Scaling Your Business Being Consistent

[Nicholas Varner]

I used to work right by Madison Square Garden. All year round there would be a line outside 31st street for a soup kitchen. For Seinfeld fans, think the "Soup Nazi". Amazing food. You would get in the warm soup kitchen finally but if you didn't know what you wanted, you were immediately skipped, there were no special orders, the price was always $7 for a large soup and half of a sandwich. They were open for 3 hours everyday 11-2. If you wanted something special, you were not their customer, if you didn't want to stand in line, you were not their customer. If you didn't know what you wanted, come back later.

Humans beings have more in common with the animal kingdom than many of us like to admit. If there's one life jacket left in a shipwreck, most of us are not going to be polite when it comes to who gets that life jacket. In commerce, human beings respond best to clear boundaries, consistently enforced rules, and routine. It's human nature to test the rules and manipulate administrators to evade adhering to policy. 

A big area that I am striving to improve upon in managing a business is being more consistent in order to scale my business effectively. I will give you a few examples. I currently have two employees that repair properties for my business. I would tell them "I support you getting the job done in the most efficient and effective way possible. Tell me what items you need to get the job done." What I did wrong was provide no time frame around these purchases. To and from I went to Home Depot all Summer long. $112 there, $323 here and so on. Once I finally realized this is a huge waste of time for two reasons: my time and I am not forcing these guys to think through their work assignments and to be thoughtful in their approach. You cannot scale a business using these types of approaches.

Now I have them give me a list each week on Friday, I approve of the list, email it to a store manager, and have my employees pick up their items at the store to take to the job site. 

Being consistent and not accepting excuses from others or yourself is of paramount importance as people will only take you as serious as you take yourself. Fight the urge to want or need your customers or clients to like you. It's nice if you can have a cordial, professional, and positive relationships with those that you strive to serve, but a job well done is far more important. Ultimately, if you run a business or work in one in many capacities, you will most likely be disliked regardless due to the fact that someone is giving you money. People are notoriously irrational when money becomes involved. 

Narrow the scope of your business by providing a niche that you do better than anyone else and keep improving on your execution by always upgrading your product, people, and processes. The customer is not always right. Fire away! If you have a client that takes up a ton of time and never buys anything "you're fired!" If you have a customer that is always breaking what they buy or where they live "goodbye!" If someone always is making returns, "maybe, you would be better off shopping elsewhere?" Use transactions logs in your database to pin point problem customers and clients and do your best to rid yourself of these time wasters and at the same time also identify who are the clients that are actually "good clients", and then spend marketing dollars and data analysis looking for where to find more good people to do business with. Trying to please everyone is a fool's errand, define your business' niche and you, too, can scale your business successfully.