Scaling the Unscalable: A Guide to Growing Your Business Without Breaking the Bank
Here are 10 key points from Alex Hormozi’s video “Stop Being Broke. Get Busy.”: |
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Scaling the Unscalable: The main concept is that you need to scale activities that seem unscalable initially. This involves doing tasks that don’t seem to scale well but can be adapted as you grow.
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Skill Deficiency: The perceived unscalability is often due to a skill deficiency rather than an inherent impossibility. Gaining the necessary skills can make these tasks scalable.
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Initial Hands-On Approach: In the early stages of a business, it’s crucial to do hands-on work like outbound calls or writing handwritten notes to customers, even if it doesn’t seem scalable.
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Customer Interaction: Engaging directly with customers, even for low-ticket items, is essential for learning about their pain points, refining your product, and improving your marketing.
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Two Key Questions: When talking to customers, ask what one feature they value most and which feature they wouldn’t miss. This helps prioritize product features effectively.
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Learn Before You Earn: Early in your business, prioritize learning about your customers and their needs over immediate earnings. This knowledge will help you scale effectively later.
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Gradual Scaling: Start with highly personalized interactions (one-on-one) and gradually move to semi-private (one-on-six) and then larger group interactions as you grow.
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Sales to Fulfillment Continuum: The easier a service is to sell, the harder it usually is to fulfill, and vice versa. Start with high-touch, high-value services and work your way down to more scalable, lower-touch offerings.
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Done For You, Done With You, Do It Yourself Pyramid: Begin with high-value, done-for-you services. As you scale, offer done-with-you services, and finally, do-it-yourself options to reach a broader audience.
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Operational Efficiency: Small businesses have the advantage of being able to do things that big businesses can’t due to scalability issues. Use this to your advantage by employing personalized, high-touch strategies.
You’ve got a great business idea, but you’re not sure how to scale it without breaking the bank. You’ve heard that scaling requires a large team and a lot of investment, but you don’t have the resources for that. What can you do?
The good news is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to scale your business. In fact, you can scale your business without hiring any new employees. Here’s how to scale your business without breaking the bank:
- Start with the unscalable. This means offering a high-touch service that requires a lot of manual labor. This will allow you to get your business up and running quickly and start generating revenue. Once you have a solid foundation, you can start to automate and outsource tasks to make your business more scalable. Sales to fulfillment continuum states that the easier something is to sell, the harder it is to fulfill. This means a highly customizable service with good profit margin is hard to scale but has high value, while a product with low profit margin and commoditized features is easy to scale but has low value. Keep this thought in mind for your product design.
The Sales to Fulfillment Continuum
The Sales to Fulfillment Continuum: Understand the relationship between the ease of selling and the difficulty of fulfilling a product or service.
Every product or service exists on a spectrum of sales to fulfillment. On one end of the spectrum, you have products or services that are easy to sell but difficult to fulfill. These are typically high-touch, customized products or services that require a lot of manual labor to deliver. On the other end of the spectrum, you have products or services that are easy to fulfill but difficult to sell. These are typically low-touch, standardized products or services that can be automated and scaled easily.
The key to scaling your business is to find a product or service that is both easy to sell and easy to fulfill. This will allow you to quickly and easily generate revenue and then scale your business by automating and outsourcing tasks.
Scaling the Unscalable
Scaling the Unscalable: Just because a solution is unscalable in its current form doesn’t mean it can’t be scaled at all. Break down the solution into smaller components and identify the key elements that drive value.
Many entrepreneurs believe that scaling a business requires a large team and a lot of investment. However, this is not always the case. In fact, it is often possible to scale a business without hiring any new employees or investing in new infrastructure.
The key to scaling the unscalable is to break down the solution into smaller components and identify the key elements that drive value. Once you have identified the key elements, you can then automate or outsource these tasks to make your solution more scalable.
The Done For You, Done With You, Do It Yourself Pyramid
The Done For You, Done With You, Do It Yourself Pyramid: When scaling a business, start with a ‘done for you’ service and gradually transition to a ‘done with you’ and ‘do it yourself’ model as you develop systems and processes.
When scaling a business, it is important to start with a model that is easy to implement and that can be scaled quickly. This is where the “done for you” model comes in. In this model, you provide all of the services and support that your customers need. This can be a great way to get your business up and running quickly and to start generating revenue.
Once you have a solid foundation in place, you can start to transition to a “done with you” model. In this model, you provide some of the services and support, but you also teach your customers how to do some of the work themselves. This can help you to scale your business more quickly and to reduce your costs.
Finally, once you have developed systems and processes that can be automated, you can transition to a “do it yourself” model. In this model, you provide your customers with the tools and resources they need to do all of the work themselves. This can be the most scalable model, but it can also be the most difficult to implement.
Practical Examples
Practical Examples: Real-world examples of how businesses have successfully scaled unscalable solutions.
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Dropbox: Dropbox started out as a “done for you” service that allowed users to store and share files online. However, Dropbox quickly realized that it could scale its business more quickly by transitioning to a “done with you” model. In this model, Dropbox provided users with the tools and resources they needed to store and share files themselves. This allowed Dropbox to scale its business to over 500 million users.
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Shopify: Shopify started out as a “done for you” service that helped businesses create online stores. However, Shopify quickly realized that it could scale its business more quickly by transitioning to a “done with you” model. In this model, Shopify provided businesses with the tools and resources they needed to create and manage their own online stores. This allowed Shopify to scale its business to over 1 million users.
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Slack: Slack started out as a “done for you” service that helped teams communicate and collaborate. However, Slack quickly realized that it could scale its business more quickly by transitioning to a “done with you” model. In this model, Slack provided teams with the tools and resources they needed to communicate and collaborate on their own. This allowed Slack to scale its business to over 10 million users.
Wrapping up
Scaling a business doesn’t have to be expensive or overwhelming. By following the steps in this guide, you can grow your business sustainably and profitably.
Scaling a business can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be expensive or overwhelming. By following the steps in this guide, you can grow your business sustainably and profitably.
Remember, the key to scaling your business is to find a solution that is both easy to sell and easy to fulfill. Once you have found a solution that meets these criteria, you can then start to scale your business by automating and outsourcing tasks.
Quiz:
Multiple Choice:
- Which of the following is NOT a key element to consider when scaling a business?
- (A) Ease of selling
- (B) Difficulty of fulfilling
- (C) Cost of scaling
- (D) Value delivered to customers
- What is the first step in scaling an unscalable solution?
- (A) Automating the entire solution
- (B) Breaking down the solution into smaller components
- (C) Outsourcing the entire solution
- (D) Hiring more employees
- Which of the following is NOT a model for scaling a business?
- (A) Done For You
- (B) Done With You
- (C) Do It For Me
- (D) Do It Yourself
True/False:
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Scaling a business always requires a large team and a lot of investment.
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It is possible to scale a solution that is difficult to fulfill.
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The Done For You model is the most scalable model for all businesses.
Answer Key:
Multiple Choice:
- (C) Cost of scaling
- (B) Breaking down the solution into smaller components
- (C) Do It For Me
True/False:
- False
- True
- False
“Multiple Choice:\n\n1. (C) Cost of scaling\n2. (B) Breaking down the solution into smaller components\n3. (C) Do It For Me\n\nTrue/False:\n\n4. False\n5. True\n6. False”