Expand Your Business Like A Boss
By Business Desk
Tuesday, May 14, 2019.
If you have waved goodbye to a steady wage, excellent promotion prospects and the camaraderie of your office team, the chances are that you’re confident in your own business idea. As a new startup, you might feel overwhelmed by the need to ensure that your cash flow is buoyant, you have the funds necessary to mitigate risk, and that you are fulfilling your legislative requirements. Creating a business plan can be difficult, but as long as your financial ducks are in a row, you can attempt to overcome any challenges that you may face.
Only when you have been trading for a little while, and once you have found your feet should you look to expand. Attempting to run before you can walk can be foolhardy and you might find that your business fails. By all means, be ambitious but also be humble and realistic. When you are ready to expand your startup, there are a whole host of things you need to consider.
Staffing
As you expand, the chances are you will take on more work, expand to a new site, go global or take on more products or services. This means that you need to take on more staff. If you were going it alone before, you cannot be expected to keep plugging away all on your lonesome if you are trying to create a small business empire. Think about the sort of staff you’d like to take on. While Ivy League colleges and decades of experience at blue chip corporations may make you swoon, these often aren’t the best candidates to create an exceptional team. Focus on the attributes you want in your office. Think about personality types, working ethos and sense of humor.
You may choose to write the adverts yourself and complete the entire recruitment cycle. However, this can be costly and time consuming. Rather than drafting an advert, publishing it, long listing, short listing and interviewing, you can save yourself a whole lot of bother by going through an industry specific recruitment agency. These companies will have a wealth of well qualified and suitable candidates on their books ready for you to interview. They’ll work with you to decipher who it is you really need. Be specific with the job and person spec, and all you need to do is interview the talented individuals. Remember what you can’t provide in terms of a remuneration package, you can make up for with other perks, fun, and being at the forefront of a burgeoning business.
With your new staff team, you are now the employer and the boss. Gone are the days of heading for drinks on a Friday after work with your mates from the office. You now need to keep a professional distance while maintaining a reputation for being a firm but fair employer. Make sure that you communicate with your team and enable them to feel empowered. You need to help them buy into the business vision and echo your company ethos. A team that is productive cares about their work and wants the very best for the company. You need to facilitate this with perks, away days, a pleasant working environment and by investing in the professional development of your new team.
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IT
Your IT provision will need an overhaul if you are to expand your business. While you may have been able to make do with a standard WiFi connection and open source software when you first started your business, you will now need something more advanced and comprehensive. By checking out a page like https://www.intellectsoft.net/services/enterprise-development, you will see the range of enterprise software solutions available to you, to help manage your new software applications, apps and technology.
As your IT provision grows, so will the chances of developing niggles and problems. As the software and IT is more advanced, the issues created can be too. If you don’t have an IT guru in house, it might be time to consider outsourcing to a troubleshooting team who can help twenty four seven should any problems arise. This means you will have limited downtime, and you won't be the person being bugged with random IT bugs when you’re trying to implement other more pressing aspects of your business vision.
Funding
Expanding means utilizing some of your finances. If you're keen to go global and break the international market, then you will have to carry out some comprehensive market research first. Just because a product or service is popular in your home nation, doesn't mean it will be over the pond. You may need to adapt and redevelop a product for a certain demographic. You also need to be aware of cultural, religious and nationalistic issues.
As you expand, you may need to consider applying for more funding. While you might think going to your bank should be the first port of call, there could be a more effective source of funding. Business angels are industry experts who have been ridiculously successful and have a wide variety of contacts. They invest their own money into businesses they can see making a success. While daunting, pitching to a business angel like the ones at https://angel.co/united-states/investors and securing funding will validate your idea and leave you with an incredible asset on board. This individual wants to make a success of your venture as they have a stake in it too. While they are investing in your startup, they are also investing in you.
Starting a new business is difficult. You have a whole host of new entrepreneurial skills to learn and fast. However, expanding your startup is even more tricky. It's very easy to be complacent, rest on your laurels and enjoy your immediate success. However, the more ambitious entrepreneur is always striving for more and wanting to compete with their rivals. If you want to become a market leader, you will have to expand. You could go global, expand your product range or consider merging with another company. Expand in the right way, and you could find yourself in charge of a prosperous business empire.