Scaling Your Business – A Crossover Podcast Episode w/ The Modern Creative

Today, Joyce and Dianuh from The Modern Creative Podcast are joining us to chat about scaling your creative business. We’re diving into what scaling means to each of us, and We’re dishing out practical tips on how you can start scaling. Remember, you get to decide how to grow your business! You don’t have to take massive leaps to scale. Even small baby steps can lead to significant growth and help you to increase efficiency in your business.

Connect with Dianuh and Joyce:
https://themoderncreativepodcast.com/

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Growing vs. Scaling: What’s the difference?

Dianuh:

So for me, my automatic thought is that growing in business is growing within one specific niche or product or service. Then scaling is kind of like working more on your business and the backend of that. Basically, making sure that it kind of is more automated and streamlined. That’s

how I see the difference between growing and scaling.

Cami:

For me, when I think of growth versus scaling, I always think of growth as more like a horizontal line and then scaling is like a vertical line. Growing to me is like, okay, I’m hiring more people. I’m taking on more things. My businesses like growing wider and wider, like a wider net. 

Then, scaling, It’s like I’m doing less work but I’m making more money. So, I’m scaling my time back, but increasing that revenue in my business. I’m just ultimately creating a sustainable, strategic growth within a framework. Whereas growing horizontally it’s a different strategy. 

There’s no right or wrong answer to whether you need to grow or scale your business. But for me scaling is more appealing because I have less hands in it then growing wise.

Does everyone need to scale their business?

Joyce:

I think it’s up to the person, like it’s up to their individual goals. A lot of people now are like, Oh six figure business, and It’s like the sexy thing, right? But it’s okay if that’s not your goal. Like as long as your business is fulfilling you in other ways that you want it to fulfill you in reaching your goals that you set for yourself. You don’t have to reach for these huge revenue goals if you don’t want to. And that’s just me kind of tying scaling to revenue though. So that was kind of my definition of scaling too. So, I don’t think so.

Dianuh:

I don’t think everyone needs to scale their business, but I think there needs to be scalability in your business. And I think that’s something you should consider kind of in the early stages because at the end of the day we’re all human and we’re going to get tired, we’re going to need to take breaks. 

I’m not saying you have to necessarily scale your business, but I think there needs to be aspects where it could be scalable if that makes sense. So let’s leave some options open for growth if you want to take it there later.

Cami:

Yeah. I completely agree with you Diana. I feel like maybe scalability isn’t like, okay, I’m going to become a scalable business and like you go in with that mindset, but in my eyes, a scalable business is a more efficient business where you have those Workflows and processes in place. And you just become like the most efficient working version of yourself so you don’t get burnt out. 

Especially like we’re artists, like we can’t just like be like I’m going to do a hundred paintings a week all the time. Like it just doesn’t work like that. You know the ultimate goal is working for yourself is that you want to be able to work less, take control of your hours and like still bring in good solid revenue. So I think having some kind of idea of what scalability looks like and what that could mean for your business specifically. 

How often should you be doing a full overview of your business to understand the ways you are attempting to grow? How do you decide to make adjustments?

Dianuh:

I think now that it has been a few years, I’ve gotten some sort of system down. It’s something that I’m always tweaking and trying to make better. But basically I do a quarter evaluation and look at which quarter is doing more of what. And based on that, that’s when I started to insert different strategies, whether it’s like a shop promotion online course of where, where do I have time for what? 

So that’s kinda how I do that. I do like a quarterly thing, but I think now that I’ve had a few years under my belt, I can kind of predict what’s going to happen like yearly, but I don’t plan that far to the advance.

Elisabeth:

I think I’m kind of like a hot mess. A lot of the times I make adjustments in my businesses based on a feeling. So, I cut out wood signs because I kind of had that gut feeling of like I know that this isn’t profitable or giving me the ROI that I want within my business. AndI ended those at the end of 2018 and then really, really niched down to doing just invitations and envelope calligraphy for 2019.

I think it takes time for everyone to kind of get that traction and even know where they’re growing.It’s like that weird like growing phase of kind of going where the wind takes you, like you get like pushed around a little bit. So, to everyone out there who’s like, I have no idea what I’m doing right now. I feel like that was me for a really long time, and Now I’ve like hit this place in my business where I’m like, okay, I’m ready to  actually evaluate. And I don’t do it quarterly like Dianuh, but I would say maybe maybe like twice a year, kind of the beginning of the year and kind of mid year for me. 

Does scaling a business always mean hiring people?

Cami:

I think with scaling versus growing, sometimes hiring can also be a hindrance. Like yeah, maybe you hired someone to take on half the workload, but now you’re paying them and you’re paying, now you have to pay yourself less. I think sometimes people get the misconception that hiring someone instantly means like, Oh, that business is doing awesome. Like they’re making a ton of money when reality, a lot of business owners, I’ve talked to her like, yeah, the work we have so much to do and I’ve hired 10 people, I pay myself the least out of all of them. And I’m like, to me that’s not scalability.That’s just, I don’t know, you’re kind of spinning your wheels and not necessarily scaling your business to actually grow at that like exponential rate. 

So I do think sometimes it can be a hindrance and I think it can be an hindrance when you’re scaling too fast and not like giving yourself, like Elizabeth was talking about earlier, the traction in the foothold to know like where you’re gonna get the most bang your buck for hiring someone and like what they can strategically be doing to grow and not just hiring for the sake of hiring because it feels like it’s the right time.

You know, we’re big on feelings, but really, really looking at your numbers and seeing, okay, if I hire this person to do X, Y,Z , is that gonna bring home the bacon for this? You have to be super strategic on your hiring process.

What are practical ways to consider scaling your business?

Joyce:

I mentioned that the difference for me for growing and scaling is like growing is really about setting the foundation. So, before you can even consider taking steps to scale, be sure that your business feels good, like it is what you want to do in the long term.

I think Elizabeth mentioned this in the beginning. She took a little bit to figure out what she really wants to do. And I did too. I started my business with Etsy and then weddings and I was quickly like, hell no, we’re not doing weddings. Sorry people that do weddings. That just wasn’t for me. Right? But it took me a lot of years to figure out what really works. So I think that’s the very first thing before you can even think about scaling, make sure you’re very happy with like what you’re doing right now.

And scaling doesn’t necessarily mean, okay like I’ve made X amount of dollars and now my next step is immediately to like hire people. There are other ways you can scale, you can scale your business line first, you can take maybe a service that you have and see if there’s a way that you can make that into a digital product, which are really scaleable. Also, you ladies have had summits and I’ve had courses. You’ve also done like online conferences as well, right? So all of that is digital and that’s a really, I would say that’s a great way to get your feet wet and scaling. See if there’s something that you can offer that can be offered in a digital format.