How to build, grow, and scale a service based business
Hey guys!
Today we are going to be talking about how to build and grow and scale a service based business. Now, I'm actually working on creating a new course all about helping service based business owners grow and scale their businesses in a way that feels good to them without leading to burnout.
In my market research have heard the most often from people is how do they continue to grow their business when they're only one person? I can't be everywhere at once and also I want to be able to take a break in my business. I want to be able to take a vacation without having to check my email. I want the business to be able to run without me pushing it forward every single day, of every single week.
The most important thing to think about is to make sure you’re tracking your time so that you can then look at what are you spending the most of your time doing and then break that up into very individual tasks. If you are spending the most time creating social media content for your clients, what are all the tasks that go into creating that social media content for your clients? Identify all of those things, so that you can now start to look at, okay, do I have systems and processes around each of these things? Can any of these things be automated? Can I outsource any of these things? Because the reality of the situation is as a service based business owner, you are only one person and so you are going to reach the ceiling of your available bandwidth. There's only so many hours in the day and you can only do so much. The only way that you are going to be able to continue to grow and scale your business and continue to increase your revenue is by raising your prices or making more sales whether that's clients whether that's adding on digital products, what have you, right?
I want you to do and what this is so, so important to do. First off, document everything that goes into the running of your business, because your brain is a liar. If you're sitting here and just thinking, Oh, I spend so much time doing this, or oh, I have to do this a lot, but it's really quick. It doesn't take me that much time. That to me is a lie because you don't actually know if you are not tracking your time and documenting all these things. You don't actually know how long those things are taking you or how often you're doing those things. So you are working from a place with incorrect information and incorrect data. So you have to make sure that you are documenting everything that goes into what it takes to run your business and your tracking your time so you know exactly how long each of those things is going to take. That's the only time you're going to really see oh, I really need to increase my prices. Because based on how much time I'm doing this right now. I'm barely making any money or I'm losing money, right? That's going to be a great indicator for you right there.
You're also going to be able to decide, maybe buying the software over is worth it, but I haven't been able to justify the cost yet. But now I see oh, I am spending so much time doing this thing that this software is going to totally take this task off of my hands. You're going to be able to much better put into context for yourself. Okay, it's actually really worth it for me to make this investment in this software in this tool. And then from that point, you're going to be able to say, okay, I'm spending a lot of time doing this thing. I don't particularly enjoy this thing. It's not really hard to do, I could get someone else to do it. It's going to be able to help you put into context, that cost of getting someone else to do it to outsourcing that thing to getting help with that thing.
What would it mean for your business? If you could go out and spend your time doing something else that's a lot higher level that's a lot higher impact for your business, right? Could you then justify that cost? Getting that support and getting that help? You now know exactly how much time it's gonna save you. So you can reallocate that time to do the bigger stuff to be the business owner, the CEO in your business. And all of these tasks really have to do with you as the owner of your business.
You need to drive the strategy of your business and I'm not just talking about the marketing strategy. I'm talking about the backend. I'm talking about the operation of your business, right. Once you've also done all those activities. Now you've documented all of your processes guess what you can do now you can look at okay, do we have a template that we use that might be useful to sell to people as a digital product? I've developed a whole system around this thing should I record it and sell it to help other people who maybe don't want to take as much time as I took to figure out this thing to figure out this process? And then you can get some of that revenue coming in from digital products, which you're not having to actively work on and sell and follow up with and create deliverables on every single time you make a sale. So you're creating almost an entirely new revenue stream off of work you've already done. But if you don't sit down and take the time to really do this and document these things and track your time, I guarantee you you are not gonna be able to effectively grow and scale your business.
Because again, you are working with false information and you are working with false data. So you're never going to be able to make a decision that you know is accurate and right for the business. You're just going to be going off of oh what you think in the moment, which is not always helpful for us. So if you are a service based business owner and you really are looking to grow and scale your business this year, but you're wondering how you you know, I can't duplicate myself. So how do I do that? Right? I only have so many hours in the day. This is the start of that process that you need to do, because then what you're going to be able to do is you're going to be able to sit down and list out okay, these are all of my options that I have. What is going to be the fastest and the easiest to implement. That is also going to be the most impactful for my business and you can kind of put it into a quadrant. Have things that are going to be fast and easy things that are going to be slow and easy things that are going to be fast but maybe a little difficult and things that are going to be slow and difficult, and you can also then look at what's going to be the most impactful and that is how you figure out what you need to do first.
Sure you could do all 10 of these things. But which of these 10 things do I put my focus on this week? Which of these 10 things should I actually do and spend time doing and which of these 10 things is going to get me closer to what I want out of my business and get me closer to my goals? You that is never going to fall out of the sky like a friggin Meteor and smack you on the head. That comes from being a good business owner. How are you a good business owner? You know, the right strategy for your business? How do you know the right strategy for your business? You know how your business runs? You know how much time it takes you to do things you know how much things cost, right? That is going to allow you to pick from all of these options, which is going to be the best option for me the most effective option for me. Being a good business owner is a skill right being a business owner is its own skill set.
So even if you own a business, say you're a web designer or you're a graphic designer or you're a marketer, those are skills that you're delivering to your clients. But being an effective business owner is its own skill set. This is why you see people who successfully start multiple businesses and they sell successful businesses or they buy a business that's not doing so well. And they improve it and it grows and they make a bunch of money from it right. People who own successfully own or start multiple businesses. They have the skill set of being an effective business owner. And that is something you really need to mindfully cultivate and improve upon. And how do you do that? This is how it starts. This is laying the foundation for you being an effective business owner and being able to drive the strategy of your own business.
If you have any questions about this, definitely reach out to me on Sam DiNicola on Instagram, or you can always contact me at SamDiNicolaDigital.com. But this is going to be what is going to show you movement this year. So I hope this has been helpful. And if you haven't already make sure you leave a review for this podcast every single month. We have a winner who gets a free coaching call with me it is the most effective way to get my eyes on your business. So if you are struggling to figure out what you should do to move your business forward if you have a lot of options and you're not sure where you should put your time and attention. That is something we can go over on a call together right. So if you want to win one of those calls, make sure you leave a review for this podcast. And I will see you next time on No Fluff, Small Business Simplified.