Why Scale my business?

There are around 5.7 million businesses in the UK.

An extraordinary 75% of them…approximately 4.3 million, employ nobody other than the owner.

(See link below to the Office for National Statistics if you don’t believe me)

You might say:

“But that’s OK, Mike. I like working on my own. I like being a solopreneur.”

And that may genuinely be your preference.

But let’s be brutally honest: in many respects, being a solopreneur is actually worse than having a job.

If you’re employed, you’ll generally receive:

As a solopreneur, you probably receive none of those things.

If you don’t work, you don’t earn.
If you’re ill, the income can stop.
If you take a holiday, the business often comes with you… or you spend the entire time worrying about what isn’t being done.
You do every job: the good, the bad and the ugly.
You are the salesperson, administrator, accountant, customer services department, operations manager, marketing team and delivery person.
You probably make yourself work hours that, if you tried to impose them on an employee, you’d be jailed for slavery

You might officially own a business.

But the uncomfortable truth is that, unless it can operate without you, you haven’t really built a business.

You’ve created a self-employed job, and possibly employed yourself under the worst boss you’ve ever had.

It is hard to scale a business.

It is hard to get off the tools.

It is hard to delegate.

It is hard to recruit, manage and retain good people.

But remaining trapped as the only person who can make your business work is hard too.

It reminds me of the principle often called Choose Your Hard:

Building a team is hard.

Doing everything yourself is hard.

Choose your hard.