Setting up and establishing a business is hard work. It takes grit, determination, time and resources, and even then many businesses are still unable to survive in what is a notoriously tough climate. Here are three ways owners can effectively scale their business to the next level.

Build Major Networks

Establishing, building, and maintaining strong professional relationships is crucial to scaling a business. Networking not only expands a business’s reach to more potential customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders, but it also opens it up to new ideas, which could be adopted by a business to help it grow.

Of course, like all networks, a business needs to offer something of value to other stakeholders in order for them to be interested in networking. This should not be a problem for most businesses, however, as long as the return (in this case, the scaling of the business) is greater than any ‘costs’ of creating new business networks.

Take on the Right People

The potential of a business is often as strong as the potential of the people who work in it. For a business to scale up and reach the next level, it is imperative that businesses hire and retain the right people who can grow with it.

This does not only mean hiring individuals who are enthusiastic and ‘can do the job properly’, but also hiring people who welcome positive change and can fit in with the culture of the business and with those around them. Although workers with skills and experience are crucial in scaling a business, team cohesion and ‘chemistry’ are just as important in ensuring they remain enthusiastic about the business grew from strength to strength.

Do Not Micro-manage

A hands-off approach to managing an entire business can be easier said than done, especially if a business owner has taken charge of their business from scratch. When starting a business, an owner almost always leads or conducts every single business activity, from the finances to the customer relations and the actual business activity itself.

While it may initially be daunting for a business owner to delegate areas and tasks to employees, doing so is an important part of growing, defining, and ultimately scaling a business. This is a common trait of the most successful middle-sized and big businesses – the owner/CEO, while approachable to employees, focuses on the most appropriate tasks while employees and teams focus on other areas with clear goals and expectations.