TLDR
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The road to successfully scaling a business can take many pathways and strategies.
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Strategies include the willingness to learn and innovate, as well as providing quality work that sparks repeat business and adapting to meet evolving client needs.
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Successful entrepreneurs build teams that complement their skills, and they network to spread brand awareness.
What is the secret to scaling a business? How do multinational corporations grow to global proportions? How has your local dry cleaner opened three more locations and added home delivery? And what does it mean to truly scale your business? We asked business coach Shelagh Cummins, Founder of The Road to SevenTM, which empowers women-owned businesses to scale strategically, to explain the difference between growing and scaling: “Scaling is not just about increasing revenue. It’s about setting up your business to handle greater demand from your target audience while reducing the work required of you.”
RBC recently sat down with Canadian entrepreneurs who shared the strategies that have fueled their growth and the turning-point moments that provided the spark. Here are their tips:
Do good work and ride the referral wave
Perhaps the most powerful lever of business growth is word of mouth. When your clients love what you do, they tell their friends, colleagues, partners and broader network. A fundamental element of business growth is just this simple: Do great work. As Glen Prairie and David Clark of Total Living Concepts, a home renovation company, like to say, “We’re only as good as our latest project.” Not only do customers come back to them when their last project has gone well, but they share their experience with others. In fact, they can track most of their clients back to an initial referral.
Get the full story on Total Living Concepts
The same applies to B2B businesses. The Corner Office founder Bev Betteridge built her business on her reputation. A CPA with a successful career in consulting, she decided to start out on her own. “I had this great network of people that I worked with in Regina for 25 years. When people heard I was available, the phone started ringing, and it just went from there.” As her business gained momentum, her credibility drove her growth. “In the first five years, we were 95 percent referral-based from other firms. Since then, we continue to get significant business through word of mouth.”
Read how Corner Office scaled for success and is growing with their clientele
Be prepared to meet the evolving needs of clients
Sometimes, growth is intentional. And sometimes, it comes as a response to evolving client needs.
Pegasus Biotech, for instance, started out with a focus on developing processes to help produce vaccines in the animal health industry. Then COVID hit, and the need for human vaccines skyrocketed. “When we started this business, we were mostly consulting. A few short months later, our contract research and development business really started to grow as the need for vaccines increased dramatically,” says co-founder and CFO Jonathan Wilts. “We have been continuing to grow from there; we have had five lab expansions over five years.” Clients also seek lower-cost solutions, as vaccines are very expensive to make. That has led Pegasus to develop new technology that brings lower-cost vaccines to market. “That has driven much of our expansion and will continue to drive it going forward.”
Learn how Pegasus Biotech grew their business
Total Living Concepts moved away from its original focus on kitchen and bath remodeling as clients led the company into additions and home renovations. “It’s natural for client needs to evolve,” Prairie says. “Your kitchen has a floor; it has electrical, plumbing and windows. When the house gets older, it all needs to be updated. This is how we became a full-service renovation company with designers and construction workers on staff. We serve the complete needs of the client.”
Build a team around your skill set
As your business grows, so does demand. You need a team around you who can add value and expand your offerings to clients. These business owners share that the best way to grow is to complement their own skill sets with strengths in other areas.
While Betteridge’s first employee was another CPA who helped manage the workload that came with her growing client base, one of her most significant turning points came when she expanded her team’s capabilities. “We’ve been on a growth plan since Year 2, but the biggest change came when we hired a data analyst on our team, which is very unusual for an accounting firm. We do a lot of transformation for clients, helping them streamline their processes and getting them into new software. Andrew can do all the technology magic around accounting that has truly enabled us to do things the average accounting firm can’t do.”
As Total Living Concepts clients looked to them to take on work beyond kitchens and bathrooms, the firm hired accordingly. “I’ve been a certified designer for many years, and I have an intimate knowledge of house construction,” says Prairie. “Building a team around whatever you bring to the table—whatever skills you don’t possess—can help you meet client needs.” Case in point: Clark, who is positioned to take over the company when Prairie retires, has an accounting background and brings a different perspective and expertise to the team—one that complements the team of skilled trades exceptionally well.
Business coach Shelagh Cummins adds, “Scaling your business requires building a team that amplifies your strengths and fills your gaps. Hire people with specialized skills and create value by opening up new revenue opportunities. Focus on hiring up—bring in team members who can excel at tasks you no longer want to handle or areas where they can genuinely expand what you offer to clients. By doing this, you’re not just growing a team but creating a powerful ecosystem supporting sustainable growth and innovation.”
Always be learning and innovating
When your business’ value proposition is specialized expertise, that’s where your growth can occur. For Pegasus Biotech, a mindset of constant innovation has certainly fueled its growth. “Our focus for this year has been launching our plasmid technology. In the longer term, we want to continue to bring new technologies to market—we love innovation,” Wilts says. It’s a priority they value so much that they are deferring their future goal of manufacturing. “It’s tough to be an effective manufacturer and an effective innovator. We felt adding manufacturing now could detract too much from the kind of innovation we want to keep doing.”
Betteridge and her team also carry a mindset of continuous learning and innovating—not only in accounting practices but also in technology. “The technology side of our business is probably where we’ll expand the most in the upcoming year. We do a lot of technology learning,” Betteridge says. “We are always looking for the next advancement that’s going to make things better for our clients. We aim to be innovative to enable not just our own growth but also the growth of our clients’ businesses.”
Build brand awareness today for future business growth
While word of mouth can be an effective driver of passive growth, it’s not enough. You need to interact online and in person so prospective clients can get to know you and what makes you stand out.
Wilts is a big believer in networking and relationship building to prime the pump. “We spend a lot of time going to conferences to build the brand and build connections. A lot of times we will talk to a client and there might not be a project there initially. But it’s always good to shake their hands, meet them in person and get to know them so that when they do have that need, they know who we are and will reach out to us.”
Betteridge similarly does a great deal of networking and speaking engagements to keep relationships strong. “We go to various events, conferences and open houses where I will talk about everything from fraud prevention to cash flow to tech-enabled automation—all kinds of things that demonstrate our knowledge and what we can bring to the table.”
Our Turning Point series helps entrepreneurs through every stage of their business. As you progress through your business journey, read about the turning points of other business owners and what they accomplished around the next corner.
