One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when growing your business is your Success! Yes, that very goal we achieved has now created your biggest challenge. While success is fun, often exhilarating, it also comes with its own set of new challenges.
In the early growth stages of a business, the challenges are primarily related to your need for a bigger team to deliver your product or service to your clients. You may have done most or all of the work in the early days, and now you’ve built a client base with referrals and more work than you can do by yourself. So now you have to make the biggest change you might ever need to make in your entire business owning life – you start adding team members.
You’re Right – So What?
The first thing most business owners do when they start adding team is to expect them to be just like themselves… and of course, they rarely are.
So what? Even if they are never as good as you, they are massive leverage for you to be able to serve more clients. Your job is to give them the Tools, Training and Environment to deliver great results for your customers.
OK, Then What?
Now you need to look at all of your Foundational Systems for Time Management, Money Management, and Delivery. It is very likely that what worked when it was just you or you and an assistant, will not work with a larger team. Your assumptions about how long it takes to do things are now wrong, which means what it costs to deliver your products/services is probably now different than it used to be. Start by setting up some simple metrics – time tracking, quality audits, and profit margins (gross and net) – these will all be under pressure until you understand the new dynamic of fulfilling orders.
Change Management
This first phase of growth will require You to change more than you have probably ever changed before, so make sure you are prepared. Focus on becoming a manager, a leader, not a producer, which may be the single biggest change you ever ask yourself to make.
The change you need to master is the change in yourself, not in your employees.
It Will Always Be People Related
Companies that navigate growth successfully are the ones where leadership recognizes that the change always needs to start with them. Your roles in the company will change, and the size of your team will usually be the biggest factor in where you should be spending your time and energy. You may go from top producer to top outside salesperson or marketer, or any of a dozen other possibilities.
The key is that you need to adapt first then help your team join you.
Where Do I Start?
If you are ready to learn more about climbing the growth ladder and how to get from one rung to the next quicker with more profit and less stress, our team is here to help. You can attend one of our FREE Master Classes or Workshops – you can find them on our events page. If you want to get there even faster, then take advantage of a free 90-minute Strategy Session with a coach to look under the hood of your business and identify the top 2-3 strategies that will be your best fit. You can schedule your Strategy Session here.
Author: Mark McNulty, Business Coach in Louisville, KY