5 Tips if Your Business is Growing
You’ve heard this before, but let’s be clear: Growing a business costs money. While this is not a secret, I find many business owners forget this and focus instead on their growing revenue. Here are some tips to remember while you grow.
By Don Harkey
Jan 21 2016 at 3:30 a.m.
1. Don’t Fall in Love with Revenue: Many business owners spend too much time focusing on growing revenue, but there are other considerations. As you grow your company, make sure you are paying attention to your profit. I’ve seen business owners brag about doubling the size of their businesses while their profits have actually dropped. This means the business owner is running a larger, more complex business for essentially less money. You can expect to invest extra expense to scale up your business, but make sure you aren’t sacrificing long-term margins.
2. Hire Slow; Fire Fast: As businesses grow, they will naturally need more people. Some business owners get in a hurry and start hiring too quickly. Having the wrong people on your team can chase away the right people and create all kinds of problems. Take time to hire the right people, and if they don’t work out, move quickly.
3. Consider Your Culture: Some studies say changing 20 percent of your personnel drastically changes your company culture. Make sure you are managing your culture through well-defined roles and good onboarding. Ignoring the impact of new employees will result in culture changes you may not like and could lead to some nasty long-term effects.
4. Redesign Your Company: As you scale up your company, don’t just add bodies to do the same work you did when you were smaller. This will result in decreased efficiencies and reduced profit. You will need to deliberately redesign your teams to take advantage of your increased size. This means training supervisors, specializing roles and upgrading your internal systems.
5. Leverage Your Growth: Successful growth often isn’t wild, uncontrolled growth. When your business is experiencing a period of success, take advantage of it. Consider picking better clients or moving to products that bring you more profit.
Don Harkey is a partner and co-founder of People Centric Consulting Group in Springfield, Missouri and provides strategic planning, seminars, public speaking, and resources for businesses and organizations. donharkey@peopleccg.com