Your Scale Up Roadmap
A step-by-step guide for growing your business from day one.
Step 1: Embrace the Right Mindset for Scaling Your Small Business.
The E Myth" by Michael Gerber is a legendary book for small business owners looking to review the business they've created or wish to create. Many of us started our journey with a technician's mindset, focused on creating a job instead of a business for ourselves. To ensure a successful and mature business, it's essential to have the right mindset before scaling up.
"The E Myth" by Michael Gerber is a renowned business book that challenges the common assumption that being a skilled technician in a specific field is enough to build a successful business. Gerber argues that many small business owners fail to create thriving enterprises because they lack the right mindset and entrepreneurial skills. Instead, he proposes a systematic approach to building a business that involves developing a clear vision, defining processes, and creating systems that enable the business to run without depending solely on the owner's technical skills. With practical insights and case studies, "The E Myth" offers valuable guidance to anyone seeking to start or grow a small business.
☝️ Before you continue to the next step, it is recommended that you take the time you need to complete this step first.
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Step 2: Developing a Clear Business Model & Vision.
Once you understand the importance of creating a profitable business that is system-dependent, the next step is to develop a clear vision for your business model. This includes identifying WHO you want to provide your product or service to, WHAT you are offering them, HOW you will deliver your product or services, and how you will be rewarded. The whole business model is your product, and it should be dynamic to adapt to the ever-changing market.
Useful tools like the "Lean Canvas" by Ash Maurya and "The Value Proposition Canvas" by Alex Osterwalder provide frameworks to help you lay out your business model. With a clear understanding of your business model, you should answer questions such as:
Useful tools like the "Lean Canvas" by Ash Maurya and "The Value Proposition Canvas" by Alex Osterwalder provide frameworks to help you lay out your business model. With a clear understanding of your business model, you should answer questions such as:
- "What is your business's well-defined future?" This provides a clear idea of where you're going from where you are now.
- "How does your business look, how does it act, and how does it do what it is intended to do?" This gives you a clear picture of how your business looks in the eyes of your customers.
The Lean Canvas is a popular business model template developed by entrepreneur and author Ash Maurya. It is a simple yet effective one-page tool that helps entrepreneurs and startups to create, refine, and communicate their business models in a clear and concise way. The Lean Canvas is based on the Lean Startup methodology, which emphasizes a rapid, iterative approach to product development and a focus on customer needs. With its user-friendly design and flexible format, the Lean Canvas has become a go-to resource for many startups and small businesses looking to build a strong foundation for success.
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The Value Proposition Canvas is a powerful tool for businesses and entrepreneurs looking to create and refine their product or service offerings. Developed by Alex Osterwalder, the Value Proposition Canvas helps users to identify and analyze the key components of their value proposition, including customer needs, pain points, and desired outcomes. By mapping out these components, businesses can better understand their target customers and develop products and services that truly meet their needs. The Value Proposition Canvas is widely used in the Lean Startup methodology and has become a key resource for businesses seeking to build a strong foundation for success.
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☝️ Before you continue to the next step, it is recommended that you take the time you need to complete this step first.
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Step 3: Building Your Growth Engine - The Importance of a Die-Hard Fan Base
Establishing a solid foundation for your business is essential, and building a growth engine, specifically a die-hard fan base for your product or business, is a crucial step before scaling up. To help you achieve this, we have provided a list of effective channel examples that have helped our partners successfully grow their fan base.
In your early days ...The Local Maker's Market: Building Your Business from the Ground Up
Starting a business at a local maker's market can be a great way to gain feedback and connect with customers. As a physical product business owner, you are proud of the products you create, and the feedback you receive is a valuable asset. Successful makers strategically collect customer information and gain a clear understanding of their target customers' profile. From there, they create customer personas that include their customers' pain points, values, goals, and dreams. By learning about their customers, makers can determine where to find their target customers and through which channels. The knowledge gained from this stage can serve as a foundation for your marketing strategies, themes and messages. Building a Loyal Fan and Community Base
Having a group of die-hard fans who love your products and your business is essential for success. These fans could be family, friends, relatives, and other known and unknown individuals who keep coming back to buy from you, provide feedback, and offer encouragement. Successful brand owners strategically group these individuals into a community, where engagement continues between every purchase. By keeping them engaged, sharing the highs and lows of your journey, and encouraging interaction, you can build a loyal fan and community base. This can be achieved through an email list, a social media group, a fan page, a chat group, or a meet-up event, with a wide range of tools and platforms available. Choose one that works for your target customers and business, and focus on growing this list through connections and die-hard fans. Establishing an Online Shop for a Continuous Service Experience
As your fan base grows, setting up an online shop can provide an even better experience for your customers. The cost of creating an online shop is relatively low these days, and the process of setting it up will help you to separate yourself from the business. Successful brand owners will learn the necessary concepts, such as inventory management, logistics, and customer service, and put the business system you designed in Step 1 into action. Although this step takes time, it is crucial to the growth and success of your business. ☝️ Up until now, you have likely been working in your business, with the technician job consuming a lot of your time. However, in order to scale up your business, it's important that you can separate yourself from your business when the time comes - which is to have a well-established business system, a clear understanding of your target customer, an awareness of the value your business provides, and a sense of where your business currently stands and where it is headed. All of the work you've done up until this point has been in preparation for the moment when you are ready to scale up.
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Step 4: Igniting the Growth Engine for Your Business
By partnering with a full-service product development and manufacturing company such as PWI, you can trust that the supply end of the equation is taken care of when it comes to scaling up your maker's business. Your efforts should focus on finding the right channels to connect with your regional, national, and global target customers. Below, we have provided a list of effective channel examples that have helped our partners successfully scale up their maker businesses at this stage.
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Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is an effective way to reach early adopters in the global market who may not be familiar with your brand or products. It also offers opportunities for future wholesale and distribution partnerships. However, running a successful crowdfunding campaign requires significant resources. If your marketing skills are lacking, consider hiring an agent to help with the heavy lifting. Your fan base will be one of the key factors in the success of your campaign. The ultimate goal is to hear the golden chime of "funded in x hours" when you launch your project. Wholesale & Distribution: A Powerful Way to Scale Up Your Maker Business
As your brand and products gain recognition in the global market, you will likely start to receive inquiries about wholesale and distribution opportunities. While these opportunities require careful evaluation and consideration of factors such as customer experience and resource to manage your global markets, they can be a powerful way to scale up your business. From a scaling perspective, wholesale and distribution offer tremendous potential for expanding your reach and growing your revenue. Retail: Expanding Your Reach Through Retailers
Establishing partnerships with physical retail chains and popular e-commerce marketplaces is a great way to make it easier for your target customers to access your products. By expanding your offering channels through retailers, you can reach a wider audience and continue to grow your business. This is the last big piece of the puzzle in building channels for your maker business. ☝️ At this stage, your maker business has scaled up significantly, and you should be focusing on optimizing your business system to ensure it can run without your constant involvement.
Apart from the aforementioned channels, it is worth exploring a few other potential opportunities to see if they could be a good fit for your business.
Business alliance
A business alliance is a strategic partnership between your brand and other brands that offer complementary products or services to your target customers, with the goal of providing a better customer experience and potentially strengthening your brand's positioning and customer reach. Licensing and Loyalty: A Two-Way Street for Business Growth
Partnering with other businesses for the licensing and loyalty option can work in two ways. You can either license your brand to be used in different product categories, or you can obtain a license from another brand to produce a product under your brand. Additionally, you can either pay a loyalty fee to include a popular product offering under your brand or receive a loyalty fee to allow other businesses to produce your product under their brand. This option presents both opportunities and risks, which should be carefully considered before making a decision. |