3 Fundamentals You Must Master to Scale (Not Just Grow) Your Company

To scale your company, you won't just need great people, money, and relationships.

The truth is, you will need all that but also a whole lot more. However, if you are one of those owners/leaders who dreams of dominating your region, market, or industry you need only focus on the fundamentals to scale...just like any super successful entrepreneur in any business or industry does.

Unfortunately, however, too many business owners are not clear as to what their fundamentals are or should be.

This blog is intended to provide you with the clarity you need to know to practice and make a habit of your core fundamentals.

So, before we get started, let's be clear: to scale your company, you must not focus on all aspects of the company yourself, only on the core fundamentals. If you are unable to discipline yourself to do this and delegate most of the rest, your company's growth will at some point (sooner rather than later) taper off and your business will become more of a churn machine than a sprout factory.

1. Build the Right Culture and Hire the Right People

Question: What's the single most important aspect of your business? Is it your products and service? Is it your customers/clients? Or is it your people?

Know the answer? Or, do you need to think about it? Well, the truth is too many company owners/leaders unfortunately don't know the answer to this most fundamental question and must take time to think about it. If you are one of those business owners or leaders, then think hard.

(Jeopardy music playing in the background.)

Ok, what is your answer? If you think it is anything other than your people, I’m sorry to say that you have much to learn about leadership and business. I know that sounds rather blunt – even perhaps harsh – but you might as well hear the hard truth now.

If your workplace is not a happy and productive one, then it is not a sustainable one. Your people must be inspired, motivated, and engaged. There needs to be a powerful why that everyone clearly and unanimously marches to: what you all are doing it for and how everyone's role in reaching the mountaintop matters. If your people are intellectually and emotionally connected to this powerful why, then meaning and purpose enters and fills their lives and it no longer is just a job, it is a role everyone together seeks to master to achieve a collective dream.

If you need help finding/identifying the right why and designing/building the right culture, then seek help. Again, this is an absolute must; a core fundamental!

2. Deploy the Right Processes and Systems

A fast-growing company owner is often faced with making some very difficult decisions. None more difficult than the decision to remain, reinvest, and scale with your existing business software platform or instead cut, run, purchase, build, and implement an all new one. So, while of course you will need every little element of the company systemized, you will never be able to scale in today's world without a platform that can put all those processes and systems together, inter-connecting all of them, working in harmony like a symphonic orchestra. This means you must make sure you have the right software platform to scale with and into.

So, with that in mind, here are your 10 Gotta Haves that will ensure you adopt the right enterprise platform to do just that:

• Make sure the system of choice replaces/eliminates as many unsynchronized applications as possible.
• Be mindful that whatever you choose, it NEVER forces you to change your business processes to fit it. The software MUST change and mold itself to fit YOU.
• The software must not only shape to you, it must allow for rapid implementation.
• Over the course of time, you will change your mind or require a quick pivot and your software must be nimble enough to accommodate this eventuality.
• Seek seamless, effortless business process workflow capability.
• Make sure you can take it with you (mobile and tablet friendly).
• Seek to reduce (as much as possible) your dependency on technical professionals. It should be easy to modify your own data.
• It must give you the ability to scale your business, not just grow it.
• Effective, efficient, and nimble API integrations are a must (if you still desire to keep some legacy systems/solutions).
• Eradicate the belief that all enterprise systems are big, clunky, and expensive.

3. Grow Yourself, Not Just Your Business

Many successful entrepreneurs are great at what they do. Some are great in how they do it. The most successful entrepreneurs, however, are great in how they be. Yes, you read that right. They are great at BE-ing. Being themselves. Thinking. Creating. Sharing. Being themselves from moment to moment, circumstance to circumstance.

However, the greatest entrepreneurs of all, our elite entrepreneurs, the ones who are the very best of the best:

1. Know themselves better than you likely know yourself.

2. Practice – practice knowing themselves, testing themselves, elevating themselves.

3. Live "self-realized" or "self-actualized" lives. They embody their vision of who they want to be.

The one thing our happiest, most successful entrepreneurs have in common is...they BE differently. They think differently. They live differently. They have different personal habits, traits, belief systems.

These successful people know that whatever "it" is (your idea, career, business) will only ever be as good as you are. And as good as you are is only as good as “it” will ever get. They know how truly connected they are. Yet, we live in a world that teaches us only to focus on it. To learn it so that we can do it. To learn more or work in it more to grow it more. To raise money for it. Get technology for it. People for it. It. It. It.

So...(here it comes, the secret sauce as they say) what almost every super successful entrepreneur has not yet told is that you need to Invest In Yourself, not just your business. Invest in knowing YOU better. Far better than you presently think and believe you do.

What they are also not telling you is that you can't invest in yourself “when”... when your business grows to a certain point, when you have more time, when you make more money, etc. You must and need to invest in yourself now. You must make YOU a priority immediately. You must commit to growing you as you commit to growing your company.

You are now likely thinking...well, why? Why hasn't anyone told me this?

The answer: they didn't know how. Most successful entrepreneurs are great at what they do, how they do it, and yes, how they be! Some are even great at telling their story in how they got there, but what has become plainly evident is that most entrepreneurs are unfortunately just not gifted at explaining this universal truth, this realization that lives within them...this REAL formula for success.

It’s Not What You Know But How You Incorporate What You Know Into You And Make It A Part Of How You Be

Now, while many of you will agree or at least acknowledge this undeniable truth, the unfortunate reality is that most of you will do nothing about it. Most will create a story (and make themselves believe it) as to why not to start now. The reason most of you will do nothing is because it will cost you money. Money – many of you will tell yourselves – you don't presently have (while of course having at least some money for It – your idea, your company, your dream).

Word of advice to all you scale-focused company owner and leader dreamers out there: don't make the mistake that most small but competent business owners today are making. Don't wait to invest in yourself when. Invest in yourself NOW. Commit to you as much as you commit to IT. Learn the practice of knowing yourself better. Learn how to test yourself. Elevate yourself.

Knowing and practicing your fundamentals is essential to any great achievement – both in business and life. If you make it a habit to focus daily on these three fundamentals (1. Your People, 2. Your Systems, 3. (last but not least) You) then very likely any business you lead will be at the very least structured and poised to scale.

Related reading:
The Typical Process of Scaling Your Business and Why You Should Change Your Strategy