So, you’ve found a problem worth solving and come up with a solution. You’ve even got a few paying customers and it’s time to start thinking about expanding. This is an exciting time; you’ve nearly achieved success. But don’t throw caution to the wind just yet. Plenty of businesses stumble and fall while scaling up. To avoid this, you need to do the following.

Create a Plan

First, start with a plan. Things need to be done in the right order and at the right time. Before you start taking on more customers, you need to improve your workflow so that you can handle the additional workload. Consider what the costs of expansion are. Will you need new locations, more office space, more employees? You need to know how much money you’ll be investing and how quickly you will be getting a return on your investment. A good plan will have smart goals. Remember that a smart goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

Know Your Customers

The fact that you have paying customers means that your business has value. But to who? Sometimes the answer is obvious, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the answer appears obvious, so you don’t dig deeper and you miss out on valuable insights. It’s quite common that businesses discover that they have a customer demographic they weren’t aware of. As such, it’s very important that you discover everything you can about individuals that use your products and what they do with them. Take all the data you gather and use it to segment your customers. Segmentation helps your business market at scale by knowing each type of customer you have.

Don’t Overextend 

As the money starts to pour in, it can be easy to get caught up in your own success. Pretty soon you leave your basement office and lease a private building. You hire more employees and throw out the used office supplies for better, newer materials. You might justify this spending with your own success, but this can quickly kill your business if you aren’t cautious. When your business is small, it is much easier to pivot in response to customer needs. Once you start growing, it can become extremely expensive to pivot therefore you need to make sure that you don’t overextend yourself while growing.

At all times in your business you need to focus on your customers. Listen to them. Don’t just advertise to them. This will help ensure that you stay on the right track and scale appropriately in a manner that will lead your business towards success.