3 Steps to Scaling Your Business

By Andrew Frazier, MBA, CFA On Mar 7, 2025

Why do some businesses succeed, others just survive, and still others fail? Almost every business owner envisions scaling their business, but unfortunately, most never accomplish this goal. So, what is scaling? It is the ability to grow a company while maintaining or improving performance and revenue. 

Although successfully scaling a business can be extremely challenging, there have been many companies that have done it successfully over the years like Apple®, Amazon®, Target®, and Chipotle®. They all have a strong culture aligning everyone in the company around continual improvement, employee development, strategic planning, and astute market analysis. The following are the primary impediments to successfully scaling a business. 

Planning and Preparation

Lack of Planning and Preparation of the business owner and his/her organization. Everyone knows that failing to plan is planning to fail, but most business owners still don’t have a current, adequate business plan. A business plan should be a living document that needs to be fully updated at least once per year. Creating the right growth strategy requires significant market analysis and usually outside assistance to increase revenue enough for scaling. Rising revenue can lead to more profit, but generally cash flows out faster than it is coming in, requiring financial and cash flow planning to avoid failure. Rapid growth exacerbates problems if the business model is not optimized with appropriate processes and procedures, thereby creating unexpected challenges. 

Knowing the Critical Path

Many times, business owners do not understand the path, so they don’t set the right goals or focus on overcoming the necessary challenges for scaling. In order to scale, there are several steps that must be taken. First, the owner needs to extract himself or herself from day-to-day operations so they can focus on business model improvement and growth planning. Then, the business owner needs to hire and develop a professional leadership team to run the company effectively. Finally, they must successfully manage growth, capacity, and cash flow throughout the scaling process.

Developing the Requisite Skills

The business owner may not have developed the necessary professional skills to scale their organization successfully. A business can only go as far as the leader is prepared to take it. Business owners must evolve to become more forward thinking throughout the pre-scaling and scaling process. The first critical skill to develop is analysis and the ability to manage by the numbers to continually make improvements and identify internal and external trends early. They must also develop their coaching skills and emotional intelligence so they can be an effective leader of leaders, empowering and influencing their team members to operate at the highest level possible. Finally, business owners must become a symbol to inspire their organizations internally so they can attract external clients, partners, and resources to support the rapid growth necessary to scale.

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