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.

Richelle Marty

My journey into how I started with Plump began unexpectedly when I decided to see my business partner for a Botox treatment at his old office. Little did I know that the guy that used to do my Botox would soon be my business partner. With my background in hospitality and previous ventures in health and wellness startups, I excelled in customer service and had an understanding of the industry. Despite being a newcomer to the medspa space, I was determined to leverage my skills and figure it out. We started our venture with just six employees, driven by our shared vision of delivering top-tier injectable treatments and addressing the growing demand in the medical spa sector. Over the next three years, fueled by determination and the surging demand in the industry, we scaled our business to a team of 35 dedicated employees over 7 locations. Read more>>

Erika Lin

I never saw myself as a business woman, I remember myself as a child playing to be an architect with a big firm and supporting another architects, developing my profession with passion, walking between the walls of the places that i designed. The love for the architecture and the constant effort to do impecable things brought me to be a business woman. Read more>>

Cody Romness

We started with 1 gym. 4 years later we were supposed to open our 2nd gym. The day we broke construction on our new location was the day the stay at home order hit Los Angeles. All construction was paused, dream put on hold, and we had to figure out how to save our 1st business from closing. For about 3-4 months, we just tried to survive. Then we got to thinking, “how can we look for the opportunity here? Let’s stop feeling sorry for ourselves for a moment and think about how we could use this as a positive instead of a negative?” Read more>>

Ivana Kovacevic

I believe scaling up all comes down to patience and consistency. When I became self-employed, once I had a few regular clients, I tried my best to maintain a continued level of quality and professionalism in my work. This later translated to word of mouth, helping me gain additional business via referrals. Patience and consistency also lie behind all the educational content I provide on my Instagram page which is the reason behind my progressive follower/community growth. There will always be days when we feel overwhelmed, overworked, and, sometimes, undervalued. These hiccups are inevitable but should not get in the way of your overall vision. All great things truly take time, so if you’re looking to start a business of your own, be persistent, follow the goals you’ve set out for yourself, and be reflexive along the way – but do not give up. Read more>>

Jaime Jay

Scaling Up: The Bottleneck Distant Assistants Experience The Road to Growth: Strategies and Tactics Scaling up any business comes with its fair share of challenges and learning experiences. For Bottleneck Distant Assistants, the journey toward growth began with an ambitious vision to expand our services and cater to a wider audience. However, we soon realized that certain adjustments were necessary to steer the business in the right direction. Recognizing Mistakes and Taking Action Read more>>

Jonathan Goldhill

It was March 2000 when the Internet bubble burst, and the doors closed on a brief chapter of my entrepreneurial life. The digital media events company I was the Chief Operating Officer of fell apart amidst declining advertising sponsorship dollars and ticket sales. We were unofficially broke. All the employees except me sued the founder in court for back payroll. I closed the doors. Shut the lights out for the final time. After a 10-year stint of building a fledgling business consulting and economic development firm into the most successful in all of California, I left to go “gold mining” among dot-coms. Since those selling the tools to gold miners made most of the money in the Gold Rush, it made sense that joining the Internet Rush and hosting events to usher people into the New Age was where money was to be made. Read more>>

Taymah Jones

My scaling up journey was a rollercoaster ride filled with meaningful moments, twists, turns, and invaluable lessons. I started my business with the lofty ambition of helping any business owner in any way possible. While it may sound simple, this approach left me overwhelmed, exhausted, and often out of my depth. I realized that I needed to find my focus, but that was easier said than done. The first step was recognizing that I was overextending myself. I had to admit that I couldn’t be everything to everyone. This self-awareness was a pivotal moment because it allowed me to step back and reevaluate my strategy. I knew I needed a more specific niche to provide efficient service and truly excel in my field. Read more>>

Karen Cacho

In the initial stages as a hobby baker, I ventured into experimenting with countless recipes sourced from the internet and various cookbooks within my reach. Over time, I got curious about the science behind baking – understanding why each ingredient mattered and how they worked together. This journey led me to a deeper understanding of how I can alter recipes into recreating them to better fit my personal preference. I eagerly enrolled in classes that would let me grow as a baker, artist, and later as a business owner. Making the transition from a hobby baker to a business owner meant that I had to take some legal steps. Read more>>

Kate Gale

There are a number of indie presses that have stayed small. We wanted to be able to publish more books. There are a lot of great stories out there, unicorns in the forest. To do that, we needed to have a larger organization with more staff. Two of us could not do all the work. We needed to build a board and trust them to work with us. In the literary world, there is always a fear of founders being fired by their boards. We had to overcome that fear and trust our board to work with us to build a strong organization. We had to hire great staff. Read more>>

Josh Greenbaum

Scaling a business is not for the faint of heart, but it was the journey I was ready to go on. After nearly a decade of operating my consulting business, I wanted to grow in order to build a team to support me and meet the client demands. Growth is a balance of vision, marketing, hard work, space for life and rest, and a willingness to show up differently. I found a variety of professionals who guided me towards a vision of growth. Knowing what I didn’t “want” was equally important to what did “want.” Specially, as a fractional CFO, I asked myself what services did I want to provide, what work was I doing that could be delegated, and where is their opportunity within the market. Read more>>