Growth is a good thing if it’s controlled and scalable. If not, well… then it might not be the kind of growth that you’re looking for. Expanding your staff, moving to a bigger office, increasing workload, and getting new equipment all sound like you’re moving in the right direction. However, hiring more people and moving into a bigger office will mean higher expenses and if your income can’t cover them, you’re soon going to embark on a downward spiral. More work is great, however, if you accept more than you can, you will soon start disappointing clients, missing deadlines, and diminishing the quality of your work. Here are a couple of tips to not allow any of this to happen.
- Hiring new people
The first thing you should do is consider whether your industry will allow you to hire freelancers and temporary workers. If that is the case, then you should seriously consider it. More often than not, these people work on performance pay, which means that if the workload decreases, their salaries will not be such a burden. Also, it gives you a chance to vet potential full-time staff members. Having them work for you will be a much greater assurance than even the best-crafted CV or the best-conducted interview.
- Remote work and flexible hours
In terms of moving to a bigger office, once you feel like you’re running out of space, this too is something that you can avoid by allowing people to work from home. If a part of your staff is telecommuting, you can afford to be in a smaller office for a lot longer. It’s also good that you keep in mind that you don’t have to choose between on-spot or remote work when you can have them both. For instance, insist that your staff work from the office 3 days every week and let them work from home for 2 days. Flexible work hours also help ensure that not everyone is at the office at the same time.
- Work on your online presence
When they want to decide whether to do business with you, people will probably start by looking you up online. First, they will check out your website. Here, the three main factors are your landing page, your pricing section and your (about us) section. The latter is crucial in humanizing your enterprise and showing it as more than just another faceless business entity. The best way to handle this is to summarize your story, state your vision and even add some corporate headshots to show the people behind the brand. Having professional headshots on your website can greatly enhance the personal touch and approachability of your business.
- Getting new equipment
What do you do when you need new equipment? Well, first, you start by considering what are the odds that your newly-increased workload is just a temporary thing. Then, you consider whether you should buy or rent equipment based on the conclusion. Renting equipment gives you an easier way to replace it when the new model is up. It also helps you with a flexible structure because you can easily downscale if things start going south. Also, to determine which of the two is cost-efficient in your case, here’s something you should focus on – if you need it more than 60% of the time, you should buy it.
- The right expansion directions
There are three indicators that your business is growing in the right direction. First, your revenue is looking greater than ever, month after month. Second, you’re diversifying your offer and all your items seem to be doing great. Third, you’re moving into new markets. Now, the reason why these three are so important and so vastly different is that they aren’t just temporary boosts. Instead, they open up new expansion paths in the future.
- Outsource
Outsourcing is one of the safest ways to make your business more resilient. Sometimes, skill is simply a matter of being able to do something quicker and with greater efficiency, rather than the difference between being able and not being able to do it, at all. For instance, if you were to handle your HR, how long will it take you to make an internal HR department of the same size, skill and efficiency as the team that you would outsource to. So, instead of wasting your time and energy, just take the easier way out. Moreover, this method is more than scalable.
In conclusion
Expanding your small business is not difficult, as long as you can think more than one step ahead of the time. So, before you make any business-related decision, try to think about its lasting consequences. An increase in workload is not necessarily a permanent thing, so if you go all-in to catch up with it, you might make a huge mistake. Smaller steps will inevitably get you to your destination.