Scale or Fail

6Executing the SCALEit Method

Even a small reduction in errors and rework can have a significant impact.

—Abigail Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Fidelity Investments

How Melissa Systemized Her Business and Scaled to 40 Locations

Melissa Woods is the Chief Business Mentor at Pinnacle Global Network. In the 1980s, Melissa built a company called JW Tumbles, a children’s gym. She was excited in the early years, but, as the company created traction and growth, Melissa found herself chained to her business.

As Melissa recalls: “I had a fantasy of driving off to get milk and never coming back. I realized that if I didn’t duplicate myself, it would only get worse. No free time, no ability to take a vacation. No ability to expand. One day – and, yes, this really happened – a princess from Saudi Arabia brought her kids to the summer program and said she wanted to build a JW Tumbles in her country.

“This was my wake-up call, as I realized that my business could be replicated and scaled. I hired a paralegal who was great with systems and especially strong at converting the information we fed her into a digestible format. She would ask us questions about how we did things – what we did the moment we came into the gym every morning in preparation for the day, how we cleaned the gym, what cleaning supplies we used and how we used them (i.e., one spray, two sprays, one wipe). This became an exercise that forced us to think about every tiny detail.

“The hardest part was ...