If you’re already making 6 or 7 figures as a wellness practitioner, scaling your business presents both significant challenges and opportunities. At Salt Marketing, our specialty is guiding companies through these transformative phases. With a solid track record of assisting various health and wellness practices in not just reaching but exceeding their business goals and sustaining organic growth, our strategies are built on real-world successes and deep industry expertise. Here, we will take a look at how you can build, grow, and scale your health & wellness practice.
Defining Build, Grow, and Scale
The terms building, growing, and scaling are often used interchangeably but actually represent distinct phases in a company's lifecycle, each characterized by unique challenges and objectives.
- Building your practice is about laying the foundational stones. In this stage, ideas are transformed into a viable business, customer bases are established, and initial revenues are generated. It's a time of rapid learning, adaptation, and laying down the operational frameworks that will support future growth. It typically targets achieving up to $100,000 in revenue with usually just one employee—the founder.
- Growing your practice involves broadening the business's reach, increasing the customer base, and enhancing service offerings. This phase focuses on refining successful strategies, eliminating inefficiencies, and improving revenue streams, often requiring adjustments in marketing tactics and customer engagement. Growth aims for revenues between $100,000 and $1 million with a team expansion to 2-10 employees.
- Scaling your practice means expanding the business at a pace where revenue growth outstrips cost increases. This phase is characterized by significant operational efficiency, market expansion, and the leveraging of successful aspects of the business to maximize profit without a proportional rise in overhead. Scaling targets revenue between $1 million and $10 million and involves growing the team to 11-100 employees.
Timelines for Build, Grow, and Scale
While timelines can vary based on practice type, market conditions, and external factors, a typical roadmap might look like this:
- Build Phase: This phase generally lasts 1 to 2 years. It is crucial for establishing a robust business model and gaining a deep understanding of the market and customer needs.
- Grow Phase: Can last from the 2nd to the 5th year or beyond, depending on your goals. During this time, practices should optimize internal operations to support expanded activities and increased market presence. This means establishing standard practices for most operational functions.
- Scale Phase: This phase typically starts around the fifth year and extends indefinitely. Successful scaling is marked by strategic growth that might include entering new markets, exploring new demographics, or offering new services.
Vision: What Does Success Look Like in Each Phase?
Build Phase: Success in this phase means setting up a resilient and flexible business structure capable of handling initial challenges. The focus is on developing a strong brand identity, a loyal customer base, and a consistent revenue stream. At this point, success is also measured by clearly understanding your clients' needs and effectively communicating your value proposition.
Grow Phase: In the growth stage, success looks like sustaining and enhancing the quality of services while significantly increasing the customer base. It involves having effective systems and processes in place to manage an increasing volume of work. Success also means maintaining the quality of service that attracts your initial customers, even as you expand.
Scale Phase: Scaling successfully means that your business has a significant market presence and can operate efficiently with less dependence on the founder. It involves having a management team in place that can handle day-to-day operations while the business continues to explore new growth opportunities. Success at this stage is also defined by the ability to replicate business success in new markets or with new product offerings without diluting the brand's core values.
Getting Help in Each Phase
Build Phase:
- Business Coach: At the outset, a business coach is crucial for helping to clarify your vision, set strategic goals, and establish the foundational business structures. Coaches offer guidance on navigating the initial hurdles of starting a business and can provide accountability to keep you on track.
- Marketing: Initial marketing efforts should focus on establishing a strong brand presence and communicating the unique benefits of your services to your target audience. This may involve basic digital marketing strategies like SEO, local listings, and social media engagement to attract your first customers.
Grow Phase:
- Strategist: As the business grows, a strategist can help refine your business model based on market feedback, optimize operational efficiencies, and identify new opportunities for expansion. This might involve diversification of services or enhancement of existing offerings.
- Marketing: In the growth phase, marketing needs to become more sophisticated, focusing on expanding reach and capturing a larger market share. This could include targeted advertising, content marketing, and an enhanced online presence that drives both engagement and conversions.
Scale Phase:
- Specialized Marketing Team: When scaling, it's often beneficial to bring in a specialized marketing team that focuses on scalable growth tactics such as automation, advanced digital marketing strategies, and entering new markets efficiently.
- Operational Managers: At this stage, having a team of operational managers becomes essential. These professionals will help streamline processes, manage day-to-day operations, and ensure the business can grow without compromising on service quality.
Support As You Build, Grow, and Scale Your Health & Wellness Practice
Each phase of building, growing, and scaling your health and wellness practice presents unique challenges and requires specific strategies and support. At Salt Marketing, we understand these phases deeply and are equipped to provide the guidance and marketing expertise needed to navigate them successfully. Our goal is to help you transform your vision into a thriving reality, supporting you at every step of your business journey.
With a strategic approach tailored to your specific phase of business, you can not only survive but thrive in the competitive landscape of the health and wellness industry. Whether you're just starting out or looking to expand your reach, Salt Marketing is here to help you achieve lasting success and make a meaningful impact in the lives of your clients as you build, grow, and scale your health & wellness practice.