Making more of it
Updated
Growth in this craft is constrained by something physical, which makes it unusually easy to plan and unusually hard to shortcut.
Space before hours
Doubling output doubles the cure racks, immediately, six weeks before the extra revenue.
So the first question is not whether you can make twice as much. It is where twice as much will sit for six weeks.
Work out the steady-state bar count before committing to anything: weekly output times six weeks.
Bigger batches
The cheapest kind of growth, because mixing time barely changes with batch size.
A larger mold, a larger bucket, and a stick blender that can handle the volume without overheating.
The limits are physical: a full bucket of oils is heavy, a large mass of soap gels more aggressively and can overheat in the middle, and a big batch gives you less time between trace and pour.
Which is why the step from a small loaf to a large one needs a test batch rather than confidence.
More batches
The other axis, and it needs a second mold so one batch is not waiting on another to be unmolded.
Batch days rather than batches whenever there is time, because setup and cleanup are the fixed cost.
And a cutting and wrapping session as its own scheduled block, since wrapping is the labor that scales linearly and it will otherwise fill every evening.
What breaks
Cure space, first and always.
Then wrapping, which becomes the largest time cost and is the thing to solve with packaging rather than effort.
Then consistency, because more batches made faster is where variation creeps in.
And then cash, which is tied up in six weeks of stock at all times and grows with every increase.