Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
Scaling Small Business With Anton Harrison Kern
Show Notes
Anton Harrison Kern is an entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in I.T. and business consulting. His greatest skill is interpersonal communication which he uses to create seamless business workflows. This is highly advantageous on all business projects and he have used this to successfully manage projects on multiple businesses and IT fronts.
Anton lives by the motto to “Push Your Potential Ferociously”. An Executive Manager who is hungry for new challenges. He brings a level of knowledge, energy, passion and results to a business that many could barely dream of.
What Really Works with Scaling Business?
Scaling a business takes a lot of buying, selling them, dismantling them, looking under the hood, working with clients consulting to them, looking for what actually works when it comes to scaling. Not what people will tell you what works so they can sell you some consulting, but what’s actually going to work.
How many business coaches do we hear that have never run a business, has studied businesses but it’s quite different when you’re actually inside and under the hood. There is no magic. You got to discover it. Each business has its own signature, its own heartbeat. The market is different. You can open up one business this week and open exactly the same business two weeks later and you will have to do it slightly differently. You have to be willing to be in the discovery if you’re a business owner and you want to scale.
Be Flexible
As we’ve seen over the last few years, what used to work doesn’t, what used to work and didn’t is now starting to come back. So it’s amazing how things rotate around.
Someone will say that they know how to do it – maybe that the thing that they may know is that there is no set way, but that’s the only way they can know how to do it, there is no set way, otherwise it would be so simple. Take a look at franchises, for example. They nailed down so tight, but they still each franchise is different. Different personality, different location, different people, so you can’t have a direct replica anyway. You just can’t.
Organic Scaling
When it comes to scaling, money gives people a false sense of confidence. Some people have $1 million to start a business and fails. Some people come to me with $1,000 to start a business and they flourish. it’s not necessarily about the amount of money. Actually, what happens is people around you, they can smell that you’ve got money to burn and they will burn, happily burn your money for you. So, whether they be SEO people or Facebook advertising people or business consultants or just people who wanna sweat really hard in your business and work for you whoever, they’re gonna just sponge the money until it’s all gone and then they’re gonna say thank you so much, that was great, and then everybody disbands.
So, first, scale organically and start by using a system called Profit First. Listen to Small Business Talk Episode 197, where our guests, Amy Bett talk about Profit First method. This system is started by Mike Michalowicz and it was when he go broke and his daughter bought him a the piggy bank and said, ‘Hey daddy, I’ll help you out of your money problems’ and he swore that that would never let that happen again and his mission is to stop entrepreneurial poverty.
This approach recommends that a certain percentage of revenue be allocated to different accounts, including one specifically for marketing. The point is that you don’t need to spend huge amounts of money to scale effectively; in fact, being resourceful and creative can sometimes be more advantageous.
The dialogue also underscores the necessity of marketing and sales as the driving forces behind scaling a business. You should offer products or services at different price points, but each should deliver value that exceeds its cost. This not only builds trust but also paves the way for upselling to higher-value offerings.
The emphasis is on delivering more value than what the customer pays for, no matter how small the initial transaction. That sets the stage for a long-term, scalable relationship.
Finally, there’s a recognition that you can continually invent and offer new value to your existing clients. This is often easier and more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, and is a crucial component of scaling your business.
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Scaling Small Business With Anton Harrison Kern
There’s only seven and a half billion people or whatever there are in the world so it’s very important to well pick the right thing and scale it okay for starters, pick something that that is scalable, tests, measure and keep checking in because at some point there will be losers in this game. Yes, scale is limitless itself, however, don’t consider that each business can scale forever like there’ll be a time for you to exit scaling that and scale something else.
So always keep an eye on the market, seeing where it’s going, those changes and be prepared to shift if necessary.
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 214.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.
