Starting your own business can be a rewarding experience. You’ll never forget the day you make your first sale to your very first customer as you see your hard work finally turn into cash. For those of you who are still in the early stages, we’re going to give you a step by-step process for growing a cottage industry into a full-fledged production line that you can be proud of.
When you first start thinking about scaling up your home-based business, it may seem overwhelming. From hiring employees to setting up vendor accounts, figuring out payroll, and leasing a building, there’s a lot involved in the expansion. Don’t let this scare you away from your dreams of owning your own production line. We’re going to look at the steps involved in scaling up a sample business to make it easier for you to relate to scaling up your own business.
For this example, we’re going to talk about a candle-making business. Let’s say you’ve been making your own candles for a few months out of your own garage. You’ve found customers through family and friends and their demands for your products are starting to grow. You’ve probably figured out by now that your ability to fulfill this demand is hindered by your own time restrictions to make the candles. It’s time to move the operation to a standalone facility and look into automating the process.
It’s fair to say that not every single part of the process can be fully automated. However, about 90 percent of the process should be fully automated to ensure you’re producing as much product as possible to fulfill your growing demands. Look for ways to automate every part of your business. For example, measuring out supplies, melting the wax, adding fragrances, installing wicks, and pouring wax into containers can be done in a production line fashion with minimal human intervention. Using computerized maintenance management system software through leading2lean.com or similar services can monitor this process. What processes do you see being done by automated machines? This will give you a good idea of what machinery you’ll need to get to automate your production process.
Increasing your production process is a must to keep up with your demand. Now, it’s time to keep up with your books. The right software can help you to determine how much product you’re producing and what products you’re selling. This will give you the necessary insight you need to understand what products you should be focusing your efforts on and which ones just aren’t bringing in revenue. It’s very easy to get lost at first just producing the products you like, but remember it’s about your customers. Just because you like the smell of lemon-scented candles doesn’t mean you should keep producing them if they remain on your shelves month after month.
As you scale up your business, you’re going to get to a point where you’re going to need to hire employees either part-time, full-time, or a mix of both. These people should bring expertise to the table to help your business grow. Many times entrepreneurs get too focused on the difficulty of managing people and what it entails instead of thinking about what knowledge these employees can bring to the table to enhance their business. For example, if you’re not overly great at marketing your products, hire a marketing consultant to handle the task. Realize that your job as a business owner is to bring the necessary talent together to accomplish the goal of increasing the revenue for your business. Your job is not to do every single task that needs to be done.
