Growing vs. scaling your spa business: do you know the difference?

Every spa business owner I’ve met (both during my time as a spa owner and since I’ve been a spa coach and spa-centric digital marketing agency owner) has been distracted by the never-ending quest for growth. Whether it be defined as booking more services, selling more retail, hiring more staff, investing in more products and spa technology, and or expanding into more locations or space, the primary goal of generating more revenue can feel like you’re chasing your own tail so to speak.

...This is especially true when there is no differentiation made between “growing” your business vs. “scaling” your business. Why? Because, while all of the above actions are awesome and will need to be done periodically during your career as a spa owner, each of them requires a heck of a lot more time, energy, money, and general resources to make them worthwhile than what’s usually realized!

So what can you do? For starters, sit down with me today to learn more about the difference between growing vs. scaling your spa business, as well as how to effectively grow your spa biz sales without adding a huge amount of work and expense on the admin side of things! (And, of course, without hurtling headlong into burnout!)

Growing vs. Scaling Your Spa Business: Why Knowing the Difference Matters to Your Spa Biz Success

When looking to grow your spa business, running into walls when it comes to both time and money are commonplace. After all, if you’ve added new treatments to your business recently then you’ll know first-hand that some technology can easily run into the thousands (tens of thousands, when you count all the accompanying staff training and retail that often needs to be brought in!)

That’s why, in most cases, spas that inadvertently choose the method of growth listed above quickly find that it takes a lot of resources to have said growth be consistent… with no promises that it will even be consistent!

This leads us directly to the difference between scaling and growing: if you’ve been hanging out in the online education community (like my private spa owners-only Facebook group, Spa Business Mastery) then you’ve probably heard me and spa coaches like me talking about the importance of “scaling your business”. Here’s how it differs than what we in the spa industry usually describe as “growth”:

• Growing your spa business typically follows the pattern described above: adding new products, tech, and/or people in the pursuit of revenue all fall under the umbrella of “growth”
• Scaling your spa business is as follows: versus having revenue increase as a result of active efforts, scaling is instead defined as a situation in which revenue increases without a substantial increase in resources

How is this possible? Well, scaling can happen when you’ve achieved some success in your spa business and have proven your initial offers. Once those initial results are seen, spa owners can then scale their business by refining their existing offers and processes to make themselves more niched, more appealing to clients, and more sustainable to offer long-term. 

Ideas on How to Start Scaling Your Spa Business Today

The world of digital marketing and technology has made incredible strides (in part accelerated due to COVID-19!) these past few years… and yet, as a whole, the spa industry has been slow to jump on this bandwagon due to the perceived learning curve.

(Psst: with tools like my Virtual Skin Consultation Toolkit, there doesn’t have to be one!)

While some spas, skin therapists, and med spas have embraced some aspects of scaling their businesses effectively, the truth is that only a handful of spas are actually aware of how to create automated, sustainable, and scalable systems that work for both them as a leader and for their business as a whole.

Be sure to stay tuned for three exact ways to scale your spa business, coming up on the Spa Business Mastery podcast playlist soon!