The 10 Questions to ask when Scaling

After grinding for a year or two, it's time to finally time to hire a team.

Here are 10 questions you have to ask yourself before doing so

1 - What does scaling mean to my company?

2 - How can I Set up Team Priorities?

3 - How do I develop a Partnerships Strategy

4 - How will my Sales Manager oversee performance?

5 - How can I scale fulfillment?

6 - How can Case Studies demonstrate the Value?

7 - How can I develop an Outbound Sales Strategy?

8 - How do I enroll a Team around me?

9 - How do I plan and manage my weeks and months?

10 - How do I stay sane as I go through this process?

Scaling a company is scary, overwhelming, and necessary.

Unless you are one of the many psychos that enjoy burnout.

As Ryan Holiday says though - the obstacle is the way.

Once we realize that its time to take the next step, it’s time to define what scaling actually means for you as a founder.

I say that scaling is achieved twice the outputs with half the inputs. The next question is about what you intend for those outputs to be

Time to set up your Priorities - what you focus on above everything else.

Even if you are a solo founder, thinking in teams or departments is necessary to scaling.

These are 8 suggested Teams/departments:

Now that you have those laid out, its time to set 1-3 Priorities for each of those teams.

If you have a small team, know that they will stretch responsibilities across departments.

I use a database to assign Teams to every Priority, Project, and Playbook in my notion space.

The key when setting Priorities is to add a Leading Key Performing Indicator to measure progress for each Priority.

Through using a Leading Indicator, we understand exactly what actions to take in order to scale each Team’s performance ability.

Next, its time to scale your acquisition through Partnerships

After developing your direct sales channel, it’s time to consider Partnerships.

Who are the peeps that will share your product or service because of how fkn awesome and transformative it is?

For example, I work with Fractional CFOs, Corporate Lawyers,

You can lay out these partnerships within your CRM (or inside your Notion space to track where each of them are at while Onboarding them into your Partnerships program).

Next is scaling the Sales team that will convert the increased number of leads that come through these Partnerships channels.

There are a couple of key questions that Sales Managers need to constantly ask themselves:

Through analyzing the feedback that is collected in your CRM, your Sales Manager can let you know what adjustments might be made to enroll my clients into the business.

Once the efficiency of the Sales team is improved, its time to scale fulfillment and delivery of the goods and/or services.

To paraphrase Biggie Smalls….

[More customers,] more money, more problems

Through the use of Project Management tools, we can measure how long it takes to fulfill on our services.

We can also discover where the bottlenecks lie.

In these bottlenecks, we can ourselves about whether we need to automate or delegate certain tasks to increase the speed of delivery.

Collecting feedback at different points of the journey will also inform where improvements can be made

As more customers complete their journeys with you, Case Studies can be created to measure the true value of your solutions.

These are typically used in high dollar offers from coaching and consulting.

In addition to the testimonial, you’ll want to tell stories on the shift of the KPIs that your company impacted your clients.

Tally Forms can be used to collect Case Studies

Up until now, we assumed that new clients were calling you.

If the phones aren’t ringing, it’s time to build lists to spray and pray using several different tools such as  Apollo.io  and other list builders.

Create a customer persona.

Write out email sequences using AI

Edit them to match your brand voice.

Fire away!

Track any conversions that result in discovery calls.

More partners, more clients, more cashflow.

Time to hire more people to support you and your leadership team.

Write the Job Descriptions.

Share it with your networks.

Track the applicants as they come in.

Stay on top of it.

Create the Triple Win for Employees

Once they join, drop them into a self-paced Video Onboarding program and verify understanding through completion steps.

It’s like school, except you are teaching them how to help you print money.

As the business continues to grow, you’ll want to tighten up on your weekly and monthly planning cycles to stay focused.

As the team grows in size, it becomes paramount to create focus week after week.

Month after month.

We use a Weekly and Monthly Review Checklist to make sure we are constantly reviewing our Projects, Tasks, Content, Collaborations, and many more.

Because I personally tend to forget to complete this cycle, I have tasked my Growth Associate with running this meeting.

This raises the stakes, which elevates my performance (in addition to everyone elses).

Ultimately everyone wins as the company moves forward.

This is the million dollar question.

How do we stay sane through all the chaos?

For starters, be easy.

Next, recognize that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

And that civilization had tens of thousands of hands to build with.

All of this takes time

And thats okay.

Go for a walk, take breaks, tell your parents you love them.

If all you do is work, which eventually leads to burnout…

then whats the point