• Return to our Main Site

    • Action plan

    Knowing when it’s the right time to scale your business

    Medium effort

    High impact

    It’s difficult to know when it’s the right time for a step-change in a company’s growth. The investment required, whether that’s cash or your team’s time, can be daunting. You need to feel confident that it’s the right time to implement a strategy that’s going to help you scale your business.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline
    What's involved? Ways to use this action plan Measuring impact
    1

    Write a vision statement to establish what you want your business to look like in the future

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Business leaders need to have a clear vision of what they want the business to become. Having a destination allows you to work out the different milestones you need to achieve to get there.

    Writing a statement that defines your vision for success

    Defining your vision for success gives you a clear destination to work towards when you’re making decisions and setting goals.
    2

    Write down the issues you might face in a risk mitigation plan or SWOT analysis

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    These tools highlight potential risks and threats, so you can identify the barriers to scaling your business and work out what needs to happen to remove them.

    Creating a SWOT analysis for your own business

    Use our free SWOT analysis template to define your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
    3

    Create a financial one-pager to share with stakeholders on a monthly basis that includes growth KPIs like customer retention and operating cash flow

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Sharing a summary of key financial information focuses the team on what’s required to scale and increases your accountability.

    4

    Create and maintain a financial forecast

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    Scaling up is capital intensive because you need to invest in capacity before cash is returned. Financial forecasts allow you to see how much cash is available to take the next step and model what it might look like.

    Creating and maintaining a financial forecast

    Our free template will help you prepare and maintain a financial forecast, including profit and loss and cash flow.
    5

    Put time aside to deep-dive on your findings and make a decision on whether or not it’s the right time to scale

    Impact: high

    Why will this help?

    When you’ve done your planning and got everything ready, it’s time to work through your vision, risks and finances, so you can decide whether or not to pull the trigger on your plans.

    Plan for scaling up a product or service

    When you’ve identified a product or service you think is ready to scale, it’s important to develop a plan to work out how you’re going to build demand.

    Preparing your business to scale

    Looking to scale up your business and take it to the next level? Follow these tips to assess if you’re ready.

    What can I do with this Action Plan?

    Start this Action Plan

    Add some extra information to this plan and we’ll help you get it done.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline

    Download and print

    Get a printable template for this Action Plan, fill it in with some target dates, and share it with your team. Pin it on the wall where everyone can see it.

    Get the printable Action Plan

    Learning Groups

    We also run Learning Groups on these topics where you can join other leaders tackling the same challenges.

    Find a Learning Group

    How will I know if my action plan is working?

    Board meeting performance

    Board meetings are an opportunity to share and sense test your strategy

    Why this metric?

    Navigating periods of growth requires business owners to have a comprehensive understanding of their finances. Board meetings are a great test of that.

    How do I start tracking?

    Reflect on your performance at board meetings. Did you feel confident about your assessment of company performance? Could you answer financial questions easily?