Ready for big girl panties? Thinking big, even when you're small.

Just a note: this post isn’t only about underwear.

My daughter Zoe will turn two on Saturday. Two! I can hardly believe it. With our second baby due in late July, we’re crossing our fingers that the potty training gods smile upon us over the next three months. Wishful thinking, I know.

To help encourage her interest in potty training I recently bought the book Big Girl Panties, and it’s been a total hit. The last several nights she’s asked me to read it again and again—sometimes six or seven times. “No, little baby! You can’t wear panties! Only big girls can wear panties.” Let’s face it, panties are cute and awesome, and even if you’re still in diapers you WANT to be wearing panties.

Thinking big, even when you’re small

Little kids want to be big and do what big kids do. Interestingly, as adults and as service business owners, we don’t always have the same mindset.

Of course, it’s perfectly okay to be just starting out, and it’s perfectly okay to be small. And I’m certainly not suggesting that all small businesses should aim to be big entities—many service businesses discover their optimal carrying capacity and make the choice to not grow beyond that—the sweet spot is often plenty sweet!

That said, it’s not okay to be small and inefficient, especially if you’re small and want to grow.

Over the years I’ve spoken to several hundred small business owners wanting to grow and improve their businesses—many willing to try anything and everything to improve. But a significant number of folks sincerely struggle to overcome the hurdle of “thinking small.”

Here are three common examples:

“We’re still too small to implement an introductory program or On Ramp.”

You’re never too small to have a thoughtful, well planned way to introduce clients to your business, especially if the service you provide is in any way intimidating or involves movements that the general public isn’t familiar with. There’s more than one way to skin the introductory-program cat— series of private appointments, a group-based workshop, and so on. Providing a great first experience for your clients is a MUST if you want to grow your membership base.

“We’ll think about outsourcing (insert administrative duty outside your core competency here) when we get a bit bigger.”

Some of the more successful service businesses I know made a point to outsource everything that wasn’t about serving clients right from the beginning. Bookkeeping, janitorial services, web design. Sure, you may have cursory skills in all of these areas, but your time is far more valuable on the floor providing your service or out creating relationships that will bring in new clients.

“We don’t have clients sign in to classes because we don’t want our gym to feel like a big globo gym.”

This one kills me. If you run a class-based business, taking attendance lets you confirm that your clients are actually paying, that they’ve signed a waiver and you can track data on your busiest classes—all of which can help inform your decisions to add or drop classes from the schedule.

Are you ready for big girl panties?

I remember talking with a man at the end of 2005 who was grossing $20K per month in his private training business. At the time our monthly gross revenue at NorCal was hovering around $7K, and $20K seemed like big kid money. And I sure wanted our business to make big kid money. So I listened intently, asked questions, and started making changes. It took a couple of years and lots of iterating, but we starting seeing results with each new thing we tried.

Back then the simple progression from accepting only cash and check for monthly memberships to having folks pay via PayPal (when most people didn’t have a PayPal account yet) to a physical credit card terminal and, finally, to software that managed memberships and billing—each of those transitions had a huge impact on the efficiency of our business (not to mention the consistency of our income!)

You’ve got to think and act like the big kids do. Being small doesn’t mean you can’t run efficiently, create effective processes for clients to progress through your business, or collect meaningful data. In fact, doing these things when you’re just starting can minimize a ton of headaches down the road. Of course, there will be continual changes and updates as your business matures, but there’s certainly no reason to wait.

You can run a tight ship even on a dinghy.