You’ve been working hard building your service-based business and starting to see the fruits of your labor. However, you may be experiencing a shift in the way you want to work. You’re ready for more separation between you and business, ready for every task not to be on your shoulders to complete, ready for that life you started your business for to become a reality.
You are aiming to scale your business, but aren’t sure how to do so when it’s taking everything to keep running your business smoothly. The key to having a business that not only flourishes financially but supports the lifestyle you want as well as through improving your business operations.
What Business Operations Are
5 Ways Better Operations Helps You Scale
Getting Support on Your Business Operations
WHAT ARE BUSINESS OPERATIONS?
Business operations is a combination of all the processes, people and tools you use in order to run simple to complex tasks in in your business.
Business operations covers the day to day work of your business. From your client experience to hiring to administrative work, how your operations are set up dictate how your business runs.
For many online service providers and coaches, the business operations are run by them alone. Everything that is accomplished in their business is completed by them. While at the beginning this can be manageable, as businesses start to grow along with what is required to run them, running your business operations that manually can lead to a lot of strain on the business owner.
When you find yourself spending more time IN your business, but not being able to enjoy the benefits of one or don’t feel like your business is working towards your vision, taking a look at your operations can offer the level of support necessary for you to unlock more growth in your business without sacrificing your livelihood to do so.
5 Ways Better Operations Scales Your Service-Based Business
Better alignment between your day-to-day work and your vision
Have you ever felt like the vision you have for your business gets lost in all the daily work you have to do? Oftentimes, it’s because we are at the center of trying to work on both at the same time. And whether you are a team of 10 or a team of one, this is incredibly difficult to do when both heavily rely on you. When your operations are aligned to this vision, as opposed to quick path-work, the work that is done isn’t based on what is pushed on your plate first, or what is most urgent— it creates streamlined processes for your business to handle the heavy lifting of day to day work while creating space for you to work on priority items such as driving your business in the direction of your vision. Aligned operations create the bridge between your vision and your day-to-day work.Easier communication between your team
Having a team is meant to help expand your business’s capacity and lay the groundwork for exponential growth in your business. However, a team is only as good as their understanding of their roles and accountability to execute them. Sometimes as visionaries, it can be difficult to break down the breadth of your vision to a team member and where they fit into the grand scheme of things. Having aligned operations can solidify your team’s processes, and give them clear instructions on how to execute the goals you have. Think standard operating procedures, performance indicators…the list goes on. Ultimately, it can help you and your team navigate how they support the business vision, and how they can support you.
Informed decision making
When so many things are begging for our attention, it can be hard to determine what is the best decision for not only the success of our business but also for the long term goals you have for your life as well. Being informed is your greatest asset to making decisions that you know are in line with your bigger goals, and that can come from having your internal operations structured and set up to provide you data when needed. You can tap into your KPIs or current process data relevant to the decision you need to make, or, save yourself time on making a decision repeatably by solidifying the standard for how something is done now.Better business experience for you
Having a successful business is so much more than keeping money in the bank and clients happy; it’s also about you enjoying the environment you’ve created for yourself. Contrary to popular sentiment, your business isn’t a baby you coddle and take care of for the rest of your days. We didn’t build a business to create another job, rather, we built our business to be a vehicle for the lifestyle we could not achieve elsewhere. However, it’s hard to reach that lifestyle if so much of your business is dependent on you.Having better operations can act as the support that take the pressure of doing everything in your business, to rely on supportive structures that can execute tasks without so much manual input. Using the vehicle example, having your operations aligned to your overall needs and goals can help ensure it can run largely by itself, with you only steering the direction and driving the business forward. How would it feel to not have to make the same decision about how to handle a client situation, or how to communicate expectations to a client, when you can set up policies and procedures to standardize those processes?
NOTE: If knowing where to begin creating this experience for yourself seems overwhelming, I created a free assessment that gives you tailored advice on where you should begin implementing systems inside your business.
Check it out here!
5. Increased chances for long-term success
It’s safe to say that life can throw a lot at us; at the time of me writing this, there has been a global pandemic(s), political unrest, war, devastating wildfires, and attacks on human rights alone in the last year. I can only imagine what can be happening in a business owner’s personal life as well. Yet business still needs to be able to whether these and professional storms, to gain long-term success. If you try to push through this with nothing of your own willpower, this can lead to more harm than good (think burnout).
In order to withstand the eventual storms, you need to have a solid foundation—that foundation being your operations. The better aligned your operations are to your goals, the better attuned they are to your specific needs, and the more solidified your business will be. Think of the standardized processes, the clear client experience, and team members with specific roles that can continually run your business without you feeling overwhelmed to cover everything.
When your capacity is at an all-time low, you have supports that can lighten the load for what you need to do in a day. Having better operations can help keep your business running for the long term.
WHERE CAN YOU GET SUPPORT ON YOUR BUSINESS OPERATIONS?
The key here is ensuring you have a holistic operation that connects your client experience, your internal team work, and your business vision together in tandem with the Like mentioned above, better systems and operations leads to increased business capacity, but knowing where those systems are needed is a big deal.
I have written articles discussing different aspects of creating these operations for you. Ranging from different areas on where you can build systems to how to know whether you need to automate or delegate, and what areas make the most sense to do so.
However, you can’t knowledge your way to scaling your business.
If you are at max capacity, information may be nice but finding time to implement it on your own can be difficult. In which case, hiring an operations consultant can be beneficial to you. Think of an operations consultant as a systems strategist, but look at the whole picture of your business. Instead of focusing on the systems first, an operations consultant will look at your vision, and help build the support needed not only through systems but through team building, software assessment, process, and experience improvement. In short, they design your operations to work specifically for you.
In my case, I look specifically at the needs you have outside of business and bake those into your business as well.
Having operations that support you can help you grow and accommodate growth in your business in ways that are both sustainable and profitable for you. As a quick recap, here are the 5 ways aligned operations can help you in scaling your business:
Better alignment between your day-to-day work and your vision
Easier communication between your team
Informed decision making
Better business experience for you
Increased chances for long-term success
Do you want to explore how to incorporate a more aligned operation into your business? Your first step can be in determining what support would best suit the season of business you’re in. Check out my free Operations Assessment for customized advice and resources to help you in designing your operations to scale your business!
I’m Elisabeth—
I live in Melbourne, Australia, but I’m from the States (Washingtonian through and through). I’m a cat-mom, wifey, and in love with a good workflow; it gives me that warm, fuzzy, Christmastime feeling. My goal is to help hard-working service providers stop having to choose between creativity and productivity to build a successful, sustainable business.
