With a potential post-pandemic boom around the corner and worker shortages in many regions driven by a number of factors, many firms are struggling to elevate their brand awareness in order to capture sudden increases in client spending AND ensure they’re attracting top talent to support an influx of new business.

At ScaleHouse, we focus a lot on business optimization. Whether it’s introducing new methods, practices and systems that reduce turnaround time, or optimizing your organizational structure, it can often be a lot easier for us (as external consultants) to identify opportunities for optimization because we’re not working IN the business every day. In essence, optimization is the art of reducing costs while improving performance (and profitability!).

With nearly record levels of unemployment globally and an ultra-competitive business marketplace, a strong personal brand can you set you, or your company, apart. Unfortunately, for many, a personal brand is often perceived as something only ownable by industry luminaries, or only worth focusing on once a certain career level has been achieved. So, what to do if you’ve under invested in the creation of it?

Summer is the perfect time to step back and focus on your business instead of being mired in your business, ensuring you're ready to hit the fall ramp up in full-force. To help you succeed, we’re launching our series of Masterminds aimed at supporting key business areas including sales and marketing, product development and leadership and culture.

Invariably there are a few “holiday” months out of every year where business slows and you have a chance to catch your breath. 

In a previous post, I outlined the importance for executives to stop working “IN” the business more than they work “ON” it. The challenge for most executives, of course, is that in order to back out of day to day tactical work, they need to have a trusted team in place to handle the “IN” work. This is where it gets tricky because the hardest part of delegating “IN” work is trusting that it will be done well. Often times, delegation happens in the thick of stressful time crunched situations where, without proper training, employees will likely fail. And that’s where our mindset needs to change... Because delegation is a short game strategy. Teaching is a long game.

One of the core tenets of scaling a business is to spend more time working ON it (meaning focusing on strategic activities that drive growth) and less time IN it. This can be incredibly challenging for execs that are really competent and may feel more comfortable with tactical work, or for those of us (and I’ll raise my hand here) who are type-A control freaks and figure it’s just faster and easier to do everything yourself. Unfortunately, both of these behaviors can present significant barriers to growth.

Somewhere along the way, you may have become convinced that stasis is safer than movement. Consistency feels comfortable; volatility is frightening. But, in this ever-changing world, we are constantly forced to reinvent ourselves and, in some cases, our businesses. And this reinvention process by very nature requires an entrepreneurial mindset. Constant reinvention requires the ability to drive a long-term vision, create opportunities for growth and foster new ecosystems. But how to actually DO it?

Most growth-focused businesses have processes in place for ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, but what does it mean to have a truly customer-centric business, particularly as it relates to marketing?

Although we’re just a little over a month past the halfway mark of 2018, now is the time to start thinking about strategic planning. Not the plan itself... but the plan behind the development of the plan.