How to Scale Your Supplement Business
Building a supplement business is fun and exciting especially when your business is successful and profitable. Taking the next steps to really scale your supplement company can be overwhelming and nerve wracking. Trying to grow a supplement business that isn’t ready to grown can be extremely frustrating when you don’t get the results you were hoping for.
Here are a few top tips to properly scale your supplement business.
What is Scalability?
Before “scaling” your business you need to first define what scalability means to you. Investopedia defines scalability as, “a characteristic of a system, model or function that describes its capability to cope and perform well under an increased or expanding workload or scope. A system that scales well will be able to maintain or even increase its level of performance or efficiency even as it is tested by larger and larger operational demands.”
If you’re barely keeping up with current demands, your business isn’t ready to scale. A scalable business has the ability to grow on it’s own without you needing to be hands on the entire time. But how do you get there if you’re not ready?
There is no one right answer for how to make your business scalable but there are a few points that experts agree on. You’ll see these same themes in just about every piece of advice you read on scalability.
- Know Your Goal
- Focus on Systems
- Make Yourself Removable
- Automate, Automate, Automate
- Develop a Balanced Team
5 Steps to Make Your Supplement Business Scalable
1. Know Your Goal
Whether you call it a destination, a vision or an endgame, it’s all the same. Knowing why you’re trying to scale and what you’re trying to achieve is crucial. It’s impossible for you to ask for directions or plan a trip when you have no idea where you’re trying to go.
One entrepreneur couple got to meet with expert and author Tim Ferriss this was his advice to them, “Ferriss stressed the importance of understanding the ultimate goal for our business, and in particular, understanding what company we need to be if we want to do an exit.”
Your approach to growing a business to sell vs to support a lifestyle will be very different so it’s important to know what direction you want to go.
2. Focus on Systems
When scaling your business it’s important to create standardized systems. If you perfect a system and standardize it, that system can be passed on to someone else to manage. Having a system removes guess work and allows you to spend less time on a task.
According to a joint report between Cambridge and Oxford Universities, “managing the operations by hands-on involvement of founders will eventually limit growth.”
3. Make Yourself Removable
Ultimately a company that is truly scalable is one where you’re not important. If your company would crumble or grind to a halt without you, it’s not scalable. It might seem like a scary thought but building a company where you could go on vacation or eventually make an exit is important to you and the business.
SEO expert and entrepreneur Neil Patel says, “In order to be truly scalable, your business should be able to function just fine without you. The way you put that into place is by deliberately shifting responsibility off your shoulders, or into the oversight of someone else.”
In other words, you should have the ability to work ON your business not IN your business. If there are things that only you can do for your business to function, it’s time to create a process so that someone else can take over.
4. Automate, Automate, Automate
From signing paychecks to sending marketing emails automating wherever possible is essential for your business to grow. Automation and processes are separate because a process is how things get done and automation is when you can set things up to get done without someone doing them.
Not all things can be automated like writing a blog post or packing an order but these things can have a process that simplifies them for fast, consistent results. You can on the other hand create automated marketing funnels that bring in leads even while you sleep. See the difference?
Automating increases the productivity level of your team. It might take a little more time investment to automate something at the start but in the end automation can save you and your employees mass amounts of time that can then be reinvested into other tasks.
5. Develop a Balanced Team
Surrounding yourself with the right team is crucial to scaling a business. Bringing on people that compliment your strengths is important. If you’re really dead set on scaling, now’s the time to bring on advisors that have been where you want to go.
CEO, entrepreneur, and star of CNBC’s The Profit, Marcus Lemonis, says, “I know what I am good at, and I know what I am not good at.” It’s important to be honest about yourself so that you can bring on people that will be able to fill in the gaps of your skillset.
Build on Your Foundation
Once your supplement business is ready to scale now you’re ready to take off! Boosting your marketing spend and efforts to bring more leads into your automated funnels will help you to grow exponentially.
If you hit snags that you weren’t expecting, that’s ok because you have the right team in place and other day-to-day tasks have been automated or standardized which allows you to focus on the problem at hand.
Scaling your business isn’t easy but by taking steps to sure up your foundation you can prepare the path to success!
Pick a Supplement Manufacturer that can Help You Scale
Need a supplement manufacturer that can keep up with your scaling supplement business? We can help! Quality Supplement Manufacturing offers custom supplements through contract manufacturing as well as private label supplements. We love helping companies grow and we’d love to help you too! Our new facility is 65k square feet and offers 3 bottling lines, 5 blending rooms, 14 encapsulation and tablet press rooms, 2 tablet coating rooms and much more.
