5 Things You Must Focus on to Scale to $1 Million in Revenue

Your Path Counseling Center
Oct 12
4 min read

Updated: Nov 10

There is a saying, Success begets success. This is especially true within business. Whether you have a successful food truck and are considering opening your first brick-and-mortar location, or if you are a pest control company looking to expand into a new state, having a strong foundation is essential to success. However, just like the stock market, past performance is not a reliable predictor of future results. To take your business to the next level, you need a solid plan, sufficient capital, a strategy for growing revenue, technology to support business operations, and the right team to help you.

Blue notebook and pen on charts with graphs and tables. Text reads "Scaling to $1 Million in Revenue: Guidance for Small Businesses."

Detailed $1 Million Business Plan

Everything starts with having the right plan. Some people will tell you that you need a formal business plan. If you speak with successful entrepreneurs, you will discover that there is no single set method for business planning. The SBA provides two types of business plans for entrepreneurs to use on its website. One is a traditional business plan, which includes a lot of information about the business structure, market research, and service lines, while the other is the b usiness model canvas, which focuses explicitly on the value proposition, expenses, and revenues. Both are different paths that take you to the same goal of defining

Who will you serve?
How will you serve them?
Who will you need help from?
How will you make money?

Capital to Support Growth

Once you have defined your business growth plan, it is time to secure the capital needed to bring that plan to life. You start with business planning because you need clarity on how much money you will need to grow your business. Once you have defined this, you can explore whether you will fund your growth through owner investments, crowdfunding, credit cards, taking out a loan, grants, or venture funding. Running out of cash flow is the #1 reason companies go out of business, so defining how much money you need and securing it before scaling is a critical step in the process.

Line of Sight to Return on Investment

All capital has a cost. Whether you borrow money from a bank or use your own money. When you borrow money from a bank, the costs are clear. Banks charge a set amount of interest and provide repayment terms. In contrast, when you fund your business with your own money, the opportunity costs are real, less apparent, and uncertain.

Imagine if you had the choice of investing $10,000 in NVIDIA last year or in your company last year. Which decision would be the right one? NVIDIA stock has increased by 41% since last year, which means your investment today would be worth $14,100. For you to be better served by putting that $10,000 investment in your business than NVIDIA, you would have had to earn more than $4100.

This is an oversimplification because it ignores tax liability and other factors; however, fundamentally, every time you allocate a dollar towards an investment, you should ask yourself what type of return you need to make it worthwhile. Forecasting your anticipated expenses and revenue growth, as well as projecting your profits, can help ensure that you generate enough revenue to utilize your capital wisely.

Technology to Support Operations

As your business grows, so does complexity. Inefficiencies are amplified, and problems that were relatively minor before can grow to become significant points of pain and frustration. Implementing sound processes and leveraging technology is essential to providing you with the efficiency, visibility, and control needed to ensure consistent customer satisfaction as you seek to serve more people.

As you develop your growth plan, take the time to identify the technology you can integrate into your workflow to enhance operations. Common improvements include leveraging project management tools like Asana and Notion, marketing tools such as HubSpot and Canvas, or point-of-sale technology like Square or Clover.

Right Support Team

Last but not least, you must be extremely clear about who you will need to support you in your growth. Many times, people make the mistake of defining the person by name (like 'I need James Brown'), instead of defining the type of person they need. The reality is that your business exists in a competitive market. As much as you may want a particular person on your team, there is no certainty when it comes to recruiting, developing, and retaining talent.

For this reason, define the skills, mindset and type of employees you need to scale your business. This is helpful for the following reasons:

It enables you to assess your current needs and identify who on your team can fill the necessary roles.
If your current team lacks some of the skills, you have clarity on what competencies need to be built.
If the time horizon for developing your current team is too long, you have clarity on the type of person you need to hire.
As you grow, you will need additional personnel, and this list will provide a starting point for selecting future talent.

JP Morgan Chase's research shows that only around 3 to 6% of small businesses reach $1 million in sales within the first five years of their existence. This is not because business owners are not intelligent or hardworking. Most of these businesses never hit the $1Million milestone because they have not taken the time to layout a solid plan, they lack sufficient capital, utilize their capital in inefficient ways, fail to embrace technology, and do not surround themselves by the right people. If you are looking to scale your business to $1M, start by writing out a plan for each of the elements outlined in this article.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Feel free to email executive coach Dorian Cunion at dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com. If you are interested in seeing additional content related to leadership and business, follow me on