How To Scale A Service Business

scale service-based business

Business concern Bound founder Natasha Stewart. Source: Supplied.

The online world is a country of opportunity. It'due south where dreams come up true, and anyone with formal or breezy skills, cognition or expertise, can start a business with a laptop and WiFi. Only it can also be furious and demanding, and at times, information technology can throw y'all to the wolves. If you don't learn how to master your time and energy, yous're out.

In 2011, I was fired from my total-fourth dimension job. I will never know the existent reason why, because there were no formal warnings or clues obvious to me — but an uncomfortable vibe effectually the fact I was a first-time mother and a payout to 'leave quietly'.

Fast-frontwards to 2019 and I will forever be grateful for that bang considering it changed my trajectory. I woke up and was no longer willing to be trapped in a 9-five task or be at the mercy of someone else dictating my salary and worth.

Like most entrepreneurs, I had heard the faint drumming for freedom over time, and at present it was and then loud I couldn't ignore it whatever longer. I decided to honour it and go my ain boss instead of finding some other ane. I leveraged off my existing graphic and spider web design skills and started a business. It triggered an insatiable hunger to thrive in the online business world and never take to be an employee again.

In just over a yr, I was out-earning my old full-time salary, but the wheels were starting to fall off in every other direction.

I was working until 2am every night to consummate projects and I couldn't go away on holidays without losing income. I had reached a ceiling on how much I could earn considering I had no more time to take on new clients and I was in a constant feast-or-dearth cycle because I had to stop work in progress in order to find new work and vice versa.

There came a turning point when I intuitively felt there had to be a amend fashion, so I started from scratch. But this fourth dimension, I was determined to set upwards a business that was going to piece of work for me, instead of me working for it, and that would advantage me with the genuine freedom I was still searching for.

Armed with everything I had learnt near working smarter not harder, and all my expertise, I started Concern Jump and scaled it to over a million dollars in under two years. As well that though, my business has lovingly supported me within the currents of life, afforded true freedom and flexibility, and offered me fulfilment through sharing what I take learnt with others.

So, how did I flip this traditional service-based model and genetically engineer it to be the catalyst to afford me more freedom?

It starts with the practiced one-time saying 'work smarter, not harder', and to exist constantly looking for how to create more time, while also concurrently saving time within our daily tasks and activities.

So, here are five strategies to save you time that is better spent elsewhere.

The right business model

Traditionally, in a service-based business model, nosotros are selling our fourth dimension for money and working one-to-one with clients. Nosotros get paid for spending 10 amount of time per client. The key here is to flip this so y'all execute a unit of fourth dimension but scale the revenue from it.

For example, I accept a customer who has been a hairdresser for 20 years and ran a successful home salon. She was tired of the physical work, so nosotros are templating her expertise into a coaching and membership model, where she will now teach other hairdressers how to start and run a successful habitation salon, through a sell one-to-many model. The same expertise, content and skills are being packaged, but it's now able to be sold an infinite amount of times without any extra continuance required to replicate the service.

Another client of mine is a nanny and too regularly places other nannies into families with her connections. She was spending fourteen hours per placement, so with some automating and outsourcing, we have reduced her time per placement to just four hours. She at present has ten hours left over per customer to reposition herself into the profit-producing areas of her business, while working on the parts of her business organization she loves about.

I have another client who is a business organisation and marketing coach. Once again, traditionally this is a i-to-one model, however, we take moved her into a group coaching and a membership strategy where she coaches many students at one time but gets paid in an ascending fashion. She as well charges a premium to work 1-to-one with her.

In one case you lot take worked out how to absorb yourself out, then you can weave additional elements into your menses.

Times it by ane,000

In a service-based concern, information technology's so easy to go trapped in a cycle of completing a projection, and so spending meaning time finding, engaging and onboarding a new customer, but for it all to replay over and over again.

This is where a smart online marketing strategy can alter the game, past leveraging off advertising platforms to compound the clients waiting at your door.

Why spend iv hours at a face-to-face up networking lunch reaching a few people when you can fix upward a Google Ad and go far front end of thousands of potential clients in the aforementioned amount of fourth dimension? Why ship out 500 flyers to a non-defined audience when you tin target hundreds and thousands of your ideal customers with Facebook Ads.

The key is to constantly ask yourself, how tin can I maximise what I'm doing to reach more people for the same amount of fourth dimension. How tin can I create a process once and non have to do information technology again? How tin I decrease time spent but all the same achieve the aforementioned result and value?

Build a team effectually you

Many business owners wait until they feel they have enough revenue to first hiring, withal, the opposite is the path to more than freedom.

Kickoff hiring every bit soon equally you've got a spare $50 every week. If your hourly rate is $100 per hour, why spend it on $10-per-hour tasks when yous can pay someone from Upwork to practice it for you?

Even if you showtime by outsourcing one hour of piece of work every week, the period-on upshot volition not but reduce your workload but also lighten the mental load.

Building a team is instrumental for scaling a business, and anyone can get started outsourcing with a wealth of freelancing platforms at our fingertips.

Catamenia with automation

We have so many amazing options and opportunities with technology these days, and I employ it to automate and systemise my business, which, in turn, removes bottlenecks and frees my fourth dimension.

Programs such as Calendly are great for making call scheduling a breeze. Zapier is fantastic for connecting the apps yous use every day to make y'all more than productive. Email marketing apps such equally Active Campaign are brilliant for delivering data well-nigh your service so you don't accept to, nurturing dormant potential clients out of the woodwork and sending onboarding emails to new clients to collect the information you lot need to kickoff the job. And Woocommerce is astonishing for automating payments and subscriptions so you lot no longer need to chase clients to settle their accounts.

Mindset ever comes first

I've saved the best for last. They say a successful business comes down to 20% strategy and 80% mindset, and I take experienced this to be so true.

In social club to scale a concern, nosotros start need to scale our minds, allow go of any inner doubts, and cull to look for the opportunity instead of the obstacles.

Nosotros must prime ourselves into position mentally, physically and spiritually and then we can work within the flow and as efficiently and productively equally possible.

Once we lead from this frame of heed our results will compound.

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