It’s human nature to crave more success, even when we’re already successful.
There are levels of success. So simply building momentum and becoming a functional, profitable brand might feel great in the beginning, but soon enough you’ll be thinking about scaling up.
Of course, why would you not want to expand the business and continue increasing the amount of revenue it earns on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis?
While there are plenty of ways to scale up, unfortunately, most methods require a fair amount of effort and patience to generate significant results.
Luckily, there’s still at least a handful of options you can utilize to bring your business to the next level as quickly as possible:
1. External Funding
Of course, getting a loan is the fastest way to get the money you need in literally one business day.
The old saying “it takes money to make money” still reigns true. Getting approved for a sizable business loan would put you in a position to invest in advertisements, product improvement, and obtaining better prices from suppliers through larger purchase orders.
Even if you have poor credit, as long as you can show decent proof of income, you could easily get approved for short-term loans, also called payday loans or bad credit loans.
2. Crowdfunding
While crowdfunding takes more work than just slapping up a campaign page and waiting for donations, it’s an effort that’s worth diving into when you’re looking for fast ways to fund a business.
When you set up a campaign on a site like Kickstarter or any other major crowdfunding platform, you have the option of setting a specific monetary goal that you’re trying to reach and a deadline by when you need to raise that amount.
However, be aware that you will need to do a bit of internet marketing to bring awareness to your crowdfunding campaign, which brings us to our next recommendation.
3. Proper Internet Marketing
Every business can benefit from online marketing, even local brick and mortar shops.
Generating awareness for your business is never a bad thing to do and having a strong web presence is a sure-fire way to gain at least a few extra clients, visitors, and prospects down the line.
While internet marketing can be expensive when you pay a professional agency to do it, if you dedicate a few weeks to learning low-cost marketing techniques, you would definitively be well-equipped to start making waves of your own.
There are plenty of courses and tutorials on YouTube and learning sites like uDemy that will teach you the ropes of marketing for free or cheap.
4. Dropshipping
Scaling up isn’t always about having more money or getting more attention. With dropshipping, you can scale up almost instantly by drastically increasing the amount of inventory you can list in an online store.
This is an ideal method of scaling for e-commerce businesses, that are looking for ways to increase their inventory variety without having to invest in large orders upfront. However, it’s extremely important to do your research and be careful about who you use as dropshipping suppliers.
Shipping time, quality, and reliability are huge factors for preventing a high percentage of chargebacks, which could negatively affect your business reputation and the status of your accounts.
5. Additional Monetization Methods
If your startup has already begun to build a web presence in the form of a website, blog, YouTube channel, social media accounts, forum profiles, directory listings and other means of online exposure, you might as well ensure you’re getting paid for all the traffic you’re generating.
Study the various ways to monetize web content to ensure you’re getting maximum income from your internet real estate.
Plus, learning how to monetize your current business will undoubtedly have you coming up with ideas for other businesses. So internet monetization and marketing are great skills for every entrepreneur to have.
Checking the Analytics First
Any major business decision should always be backed by the comprehensive study of analytics and crucial metrics.
If the numbers don’t add up, investors aren’t going to invest, banks and lenders won’t approve, and ultimately, you’ll be left to bootstrap the business with what you have.
While it’s possible to succeed by funding the company out-of-pocket, there’s no doubt that growth comes much faster when you have plenty of capital to leverage. Thus, learning analytics is one of the final steps you should take on your journey to quickly scaling up any business.
While all of the above suggestions might seem like a lot to accomplish within a short time span, if you dedicate a decent amount of your free time to the challenge, you should be able to do everything suggested here within 1-4 months.