hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder of catching clouds the leader in
e-commerce accounting today I want to talk about how to scale your business
now if you're not quite at the point of scaling it doesn't matter because this
is actually the perfect time to be thinking about that this is when you're
first developing your business and if you need some other tips on how to get
started in your business please stick around to the end because I've got
something else for you so let's jump in and get started with step number one
understand your business's guts okay so if you want to build a really great
business you need to understand every single piece and part of the activities
that make up your business it's gonna include sales and marketing and admin
and accounting and financing and all kinds of different things so anything
that has to do with your business is going to have to be identified by you
and you're gonna have to understand how things work alright then the next thing
you're going to do is you're going to take a look at all of those different
processes and systems and and different things that's going on in your business
I think a lot of people think about systems as being like information
technology or something like that but really anything that you're doing in
your business I don't care how manual it is it's a system and the way to make
your business most efficient and most easily scalable is to not only identify
what those systems are but then make sure that they're standardized for every
activity that you do and then streamline your processes so take out superfluous
steps that are just kind of getting in your way don't have a different way of
doing things for every single activity that you're doing so let me give you an
example when I was starting to use add-ons with QuickBooks Online in Xero I
noticed that some of the add-ons had different workflows so in some cases you
would go from the app to QuickBooks Online
whereas this the same tools you would go from
zero to the app and it was confusing it wasn't standard it was really hard to
train new people on that so we just booted QuickBooks all out of our
practice we just use Xero now and it helps make things a lot more efficient
everybody knows what what tool we're using how it works it's the same for
every single client so I would highly recommend doing something like that in
your business the next step is to document so it's not enough to just
identify what the processes are you need to document what those processes are and
if you're just starting out I know you're really busy but I highly
recommend you do this because by the time you get really in over your head
and you're you're super super crazy busy like even busier than you are now and
you really decide you need help and can afford it the person who's coming in is
going to need that documentation to know how you do things it's just gonna make
the whole process go so much more smoothly the next step is make sure you
train your people so you're gonna need to get help along the way you systems
can only go so far you know quick fixes with technology or they're not always
quick but you know fixes with technology will help for a while but at some point
if you're successful you're probably going to need somebody else to step in
and take over some of the 18 billion hats that you wear so you want to do a
good job training them so that they just don't feel like they don't know what
your expectations are and they're just floundering around it's you're gonna
scale more quickly if you give them the tools that they need to do a good job
the next step is to keep your eye on the road so let's say you've got all your
systems in place everything is documented you've got people in there
you have trained them and you say just go that doesn't mean that your business
is going to just run smoothly you need to keep an eye on things you need to
make sure that the training that you provided actually stuck or that they
and the the people that you've hired haven't just added in extra steps and
things that is breaking your vision so so keep your vision in mind and just
check in from time to time and make sure that things are still going according to
plan and if they aren't adapt and and you can
start over the process again as you add new systems or new things pop up so I
hope you found this video helpful if you look down below I've got a link to a
startup ecommerce guide a free ebook that you can get that will talk all
about getting your business up and going and help make sure that you haven't
missed any steps along the way as you're starting your business so I hope you
like this video if you did please like comment and share if you haven't already
please subscribe and I'll catch you later
you