Running a small business can become your whole life. But when it comes time to scale up your startup business, it may feel like there are obstacles on every side. Here are some strategies to identifying and overcoming those obstacles so you can take your company to new heights.
Obstacle: Finding the Right Time to Scale Up Your Business
Some business owners are eager to expand while others are resistant to going beyond what they have always done. Each extreme can be an obstacle to scaling up your business. Just because your business is running smoothly doesn’t mean it’s time to expand. You could face cash flow problems, lower quality performance, or employee shortages as workers feel stretched thin. On the other hand, waiting too long to scale up your startup business can hold you back from greater profits, providing more services to your clients, and developing a stronger market share.
Solution: Thorough Market Analysis Paired with a Strategic Development Plan
Choosing the right time to expand should be a strategic decision. Working with a business consultant, craft a strategic development plan that sets out ambitious but achievable growth goals based on a realistic approach to your market, and your current business makeup. The best scale up model will push you and your team to do more, without reaching a breaking point or sacrificing quality. Finding the right balance can be difficult, but exceedingly rewarding.
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Obstacle: Releasing Control of Your Business
If you are the founder of your startup, you’re used to being on top of everything that happens in the company. You may have been the one drumming up funding, setting the company’s production targets, and taking out the trash at the end of the day. But there is only so much any one person can do. As you scale up your business, you will need to begin releasing control over certain aspects while retaining what is most important to you as a CEO. This shift from hands-on to management can be hard for some small business owners, but it is necessary for growth.
Solution: Intentional Delegation to Scale Up Your Start Up
The best way to handle the growing demands on your time as you scale up your business is to delegate tasks to trusted members of your team based on their respective strengths and your own weaknesses. To do this, you may want to retain a business consultant to objectively evaluate your senior staff and discuss with them their future with the company. Then you can invest trust and possibly training into loyal employees with skills you need to help your business flourish.
Obstacle: Finding the Right People to Grow Your Team
Scaling up almost always means bringing on additional staff to manage the increased workload. But making a hurried hire in the heat of crunch-time can cause workplace conflict, cause delays in productivity, and in the worst cases, result in the loss of more experienced team members. Hiring and recruitment is never easy, but the push to bring on a wave of new blood can create a significant obstacle to scaling up your current roster of employees.
Solution: Hiring Employees and Managers Who Share Your Vision and Add New Strengths
It may seem counter-intuitive, but taking time away from working in your business to thoroughly interview and vet potential new employees will serve you better in the long run than rushing to hire whoever is available right now. New employees, especially those who will take on leadership roles, should have personalities and priorities compatible with your current team and your company’s vision. Those aren’t the kind of qualities you can discover in a take-home skills test. Instead, you should work with a consultant who can interview the candidates and get a sense of how they will fit in as a part of your new and growing team.
Get Help Overcoming Obstacles Between You and Scaling Up Your Startup Business
Scaling up a startup business means taking your idea and turning into something bigger than yourself. It can be daunting, and there can be many obstacles along the way. Working with an external consultant can help you make the right decisions at the right time, so that your expansion leads to a boom of new opportunities, guiding you through the growing pains so your business can reach the next level. From strategic growth planning, to hiring and promotion, a consultant can serve as an outside perspective to help guide you to make the best decisions for the growth of your company.
David Stanislaw is an organizational development specialist with over 30 years’ experience helping startup and small business owners with develop strategic plans for the growth of their business. Contact us to meet with David to create a compensation plan that treats family employees and non-relative workers fairly today.
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