to become part of the team.
Client management
Clients. Without them, your business doesn’t exist.
They pay the bills. They offer the challenges. If you get too focused on systems and people – on you – clients can start to get forgotten.
What are your client management processes?
How do you know that you’re looking after your clients’ needs? They change over time. They develop. Their expectations develop. Very few clients are going to want exactly the same thing from you and your business in 5 years that they want now.
Understanding and managing clients and client expectations are critical in developing your business for the future.
All of these elements contribute to the both the sustainability and scalability of your business.
Sounds like something with which you could use some help.