Becoming an overnight success is every entrepreneur’s dream, but when it actually does happen, it can rapidly turn into an overwhelming nightmare if you aren’t prepared for the influx of new customers and orders. Rather than allowing yourself to be buried by the consequences of your success, finding a way to scale your business quickly can ensure you keep up with rising demand.
But to do so, you’ll want to consider the following advice from the members of Young Entrepreneur Council. Here, they discuss their best tips for scaling a business quickly and the steps you won’t want to miss if you find yourself suddenly successful.
Members pictured from left to right.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Start With A Plan For The Future
Having a plan is the key to staying on track and focused on your goals during those fast-growth times. Without a plan in place, you will inevitably lose focus, lose your grip on that growth and get discouraged when things don’t go according to your plan. I experienced incredibly fast growth in the first three months of launching my first company. While it was fun and exciting in the initial stages, I got burned out because I worked more than 60 hours a week. So, my advice is to make sure you have the standard operating procedures in place to ensure your company experiences controlled growth. – Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC
2. Ensure You Can Maintain Operations At The Current Demand
First, take a moment to assess what’s needed in order to maintain the new rush of sales. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and start planning 10 steps ahead; however, it’s a missed opportunity if you don’t figure out how to maintain smooth operations at the current new demand. Once you can ensure you have the right systems in place for customer service and fulfillment, then you can start to ramp up marketing and sales efforts to continue scaling. By attempting to scale too quickly, you may forget to lay the right foundation for long-term success. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress
3. Create An Exceptional Customer Service Process
The best advice for scaling a business quickly after becoming an overnight success is focusing on customer service. By creating an exceptional customer service process, you can quickly scale your business and get more customers to come back and recommend your business to friends and family. A key step to achieving this is implementing a great customer feedback system where customers can provide feedback on how they feel about their experience with you. This will help you identify the areas where you need to make improvements and take your customer service to the next level. – Jay Dahal, Machnet
4. Focus On Hiring The Right People
Businesses that grow too quickly can experience workflow problems that can harm the company’s image if they do not hire the right people to pick up the increasing workload. Hiring employees who are compatible with the company culture and mission statement is also essential to scale a business quickly. If your company’s atmosphere is fast-paced, make sure to communicate that clearly. Employees need a thorough understanding of a company’s work expectations in order to be successful on the job. – Evan Nierman, Red Banyan
5. Invest In Software And Tools That Allow You To Grow
If you want to grow your business quickly, I suggest investing in software and tools that allow for scalability. For example, you should look for products that have multiple tiers based on the user’s needs. You don’t want to get caught in a position where you’re growing so fast that you can’t keep up with customers. This tip can help you mitigate damage and grow alongside your audience. – Chris Christoff, MonsterInsights
6. Use Automation To Save Time
Automation is key for any business looking to scale, but it’s essential for one experiencing rapid growth that wasn’t anticipated this quickly. You can put systems in place much faster than you can hire new employees to keep up with demand, so it’s an important first step. Everything from scheduling your workforce and handling payroll to email marketing and even some aspects of customer service can be automated using software, workflows and digital processes. The right tool allows you to automate most, if not all, aspects of your business, making it a low-cost, highly effective solution for scaling rapidly. – Diana Goodwin, MarketBox
7. Go Narrow Before You Go Wide
It is a common misconception that when you narrow down your focus on a specific niche or problem, you limit the market size and the number of customers you can reach. In reality, it is the opposite. Narrowing down your focus is exactly what you need to do if you want to scale your business quickly and efficiently. When you view it from a different perspective—for example, the difference between a general practitioner and a brain surgeon—it actually makes perfect sense. There’s a good reason why the latter is difficult to reach and can charge much more. Apply the same mindset to your business. – Samuel Thimothy, OneIMS
8. Balance A High-Level View With Keeping On Top Of The Details
Very early in the pandemic, before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended masks, we refocused our company’s resources to produce and sell masks. Within days, our revenues grew 100 times, and we were selling millions of masks as we opened new warehouses, converted our office into a fulfillment center and scaled our customer support team 10 times. As I look back, my best advice would be to try to keep a high-level view of the most important aspects of your business while staying on top of the details. Neither can be overlooked for the other. Find people you can delegate to quickly, and hire early and fast. Ensure all elements of the business have at least one, if not two, pair of eyes so nothing falls through the cracks. You really have to ensure the overnight success does not turn into an all-night nightmare. – Umaimah Mendhro, One League
9. Ensure Product Consistency And Quality
Maintain consistency and quality with your product or service offering as you look to scale your business quickly. Don’t slack on the efforts that helped you realize your overnight success in the first place. Ensure that everybody on your team is as committed as they were to begin with, and create processes that will keep that industry benchmark alive and kicking. Always play the long-term game, and don’t allow the overnight success to get into your head. Maintaining a consistent brand identity is a continuous process, so sustaining the customer experience is also essential when looking to scale your business massively. – Brian David Crane, Spread Great Ideas