If your business provides a quality product or service, your business growth has probably happened faster than you imagined. Your client or customer base may have grown along with your good reputation, leading to exponential growth as word spreads!
While business growth may be your intention, fast business growth can lead to challenges – leaving you feeling out of control with your finances, systems, and staff.
While we’d never discourage business growth if it meets business objectives, we do encourage planned and measured growth, so you don’t lose your grip on the business or feel like it’s spinning out of control. Here are the three main challenges we see with unexpectedly fast business growth:
1 Fast business growth affects finances
When you are too busy ‘producing’ to focus on invoicing and chasing debtors, you can become short on cashflow. Businesses can be making a profit on paper – but if the money is not there to pay creditors, the business will not survive long. When you have fast business growth, the saying “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king” certainly applies! (Managing your money is number 5 of Brian Tracy’s “7 Strategies to Grow Your Business”).
2 Fast business growth impacts client satisfaction
If you are barely keeping up with workflow and have no time to create systems, you may find each team member does things differently. Inconsistency can lead to client dissatisfaction, and wasted time and money due to inefficiencies and rework as mistakes are fixed.
3 Fast business growth affects team morale and retention
If your fast business growth means you haven’t had time to effectively manage staff, team issues can grow; leading to poor performance, frustration, and low morale. Team members who don’t feel supported may leave, leading to high staff turnover. And the last thing you need when your business is growing is to continually replace staff!
How to regain control
If this sounds like your business, business coaching can help.
One of the main reasons business owners get in touch with us is because their business has grown too big, too fast; and they want help to regain control of their business.
We’ll help you monitor and manage your finances; ensuring strong cashflow, realistic budgets, and profit targets. This includes setting aside time to invoice, or analysing if this is a function that can be better resourced.
We’ll teach you efficient ways to lead, train, and manage your team; so they are able to grow and take on more responsibility in your business. Team culture will be improved as you provide staff with skills and tools to be effective, and feedback on their performance. Good people want to work for good businesses – so as your reputation as an employer of choice grows, so will your choice of new recruits.
Creating systems will make work easier and more efficient; keep product and service levels consistent; and maintain your reputation for quality.
As you regain control, you will be able to find more happiness, wealth, and freedom through your business. You can set some goals and put a strategy in place to achieve them.
Your end goal may be to:
- sell your business for a profit;
- replicate it (perhaps open other branches, or franchise);
- use business income to grow your wealth through other avenues; or
- hire someone to run it, so you have the choice of when to work.
Whatever your goals … having control, a plan, and support is key.
If you or someone you know has experienced rapid business growth and needs to regain business control, please get in touch with us to see how business coaching can help. We look forward to hearing from you.