What is Scalability?
Scalability is term that refers to the ability of a business to make more revenue without working more hours. For example, a bar tender is not a scalable job because in order to make more money the bar tender must work more hours. In contrast, a book author is a scalable job because selling more books does not require the author to work more. He simply needs to expand sales through wholesalers or through direct online sales.

The Challenge of Scalability
The challenge for most service businesses, like wildlife control operators (WCO), is how do you make more money? You can’t make more time, so you either have to charge more money for your services or become more efficient in your business by reducing service times and costs or both. The typical way to expand in a service business is to hire more workers. But hiring workers brings its own challenges and headaches. You may think, at this point, that WCO businesses lack scalability.
Ideas for Scalability
But is that true? Is there a way to scale your WCO business? I am not sure WCO work is scalable in the way that product sales would be scalable. But I do think that WCOs can scale their companies in other ways. Let me provide a few ideas.
- Offer additional services. Consider renting and/or selling traps. Here you have the clients do the work for you. This can be done with jobs that are low expertise and low profit such as ground trapping animals. Just be sure that your insurance and contracts are designed to handle the added risk.
- Collaborate with other WCOs. Through collaboration, your business can work with competitors to handle jobs neither of you could resolve on your own.
- Franchise. Sure establishing a franchise for your business is not easy. But it is a way to expand your business by multiplying yourself through the work of others.
- Can you think of other options?