Glow Pros Academy

Mini Module IV

Bigger, or just better paid

The Glow Edit. Business education for the aesthetic and wellness field, written from a working clinic.

Module specification

Framework: Ansoff's Growth Matrix, Igor Ansoff, 1957
Field: Corporate strategy
Duration: 10 minutes reading, 20 minutes practical
Prerequisites: None
Strand: Pillar I, Foundation
Benchmark: National occupational standards for enterprise

On completion you will be able to

Distinguish growth in size from growth in income
Identify which of four growth directions suits your business
State a growth intention you have actually chosen rather than inherited

In one line

Almost every piece of business advice you have been given assumes you want to get bigger. Most practitioners do not, and there is nothing wrong with them.

Section A · The situation

The advice that never quite fits

Somebody tells you to scale. Somebody else says the next step is staff, or a second room, or a bigger space.

And something in you resists it, quietly, without a good argument to hand. So you assume the resistance is fear, because that is what you have been told resistance is.

Sometimes it is. Often it is not. Often it is a perfectly sound judgement that a bigger version of this business would be a worse life, and nobody has ever given you permission to say so out loud.

The numbers back you up. Of roughly 5.7 million UK businesses, around 4.3 million employ nobody but the owner. Not failed expansions. Choices.

Section B · The theory

Four directions, and none of them is compulsory

In 1957 Igor Ansoff published a matrix for thinking about growth direction. Two axes, existing or new market, existing or new product, producing four strategies of increasing risk.

It was written for corporations and it works perfectly well for one person with a treatment couch, because the underlying question is the same. If you want more, where is the more coming from.

The version below is the matrix translated into the four things a practitioner can actually do.

Where more can come from

IDeepenSame clients, same treatments, more often or at a higher price. Lowest risk, and almost always the unexplored one.

IIWidenSame clients, new treatments. Moderate risk, and the reason most treatment menus are too long.

IIIExpandNew clients, or new premises, or staff. Highest risk and highest cost, and the one people mean when they say grow.

Most practitioners jump straight to Expand, because it is the visible kind of growth and the one that gets congratulated. It is also the one that reliably increases hours, cost and worry.

Deepen almost never gets tried, and it is the only direction that increases income without increasing the size of the thing you have to run.

Where growth usually comes from, against where people look for it

DeepenWidenExpand

Lowest risk, rarely triedModerate risk, often overdoneHighest risk, most attempted

Before any of that, though, there is a prior question that Ansoff assumes has already been answered, and in a micro business it usually has not been asked at all.

Do you want this business to get bigger, or do you want it to pay you properly at the size it already is?

Those are different projects. They need different decisions, different prices and different amounts of your life. Answering honestly is not a lack of ambition. It is the thing that makes every subsequent decision straightforward.

Before you go on

Picture the business in three years at exactly its current size, but paying you half as much again. Is that a disappointing picture or a relieving one?
If you knew nobody would judge the answer, would you take on staff?
What have you added to the menu in the last two years, and did it bring new clients or just more work?

Section C · Mini audit

Practical

The Growth Intention Audit

This one has fewer numbers and more honesty. Score each statement from one to five, where one is not at all and five is completely.

	Line	Score
	1. I want more income from this businessAlmost everyone scores high. It is the control question		/5
	2. I want the business to be physically biggerMore rooms, more space, more equipment		/5
	3. I am willing to manage other peopleNot could you. Would you want to		/5
	4. I want to work fewer hours than I do nowBe honest rather than virtuous		/5
	5. I would trade some income for more control of my timeThe question that separates the two projects		/5
	Lines 2 and 3 added together		/10

2 to 4Lifestyle business, and deliberately so. Your route is Deepen. Pricing, contribution and retention will do more for you than anything with the word growth attached. Most of this newsletter is aimed at you.

5 to 7Undecided, which is a real position. Usually means you want the income of a bigger business without the management of one. Deepen first, and revisit in a year with better numbers.

8 to 10Genuinely growth oriented. Rarer than the industry pretends. Expand is legitimately yours, but do it after the pricing is right, not instead of fixing it.

Section D · The reveal

What you have just done

That was a growth direction analysis using Ansoff, preceded by a growth intention diagnostic. You established what you actually want before choosing a strategy, which is the correct order and almost never the one used.

It maps to identifying and evaluating opportunities for your business, and to developing your business. Both are national occupational standards for enterprise.

Most business coaching skips the first half entirely and sells you the third column.

Section E · Your action step

Twenty minutes this fortnight. One sentence, written down.

Finish this sentence honestly and keep it somewhere you will find it again.

In three years I want this business to be ______ , and I am willing to ______ to get there.

Every decision in the next six modules gets easier once that sentence exists. Including the ones about price.

Type it here, or print the page and write it by hand.

Mini Module IV at a glance

Around three quarters of UK businesses employ nobody but the owner, by choice
Ansoff gives four growth directions of increasing risk
Deepen is the least tried and the least disruptive
Growth in income and growth in size are different projects
Choosing which one you are on makes every later decision simpler

From the deck

Pillar IFoundation

Card

Ansoff's Growth Matrix

· · ·

Four directions for growth, at four levels of risk. Choosing none of them is also a strategy.

Business Development

Every framework in the Glow Mastery Programme has a card. More than a hundred of them, one for each thing you learn.

The reverse carries the origin, the theory and the standards it maps to. That side comes with the deck, which arrives when you enrol.

That is four you have earned.

Reply and tell me your scale score, and whether the answer was the one you expected.

I read every reply myself, and it decides what gets taught next.

In two weeks: Mini Module VThe twenty per cent who keep the lights on. Which of your clients actually pays for this business, and what happens when you find out.

Amelia x

Founder, Glow Pros Academy

The Glow Edit is the fortnightly mini module from Glow Pros Academy, the business education for practitioners across the aesthetic and wellness field. Written from a working clinic, not a coaching desk. This page prints on two sides of A4 if you would rather work on paper.