How to Scale a Business

A comical analogy...

Have you ever wondered what people mean by "scaling" a business? They say once you find a method to make money you need to scale it to make more money.

I offer below a clearer example everyone could relate to. Take for example the street beggar. I won't say "homeless" street beggar because I don't want to get into a debate if they are truly homeless or not, or if it's their full time job, or if they really enjoy being out in public and are collecting donations to their favorite adopt a pet clinic.

I digress. Let's pretend you want to get into the business of asking for money.

You already did your research and found your first location to break into. There's no competition, a high volume of traffic, and a nice demographic of wealthy people.

Let's get started!

You start out by standing on the street with your hands out asking for change or spare cash.

Scale up

After some success you need to begin to scale because your hands can only hold so much. Use your money to buy a small cup of coffee. Consider this an investment. You're spending some of your earnings but expecting a return on this investment by being able to accept more money. The coffee will give you energy to go out the next day, but more importantly you can hold a lot more money in an empty coffee cup than your hands can hold.

Scale up some more

Your business is booming and you want more than what your little cup can hold. How can you scale up more? Buy a large coffee to hold even more money. You now scaled your business from using your hands up to a large cup.

Scale out

You are happy with how well you scaled your business up. You are confident you have a great system in place and maximized the potential of yourself and the money income.

Now it's time to scale out your business. Take the empty cup from that small coffee you first purchased and give it to a friend in exchange for a percentage of what they collect. Congratulations, you just scaled out your business to include other people whether they be employees or affiliates.