TBL: How did you scale and expand your business?

[Pesso]

Hey everybody, 

Over on The Bottom Line, we’ve been publishing The Way Up: a video series where Guy Raz interviews sellers about how they grew their businesses. 

Quie Slobert from Charles Pan-Fried Chicken also wrote about how they quickly scaled to four locations in 13 months by focusing on consistency, onboarding the right technology, and knowing when to leap. Check out the article to learn how you can grow while staying authentic to your business.

We’d love to hear about your experiences with scaling & expanding:

• If you’ve grown your business, what helped get you there and what challenges did you face? 
• If you haven’t expanded, what is standing in your way?

Can’t wait to hear from you,

Pesso

[Pesso]

I'd love to hear from y'all!
@VanKalkerFarms , @anucrown , @ryanwanner , @Donnie-M , @vinesandrushes , @Twiggy , @Minion , @TheRealChipA , @JTPets , @DinaLRosenberg , @indianathomas , @BofBArtStudio , @Lovewell , @JUYBoutique20 , @HC_Charlie 

[indianathomas]

We've grown to 18 locations and have just started to get into licensing and franchising.  We've developed a formula and system to scale the business.  Below are a few of the details:

Step One: Master the three P's (People, Product, Process).

1. People: You have to have great people and be willing to pay people to give a crap.  Develop a culture and have a team that can help you execute your vision and mission for your business.  What competencies must your employees have to work for you?  How does your executive team have skin in the game?  For me, I give 10% of the company's operating profits to my executive team as a bonus.  This way, everyone wins.  
2. Product: You must have an amazing proprietary product, service, or system that is difficult to duplicate.  I can't tell you how many times I have seen someone open another coffee shop when there are 20 within a five-mile radius.  Nothing proprietary about a coffee shop in many cases.
3. Processes:  These essentially include your systems, procedures, and processes that help scale and get your team moving in the same direction.  You can review this on my manager's training video here: https://youtu.be/kHAIQjbikzM  (skip to 11:03).  Everything is written down, from how to use equipment, cleaning, mopping, cash handling, and production flow.  All employees go through one week of training, including lots of videos we have created.  Managers go through a three-week training program.

Brand Identity:

Delving further into scaling, you must develop your Brand Identity or Brand Kit.  This is who you are as a trusted business in your community.  It includes your logo, design, build, colors, web, etc.

Location, Location Location:

Other than the first location, every single one of our locations was a second-generation location where another business had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and failed.  We essentially saved millions on TI costs.  We focused on opportunities to expand that popped up.  

There is a lot more that I can share, however, that's all the time I have for now.  

[Lovewell]

love love love this! 

Thank you so much for sharing. 

[JUYBoutique20]

Wow...18 locations....Thanks so much for sharing this.  Lots of valuable info.

[Twiggy]

This might be a bit off piste x

I wanted to share a brief update on our business operations. Like many businesses, we've had to make some adjustments in the current economic climate, and have reduced and downscaled our services. 

We're observing a significant shift in consumer habits, particularly when it comes to luxury items and discretionary spending on goods like flowers and high-end event services. People are generally becoming more cautious and price-sensitive with their purchases. While there's still a desire for those "feel-good" treats, bigger, more extravagant spending is being carefully re-evaluated across the board. This trend is widely reported; even luxury sectors, while resilient, are seeing consumers prioritise value and necessity more.

This contrasts somewhat with the food industry, which appears to be far more resilient, and in some areas, even booming. As an essential, consumer spending on food tends to remain robust, with shifts more towards value options or "fakeaways" rather than complete cutbacks. Reports indicate that the UK food and drink market is poised for significant growth, driven by changing preferences for convenience and in-home eating, even if real-term growth is impacted by inflation.

This market shift has naturally led us to streamline our offerings to better align with current demand for our specific sector.  In response to these market changes, I've actively adapted our offerings. We've noticed that many of our clients, who previously invested in flowers for events or interiors, are now entertaining at home more frequently. With this shift, there's a growing desire to maintain beautiful outdoor spaces.  So as I enter year 30 of trading - it is definitely as case of make hay while the sun shines. 

[Lovewell]

What a fun. question! 

We did have a set goal that we wanted to open our second location by year 5. We just celebrated 5 years and opened our second location 1 year ago! 

That being said we do feel like too much growth too quickly can create an environment where it could all come crashing down. 

We really had to find our flow, edit our business, and learn a lot before finally feeling like we were ready to expand. 

Many people are asking "when is location 3 coming??" We are still in the stage of owning 2 that the idea of 3 sounds actually terrible haha. Which we felt that way for a couple of years after opening the first one. Couldn't even imagine the reality of having 2 shops because having one was enough. 

HOWEVER- 

To sum it up: 

Know your vision 

Can your vision fit any location? 

Is it going to meet a need? 

Are your procedures working? if they aren't get them to a point where they are or else it becomes double the chaos. 

Count the cost. What will this make your life look like? Better? worse? 

Got us thinking now! 

[JUYBoutique20]

Love your response...Congratulations on Location 2...

[Lovewell]

I think as business owners, especially those who have expanded, we feel like we have all the knowledge and right answers. 90% of the time I'm saying "I have no actual idea what I'm doing." and that's the fun of it! 

Not too prideful to say so much of what we have learned and what we do well is from a mistake or doing it poorly and we had to find a solution.

If you aren't loving people well and giving the best experience possible there really is no point to expand. To what end? ya know? 

Anywho- thank you for liking what we had to say! 

[JUYBoutique20]

So instead of adding a second location we decided to completely move our storefront from the military base and open in a major mall here.  My goal was to always have a space off base but because my hubby was military, we decided to start up in that community first.  Our business is now doing much better and I'm hoping to open up a stand-alone storefront in 2 years...I haven't decided if I'd leave the mall location or not.  I guess if we keep growing here I will.   

[doc_choc]

Until we opened up our second store I didn't realize how challenging scale up could be. As a manufacturer and retailer a challenge for us was the building of stock and maintaining stock levels. It was one thing opening the shop, putting in fixtures, fittings, plumbing in a coffee machine and employing a new team, but the back end of the business needed a capacity upgrade as well. Everything is doable but it required a whole extra load of focus!