In 2023, Statista found that around 850,000 UK businesses turned over up to £250,000. At the £1 million turnover mark, however, this number dropped to just over 123,000 businesses.
Hitting that elusive 7 figure mark is not just a huge milestone in business development – it’s also a tricky endeavour requiring forward planning, the right vision, and a willingness to step outside of one’s comfort zone to take the business to the next stage.
Over the last ten years of scaling my own business from a bootstrapped startup to a 7-figure multi-national, there have been things I have done right, and things I wish I’d known from the start. Here are a few of the key lessons I’ve learned while reaching that elusive 7-figure milestone.
Stop Being Comfortable
Of the 5.6 million private sector businesses in the UK in 2023, nearly three-quarters [74%] had no employees besides the owner. Many business owners are perfectly content to run a business that earns them enough to make a comfortable living without the desire to take that venture to the next stage.
However, for those that do, getting out of this comfortable rut is key. Climbing the entrepreneurial ladder means always striving to achieve something new for yourself and your business, and always having a goal you are working towards.
The work that goes into scaling a business is immense, but ensuring that work is directed towards your current goals can prevent it from becoming overwhelming and keep you focused on your aims.
Timing is Key
There is no foolproof formula for how each individual business will scale, but learning to recognise when your business is beginning to reach its operational capacity and planning ahead is crucial.
If your business is starting to take off, it’s important to have a strategy in place for sustainable growth, and a way to continue meeting customer demand. Monitoring how your business is performing in terms of delivery, customer service and operational stability is key to knowing when expansion, increased investment or recruitment are necessary, and avoid being blindsided.
Marketing Matters
You might have the best product or service available on the market, but without the right channels to spread your message, gaining new customers and putting yourself in front of wider audiences is going to be an uphill struggle.
Identify the right marketing channels for your brand and leverage these early on. For us, this began with simply a Facebook group for our members, and quickly grew into a whole community around our brand. Identify where your target market is and establish your presence on those platforms. This might be LinkedIn in the case of a B2B brand, or perhaps TikTok or Instagram for an ecommerce business. Whatever the channel, it’s important to leverage your presence on social media and use it to actively engage with your customers and wider community.
Find the Right Team
As entrepreneurs, we live and breathe our businesses, and this can often lead to thinking we need to juggle everything within the business ourselves. As operations begin to scale, this approach is impractical. You can’t oversee every moving part of an expanding business, so it’s vital to surround yourself with the right talented people who can.
Hiring the right people and providing what they need to succeed is a key part of sustainable growth, and this means being prepared to make an investment in attracting, training and empowering your staff.
It also means having the systems, processes and operational procedures in place that allows your employees to run those areas of the business in your absence, freeing you up to focus on the more strategic elements of scaling.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps the biggest lesson scaling my business has taught me is not to get complacent. There is always a new milestone to be reached as long as you’re willing to keep innovating, looking ahead and preparing for each new stage growth.
Sam Stoffel is Founder and CEO of Outplayed.com.
