Here is the thing about scale, it is a result – not a process.

Everyone and their distant cousin from the unemployment line is talking about scaling this, scaling that and scaling…scaling…scaling.

There is a plague of massive, misinformation about growing businesses — perpetuated by people that have little clue about that journey.

Just like how people screw up strategy and tactics and wake up in the wrong place… people screw up scaling. Especially those that have not truly done it at… scale.

When you say you want to scale your business, you actually mean that your strategy is to grow to a certain scaled level. That my friends is a goal.

How do you grow to a certain scale? It’s not by scaling. It’s by….wait for it….

Executing your plan to grow, by doing things (tactics/actions) that will move your business to the next level and beyond. Implementation comes first.

Increasing Revenue is not scaling up.

What shall you pivot on now to have the future you and your business deserve?

The only time you can pivot, is in the present. The past and the future are indistinguishable by your mind.

If you want something different than the past and you see it in your future, the only way to get it is to pivot now – into your future.

By definition, pivot is the central point, pin, or shaft on which a mechanism turns.

Yes, pivot requires action. The movement that is different than the previous movement. That is how you pivot to have the future you deserve.

If you want to scale, you must wake up to scale up with the right people.

Increasing ad spend isn’t scaling an ad campaign. It isn’t scaling a business. It also is not a strategy…it is a tactic.

Increasing revenue without scaling the business operations means that the business will fail from the inside out.

If you want to scale revenue to $100k, ok. $500k, ok, $1M, good, $3M fine, $30M go for it. $3Billion be my guest.

But, at each level, you will need someone that has been there – done that and has the muscle memory to execute at that scale. Picking a mentor or coach or operators that have been to those levels is what is required.

Think about large, fast growing companies that rotate executives as they scale up. Why? Because to scale, they know that the leadership that’s great at $1M isn’t the leadership that is great and appropriate at $100M or a Billion. This is natural up-leveling.

As an entrepreneur, you must acknowledge the hole in your competence and fill it with, talented, experienced, and seemingly expensive people…the cost to skip this truth is too costly.

The whole purpose of executing the plan is to arrive at the scaled size, operating like a well-oiled machine. That is a scaled business.

Using a music metaphor, it’s like turning up the guitar amp and drowning out the vocals. The song suffers. It’s out of whack. It sounds like crap and people won’t listen for long or again and again. It’s ugly noise.

Your business should make sweet music to you, to its stakeholders and to a potential acquirer…oh, you don’t want to ever sell because it’s a legacy business? The valuation still matters..

When a business grows faster than the internals are adapted, the muscle memory of the organization will revert to the norm of what was. This happens even faster if during the changes you don’t harness the talent of people comfortable with the new level. They will unintentionally drive it right back down.

The people who are not ready to scale unintentionally hold the business back. If not, the business will revert to the previous level of comfort. Like clockwork.

So, if you plan to grow revenue…that is most typically to derive more cash profit. To get there you must execute the plan and to stay there you must install that new way of operating. There should be no hedging and no turning back. It becomes the new norm.

Source: Jason Myers

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P.S. The blog image is a lock from Caen.  A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats, ships and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in which the water level can be varied.  To scale you need to move out of your current chamber (and comfort zone).