When businesses are covered in the media, often there is a lot of focus on the initial idea, the genesis moment. Then they almost brush over the middle part – the scaling up part – and arrive at how big and awesome the business is today. It makes for a fun read or in the case of a movie or show an entertaining watch, but it’s also a missed opportunity. The middle part – the scaling up part is where so many small business owners get stuck. It’s the part so many of us need more guidance with and so we wanted to get conversations going on the topic of scaling up.

Barbara Maisonet | Life & Business Coach Specialist

First and foremost, a business owner always knows when it’s time to scale up… Things are moving along. There’s many successes and a few failures. (Ok.. sometimes many). Revenue is up (but not quite to where you know it could be). There are a few systems in place but you can see how implementing more would catapult your business into a new dimension. And… there is that gut feeling. That feeling when you realize that all the hard work, thus far, as gotten you to where you are YET you know that there’s more. More possibility. More growth. More impact on the universe. Read more>>

Brant Miller | Owner/Creative Director

I think for me, scaling up meant scaling out. When I started, I painted furniture that I could pickup for free or very cheap and sell for a few more bucks as I learned how to paint, advertising, and sell. That one avenue of revenue had a glass ceiling based on how much I could pick up a piece for, time to refinish, and ability to sell for a specific amount. I was held to my own capabilities of making only a certain amount based on the hours I had available. What I learned was to adventure into other avenues of making money. I started making custom pieces from signs all the way up to large upscale farmstyle kitchen tables that would also generate larger profit ranges. Read more>>

Johanne Wilson | Designer

During the pandemic, while most were scaling down or pivoting, we scaled up. We were awarded several grants by organizations like NAACP, Bey Good, Black Girl Magic, Comcast NBC and United Way of Broward County. This gave us the boost we needed to make critical investments that grew our business. Among the many investments we made, the most impactful ones were participating in trade shows. The pandemic caused the big shows to be virtual which meant exhibitor fees and expenses associated with build a booth were greatly reduced. This gave us an opportunity to get in front of major retail buyers at a fraction of the cost. Read more>>

Erika Livingston | Salon Owner

When I first started Hello Gorgeous Blowouts six years ago, we were strictly just a blowout salon that offered makeup and spray tan services as well. I started out with one stylist then quickly built up to three stylists. I did a lot of social media marketing, grass roots marketing, worked with the Rockwall Downtown Association, and networked everywhere possible to get our name out there. Don’t get me wrong this part takes time and time to build up. With patience and lots of prayer we were able to gain so much traction. Later we added more services that then brought up more clientele. Read more>>

Tolechia Lane | Realtor

Success in this business didn’t come easy and it still doesn’t to this day. I’m helping people with the most important financial transaction of their life and people want to feel comfortable. They want to work with someone they feel connected to, someone from the same walks of life as them, who they like and trust. If you ever heard the saying “Your network is your net worth” that statement is so true in the Real Estate Business. When I first got into the business my mentor encouraged me to tap into my network of people, as they are the ones that were going to either do business with me or refer business my way. My network of people were extremely hard workers but lacked when it came to credit and finance education. Read more>>

Eduardo Medellin | Accountant & Business Consultant

Scaling up is the hardest part of any business and it was that with my firm. It required commitment from the owner to make it happened. Delegating and supervising are the most difficult trades to develop, no one teaches you that. I new how to do the work and how to preform well with the client and I was very successful, now I needed to bring people on board to continue that performance and service to the client. First thing is to hire the right person, which it sound easy but it is not. It is the most important first step. If you do it right, it will save many headaches and time. Once we had a good solid ground of 3 people, it was time to add the rest. Same process but now I needed to involve the 3 key people. Read more>>

Lauren Munson | Esthetician & Permanent Makeup Artist

When I first started my business, I didn’t take it as seriously as I do now. Obviously, when I first opened, my books weren’t always full and I struggled paying my salon suite’s weekly rent some weeks. I began my business on the wrong foot that absolutely exhausted me. I let clients tell me how I should run my business because I didn’t have boundaries in place, specifically with my clients and maintaining a healthy work/life balance. These practices manifested as me letting clients cancel last minute with no cancellation fee, consistently working outside of my regular business hours, and not following my gut when it came to business decisions because I prioritized being liked by others over doing what I felt was right. Read more>>

Jeremy LaBahn | Business Owner

I got started in the event rental industry by purchasing an existing business. At the time, I was working for someone else as a regular employee and I was miserable. All I wanted was to have my own business, but I had no idea where to start. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) was on girls’ getaway weekend with some friends and one of the ladies there mentioned that she was selling her rental business. Long story short, the following week we sat down to talk about the business and a few months later we finalized the deal and I was officially a business owner. Read more>>

Manning Sumner | CEO

I opened in 2008 at a dead end street next to crack houses, homeless & hookers. The original concept was to train my private high end clients in this 2,000 sq ft warehouse with 4-5 other trainers doing the same. First two years was a real struggle finding hard working trainers and the high end clientele willing to come to at the time a shady neighborhood & street. I went through 19 employees & 2 business partners in those first two years. I then pivoted to combining mixed martial arts with my strength & conditioning programs & boot camp classes. Although I enjoyed it and loved the community it wasn’t profitable. Read more>>

Terrance Hooks | President

I began my career as a media sales professional (print, radio, tv production programming and out-of-home). I became more motivated and confident that I could start a successful business after interviewing my prospective clients on how they got started. Trans 1 Graphix Corp is heading into its 17 year and going strong as a out-of-home advertisement installation maintenance company to the transit bus, airport, light rail and tour bus industry. In the beginning, I did not have any experience, role model or mentor to learn from. As a manager for an outdoor transit bus advertising company, I met a number of graphic installers who installed for us and was not impressed with their overall professionalism. Read more>>

Katie Wilcox | Dance Instructor / Studio Owner

PDT was established in 2005 by myself. Katie Wilcox, Ms. Terri Bruno & Ms. Sharon Godsave as The Plano Dance Theatre (PDT). We started very small in studio location in Plano. The three of us were handling every job from teaching and directing to marketing, accounting and janitorial tasks. We put on several productions, ran the studio and slowly grew over the course of the first few years. In 2012, PDT adopted Ms. Mary Barnett, (who began as one of our students,) Mr. Larry Luna and Mr. Greg Griffin as co-owners to build our family and aid in growth of PDT. We moved from our first location in Plano to our current Allen location and renamed our business, “PDT Dance Arts.” Each owner contributes their time and individual talents that contribute to the well oiled machine that is our business. Read more>>

Storm Kaufman | Freakin Fitness CEO

No one ever tells you, “you should be an entrepreneur,” growing up. There’s no classes taught in schools, no work shops on financial analysis and projections that will get your ready. It’s something that just hits you and you run with it. I honestly didn’t even know what the word really was, or what it meant until I was already in the s*#t. I can’t go over everything because, to be honest, there’s just too much. So let’s keep it simple and I’ll go over a few topics. “Perseverance and an unwavering drive to succeed in changing the world for the better is the only way to live.” This is what drives me. Read more>>

Dune Johnson | Entertainer, Writer, Teacher, all around Fun facilitator

In the entertainment business, just like every small business, my success came from the fact that I had a talent for what I was doing. I loved my clients (the families that I worked with), I practiced my skills, and I just have a knack for helping people have fun. One of the hardest parts of expanding was trying to get skilled people to work for me part-time. It’s very hard to get good, highly qualified people, who only want to work a few hours a week. I solved this problem by training people from scratch. I started with reliable, eager young people and I trained them to do what I do (which meant writing multiple training materials, and spending the time with them to make sure that they got it. Read more>>

Roy Elam | Chef/Restaurant Owner

At this point in our life we are doing 4x the amount of business as we did when we first opened. This has been a gradual growth with waves of growing pains. We have tried it all: dinner only, lunch and dinner, 7 days a week, 6 days a week, 5 days a week…it has all been a huge learning experience. The biggest tool that I have had in terms of scalability has been knowing my recipe yields, knowing my staffing needs, and good old fashioned math. It’s not exciting but I think it’s a step that a lot of people skip over. I went from being a person that just loved to cook to a business owner that is constantly crunching numbers, checking sales reports, costing recipes, adjusting labor, and being the default accountant for our $1.5 million dollar a year restaurant. Read more>>

Gavin Fleming | Hotel Manager

How did I upscale? Next, no, I’m joking. This is a long kept secret of the industry but to upscale you must actually work hard. Not talk about working hard, actually work hard. Work with what you have and improve from there. Start actually working on something and do not stop until it is complete. Don’t over exceed yourself. Work within your boundaries. I’m my position, expanding isn’t an option, so we upscale whenever we can. Customer service is my number one attribute to upscaling. Take care of your customers and they will return, do that enough and you won’t have enough business to give out, so that leads to upscaling. Read more>>

Jessica & Joe Dougherty | Event Organizer & Promoter

In 2009, Jessica and Joe took a leap of faith and organized their 1st Annual Funky Finds Spring Fling, an all handmade shopping event. It was a great event featuring approximately 50 vendors. Funky Finds hosted their second Spring show in 2010 and added a holiday event that November at the urging of makers and friends. Each event grew steadily in the amount of vendors, as well as shoppers. As the number of applicants increased, they realized that more space was needed & in November of 2019 rented two adjacent buildings at Will Rogers Memorial Center. Just when Funky Finds was expanding, the Spring 2020 event was among the first of the shut downs due to the pandemic. Read more>>

Gil Breef | President of Shades By Design

Shades By Design was incorporated in 2014 as a custom window treatments company with a single employee handling customers inquiry and coordinating meeting while the founder Gil Breef was the only sales person and also handled the installation. “We worked out of a shared office space with one desk, a computer and a cell phone”. our focus was to provide un parallel customer service and provide out of the box solution to our clients. As the demand to our products and services grew, we hired full time installer and a second designer, both had no industry knowledge and were trained by our founder. Read more>>

Nate Church | Martial Arts and Fitness Instructor

Our school started as a small program with just a few kids. We worked with a Home School Enrichment Program and was one of the activities for them on Fridays. They had a science teacher who taught in the morning then they got an hour of martial arts then another class after lunch. It really helped introduce us to a lot of different families. That class quickly grew from 4 kids to over 30 some days. We were sharing space with a Cheer school and limited by their open gym time but it worked with all schedules. I had my early morning fitness program and then the big Friday class. I added an assistant for Fridays as it grew. Read more>>

Claude Hooton | Chief Executive Officer

Over the past 8 years that I’ve been here, we’ve done quite a bit. We started a cloud based medical image management system that went from a client base of 0 to 7,200 healthcare organizations. During that time, we traversed several lifecycles of a company’s growth. Getting those first few reference accounts, and making them happy, was critical. Making things work as we grew was what allowed us to get to size that we did. Our solution was the first cloud native application for this very challenging segment of healthcare so the were many false starts, trials and tribulations. Ultimately, it was a success. We sold that division to publicly traded, Change Healthcare in August of 2020. Read more>>

Ann Noder | Public Relations CEO

Being smart about growth has always been an important focus for me. The path was always rooted in our results. Many other PR agencies have extensive sales teams, focused on finding and landing new clients. That’s their financial model. It’s not ours. Pitch PR is focused on servicing the clients we have with an unparalleled level of results. We wow our clients. We deliver on editorial coverage that helps them grow their businesses. Because of those strong results, our clients stay with us over time, from startup to acquisition. Many of our companies have grown through various funding rounds and many have been acquired in hefty deals from larger brands like JP Morgan, American Express, UPS, etc. Read more>>

Brian Galton | Chief Fun Officer

Building a business requires many layers of laying the foundation. You have to have a plan on paper that you believe it=s the correct path to success. But what if it’s not? You have to have a plan B. Establish a threshold and if you do not meet your expectations then you have to have a threshold to stop the bleeding. Just like a bandage. Accept your injury and heal. You have to be willing never fail as long as you learn from your efforts and use it as power towards success. You may even need a Plan C. If there are no other plan’s then you better be 100% positive Plan A will be successful. You have to constantly be looking ahead because what may be doing well in the present may not do as well 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, and think about how much has changed in the past 10 years. Read more>>