Over five years ago, my partners and I sat down to hatch a business, Hands-on Garage, after my car needed a new starter and we were trying to fix it in my driveway. We massaged that germ of an idea into a scrappy startup and now a growth-obsessed venture poised to surpass one million dollars gross revenue this year.
We have watched the entrepreneurship ecosystem in our city, Milwaukee, also become growth-obsessed. Milwaukee is the first U.S. city to launch an entrepreneurship ecosystem project focused on scaling existing businesses to stimulate economic growth. Appropriately called Scale Up Milwaukee, the initiative draws upon the work of Daniel Isenberg, founding executive director of the Babson Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Projects, and is led by sundry group of public and private, local and national partners from Governor Scott Walker, Mayor Tom Barrett, the Greater Milwaukee Committee, and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, to American Express OPEN.
As part of Scale Up Milwaukee, we applied and were selected to participate in the pilot Scalerator, a two-month intense training on sales and growth. The goal of Scalerator is to help existing businesses like ours get the tools and techniques to scale up quickly. So what did our participation accomplish?
Not only did we achieve an additional 15 percent increase in revenues in the last two months of 2013, we discovered several ‘aha!’ moments that would help any ambitious business accelerate its growth:
Moving towards growth will also benefit the community. When Hands-on Garage generates more than a million dollars in revenue this year, we will increase our headcount 25 percent, buy over $250,000 in auto parts, and scout for a bigger location. By growing our business, hiring local people, and working with local vendors, we aim to help Milwaukee thrive.
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