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Question: What is one mistake young companies make when trying to scale too quickly?

Hiring for skills instead of passion

“When we were trying to scale, we had two choices in a hire. One lacked hard skills but loved our mission. The other cared less about the mission but had a stacked resume. We chose the one with the resume. They lasted eight months. A year later, here we are repeating the hiring process for that same position. Learn from us. Hire for passion first, skillset last — hard skills can be developed.”

– Joshua Dorkin (@idorkin), BiggerPockets

Chasing shiny objects

“If you have a great business model and want to scale it, you need to make sure you’re focused on that initiative only. We are constantly surrounded by new opportunities (shiny objects) and many times having just a small distraction can drastically get a core project off track. Stay focused.”

– Drew Gurley (@drewgurley), Redbird Advisors

Not sticking to job descriptions

“A huge mistake that young companies can make when trying to scale quickly is neglecting the job descriptions that are presented to the candidates they really need to hire. Since they may be trying to grow rapidly to get more work done, they may think it’s okay to keep descriptions and company bios short and simple, but this really could put a dent in building a strong, cohesive team.”

– Miles Jennings (@milesj), VocaWorks

Hiring before you’re ready

“There are quite a few alternate solutions to hiring employees. Since a W-2 employee will require you to pay benefits, you might want to consider intermediary solutions before you bring on more staff, such as contractors or online freelance platforms. This also prevents you from the frustrating push and pull of training only to realise you weren’t ready for a full- or part-timer after all.”

– Nicole Munoz (@nicolemunoz), Start Ranking Now

Ignoring your people and culture

“If you’re scaling successfully, you’ve probably got great people working for you. Losing them at this stage is very easy if you’re not paying attention. Sometimes it’s just that responsibilities grow too fast, but I’ve also seen teams fail because the earlier members didn’t get along with all the new people who came aboard and didn’t understand/couldn’t maintain the culture that got you here.”

– Matt Doyle (@_MattDoyle), Excel Builders

Also Read: [TOP100 Academy AMA] Steve Melhuish, Cash is king: Investment to finance scaling

Forgetting to document your processes

“Document and process everything you do. When you are scaling, you are likely adding people underneath you. If you and your other team members have to teach them everything, no one will have time for actual work. However, if you have been building guides along the way… well, now everyone can support the new team members while getting their own work done too.”

– Adam Steele (@adamgsteele), Loganix

Running out of resources

“As a young company, it’s easy to get excited by all the business that is flowing in, but if you run out of resources to fill those orders, you will be shooting yourself in the foot, losing those orders, and never regaining those customers. You need to have a plan in place to quickly tap into additional funding to accommodate the growth, or simply slow it down and scale in line with resources.”

– Drew Hendricks (@Buttercup), Buttercup

Forgetting that scaling is an organic process

“Companies should never ‘try’ to scale. Scaling is something that should happen organically. If you’re forcing scale, then you’ve already made your biggest mistake. If you make changes to operations, sales and technology as they’re needed, you’ll generally make the right choices and not suffer the dreaded problem of scaling before it’s required; you’ll also be in a much better place to succeed.”

– Blair Thomas (@MerchantBroker), eMerchantBroker

Broken customer experience

“Scaling a business too quickly brings a great deal of challenges for a young company and a lot of time hiring, culture, financials, processes, and other shiny objects that distract founders and leadership teams away from customers. It brings broken experience for customers, as too many and too new people join the team who are not properly trained or experienced to delight the customer.”

– Shilpi Sharma (@Shilpi_SV), Kvantum Inc.

Founders geting in the way

“The biggest obstacle to sustainable growth are founders who can’t change at the same speed as the business. The skills needed to grow a business are dramatically different than those used to start it. Founders who successfully scale give up control, communicate effectively, and learn to manage employees and managers. If you don’t learn these skills, the blessings of growth may become curses.”

– Brian Smith (@sbriansmi), S Brian Smith Group

Also Read: 3 ways to stay true to your core values while scaling your brand

Focusing on too many goals

“Entrepreneurs get excited about new things and try to quickly scale horizontally into too many adjacent fields at once. Horizontally scale where you are doing more of the same thing seems less exciting but is usually a much more profitable and sustainable business strategy.”

– Christopher Kelly (@ThoughtsOnBiz), Convene

Internal growth first

“A big mistake we made was focusing on and making sales before growing internally. It was an absolute mess trying to get operations sorted after making the sales, and we scrambled to satisfy everyone. We adjusted by slowing down sales and getting all ducks in row in-house. Grow internally first and be able to meet the demand before you grow externally. It’s about delayed gratification.”

– Engelo Rumora (@engelorumora), List’n Sell Realty

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The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organisation comprising the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship programme that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

Image Credit: Oskar Krawczyk on Unsplash

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