3 Signs It’s Time to Exit the Day-to-Day & Scale Your Business

A business owner’s workday is rarely idle. Especially in the early years, it’s not unusual to find an entrepreneur juggling multiple roles, both out of financial necessity and the desire to make sure everything is done right.

While it’s easy to justify wearing most hats to save money in the early days, it’s a practice that eventually poses multiple risks to the health of the business, beginning with the risk of leaving an owner too busy for the strategic decision making that drives growth.

If you’re a business owner whose day-to-day role is barely distinguishable from the role of a marketing manager, production supervisor, or VP of sales, you’re almost certainly shortchanging the contribution you should be making as the leader and strategic guide of the company. You also are not alone. We see plenty of well-established businesses where owners are still trying to do their own marketing, bookkeeping, or IT.

Still, it’s important to recognize when your business has outgrown such practices.
 

Moving from Business Ownership to Business Leadership

Scaling your business for successful growth begins with paying attention to the signs that your current structure is not going to work anymore. Scaling is not the same as growth. It’s about optimizing your processes to leverage new growth. Scaling can mean training your employees to work more efficiently and adopting technologies that drive sales with less effort. It requires sound cash flow management – and a strategic thinker at the helm.

Here are 3 signs that it’s time to scale:
 

Sign 1: You’re Exhausted

Does your time performing key business roles leave you with little energy for the job of working toward your bigger goals? Are you maintaining any semblance of the work-life balance needed to recharge your creative powers? If the answer is no, it’s time to pause.
 

Sign 2: You’re Deep in the Weeds

If you’re constantly working on things that are not at a strategic level, consider it a red flag. As the owner, your role is to ensure healthy financial returns, growth, and resilience. If you’re managing people on the shop floor, you’re not focused on the big picture. Many business owners get focused on the day-to-day operations of the business and lose sight of what is really important: making sure the business is viable five years from now.
 

Sign 3: Your Company Could Not Survive without You

Imagine if you left. Would your business be able to continue? If you don’t have the systems in place to scale, you have no business – you are the business. A healthy business is one whose operations go uninterrupted in the absence of its owner. A business dependent on its owner is diminished in value.
 

How to Start Scaling

Starting your company was no doubt a big investment, but scaling can be done incrementally on a reasonable budget. Most people assume that scale involves hiring new people, but it’s not always true. To take the first step, you need an accounting system in place to capture the data needed to produce a solid financial picture of your business.

An accounting system runs double duty for your scale objectives. First and foremost, it will organize your finances and help you know what you can and can’t afford. Secondly, you don’t have to hire another full-time employee to do it, so you can continue saving money.

An accounting systems upgrade can:

• Provide insights upon which to make critical decisions
• Optimize your chart of accounts (or financial categories)
• Generate timely and accurate financial information, including ongoing transaction processing (vendor payments, customer invoices, etc.)
• Reduce time spent on accounting duties and functions through using leading software solutions, like QuickBooks
• Reduce risk through the implementation of internal controls
• Prepare for growth and transition, as well as help protect your business during uneven economic conditions

The Right Accounting Partner for Growth

The thorough implementation of accounting software is the foundation of a healthy scaling process. After it’s set up, your accounting partner can help you read it, optimize it, and create the strategies that will enable you to start working on growing your business, instead of just working in it.

At Kirsch CPA Group, we specialize in helping businesses grow, scale, and thrive, beginning with creating the financial transparency that drives strategic insights and good decision making. Built on a holistic approach to accounting and a deep understanding of the unique needs of your business, we’re here to support you through every stage of the business life cycle.

Contact one of our team members to get started on scaling your business.

Contact us to learn more about how accounting supports growth

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