Small Business Growth: Scaling up while staying agile
For many small business owners, you may have mastered the art of working small, but perhaps you are ready for business growth. We all know that “slow and steady wins the race” for many reasons in business. One of the most obvious reasons is that you are so used to working on a smaller scale that if you grow too fast, your current processes and infrastructure may not be able to handle it.
You can be assured that if you are looking for growth, you should expect change. Your business needs to be able to handle those changes over time so you can grow at a manageable rate rather than trying to tackle everything at once.
As a small business owner, you are able to remain quite agile throughout your processes – you are not bogged down by inefficient processes. You can still remain agile throughout your growth if you try to anticipate issues that may arise.
Here are a few things to consider to help you manage your business growth successfully.
Put the business first
While your revenue stream is important because it is what keeps the business afloat, it shouldn’t be the driving factor in your decision-making. Financial pressures can create undue stress and create a barrier for your business growth. Focus on the results and how you are getting there creatively. That doesn’t mean ignoring your finances as you scale up, it just means that it is only one of many factors to focus on.
Define your business goals
If you plan for it, it makes it easier to transition your growth phases smoothly. It all comes down to your business plan (surprise!). Define your growth objectives in a way that is meaningful and measurable. Then create a plan to help you reach your objectives. It should include answers to questions such as:
How will you finance each growth stage?
What is your hiring strategy to grow your team along with your operations?
How will individual roles/responsibilities shift as you grow?
Do you have a team with the right skill set to get you what you need?
Will you have the processes in place to help maintain order as you scale up?
Do you have the appropriate manufacturing facilities? Storage facilities? Distribution?
How will the growth affect your current costs/expenses?
Are there things you do now that can be cut out of your processes to create efficiencies?
It’s still all about the customers
It doesn’t matter if you are at the beginning or the end of your growth story, you need to constantly listen to your customers. They will have valuable feedback and ideas that will help you reach your growth milestones in a way that doesn’t negate all of the work you have done in the past. Even though you are looking to expand your audience, you don’t want to lose your loyal base of customers in the process.
Embrace Freelancers
Managing a team of full-time employees can sometimes put a strain on your business in terms of finances – especially if you are planning to grow or you are in a growth phase. It becomes a “cart before the horse” type of situation where you know you will need to have these people in place to run successfully after you reach your growth goals, but you don’t have the steady growth revenue or the full work load to justify hiring full-time. Tap into a global pool of talent by hiring freelancers or contract workers. By 2020 40% of the workforce will be working as freelancers and they are willing to be more flexible in their work arrangements so you can hire them for the hours/projects that you need. You can either keep them in their role long-term, or transition to a full-time employee when the time is right.
Avoid silos
Even as your employee/contractor number increases, you should still encourage a collaborative work environment between all departments. The moment each department starts acting as separate islands is the moment your strategy will start to fall apart. Each piece of your business strategy should work with all of the others. That means open communication between departments and keeping each other accountable.
While business growth can be exciting, it can also present with a number of issues that need to be resolved. The key is to try to stay ahead of the game so you are prepared with solutions before issues arise.