Self-improvement can go a long way as a business leader.

When running a business, it’s common knowledge that stagnation should be avoided at all times. If you’re not working toward some form of growth or actively scaling your business, then you and your brand aren’t moving up in the world.

Your mindset and your capabilities as a business leader are integral aspects of making sure your year-to-year outlook keeps trending upwards. By scaling yourself and your processes, you can more effectively scale your business. Here are some ways you can work towards a more scalable version of yourself.

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Position Yourself to Make the Most Impact

As the head of your business, your input matters. Whether you’re a sole proprietor or you have a number of employees at your disposal, where you both mentally and physically are as a worker are important to the overall success of your company. By being aware of yourself and how you operate every day, you can ensure you make the most impact each day.

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Become a “Process” Thinker

When someone says you have to “scale” your business for future growth, that typically refers to the act of creating processes and creating systems that pave the road for future growth. Things like your company’s values and culture are part of that scaling process, but what it means for one company or industry may differ from another.

As you prepare your company for the next stage of its journey, you must be mindful of those processes. By focusing on your company’s infrastructure, you can not only ensure your operations run smoothly as you continue to grow, but you can create a positive experience for your customers.

As your company builds on past successes, you have to remember that what may have worked when you were starting out may not work as you grow into a larger and larger company and must adapt as a business leader and implement changes as needed.

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Simplify to Facilitate Your Growth Model

If you build up your company’s processes and focus on what’s working, you’ll eventually be able to grow the company. Over time, your business of 10 employees could blossom into 50, 100, or more over time. At each stage of growth, it’s important that you focus on the business priorities that will continue that upward movement—albeit at a sustainable pace.

It was through growing multiple businesses that Growth Institute Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Marcos says he learned an important fact: that it’s possible to grow your business “with less drama, less stress, and less work.” By focusing on his “4 Stages of Growth,” he said a business can overcome barriers and eventually operate without your input.

“I often tell people, ‘The best thing you can do if you want to grow your company is to build a company that can run without you,’” he wrote. “Your goal, at every stage of growth, is to get your company ready for an exit — EVEN if you don’t want to sell it.”

Ultimately, he wrote, you want to create a simple enough infrastructure that doesn’t need so much manual input, since “you can’t have 10,000 people go through a complex process because it will cost you more money and create more drama.” By focusing on eventually being able to let the company run on its own, you will be pushed to “right systems, procedures, and people in place that become an asset with an intrinsic value on its own.”

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Amplify Yourself by Hiring Great People

When looking at the best business leaders and entrepreneurs throughout history, there’s one thing they were particularly good at—delegating. Steve Jobs didn’t have his hands on the wheel at all times while running Apple and you can bet Richard Branson is more focused on his leisurely space activities than he is on the daily happenings at the Virgin Group. So it’s your job as a business leader to eventually delegate tasks through the various processes you create.

In order for you to delegate anything to anyone, you need to hire good employees to carry out those tasks.It may be hard to attract good candidates to your company in such a competitive job market, but it’s important that you do just that. It’s extremely unlikely that you’re the best at all aspects of your business, so when you need help with marketing for example, hire the best people in marketing you can find. Eventually, hire an executive to that marketing team that can take over for you in that area. Reid Hoffman, an entrepreneur and partner at Greylock, said he overcomes the challenge of handing over operational control to someone else by “[picturing[ the hire as a specific living, breathing person rather than as a role written down on a piece of paper.”

“When you try to picture an abstract ‘head of product,’ for example, you might have a hard time visualizing this faceless entity doing a better job than you are,” he wrote for LinkedIn. But when you picture a particular individual, all of a sudden your mind shifts to thinking, ‘Wow, just imagine how awesome it would be to have someone like this running our product team.’”

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Remember: No one is “on” all of the time

One way to grow yourself while scaling your business is to be aware of your energy levels. As humans, we all work differently and at different effort levels throughout the week. Some days are more productive than others, but as a leader there’s this idea that you have to be firing on all cylinders at all times for the good of the business. Some days, or even portions of the day, come with more energy than others.

To that end, executive coach Katia Verresen outlined the importance of auditing your energy levels through the day for First Round Review. “So much of what we feel is instinctual, and we don’t know how to identify it,” she said. “If you’re a founder or a manager and you really track your physical sensations, you’d realize that you probably spend most of your time in ‘fight or flight’ mode.” By auditing your energy peaks and valleys, you can ensure you’re performing at peak efficiency while avoiding the harmful effects of burnout.

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The Bottom Line

When running a business, you get what you put into it. If you’re not at your best and unable to delegate to people who know a certain aspect of your business better than you do, then you’re never going to scale your business as much as you’d like. Being the best business leader you can take a lot of introspective thought, so be sure to look inward, position yourself accordingly, and adjust to the changes your company naturally takes on. Be mindful of yourself and you’ll grow yourself as your compa

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