Trust me. I know how hard it is to own a business.
Whether you are just getting started or have been in the game for a while, your business can quickly take over your life. Between book keeping, hiring, and organizing, acting as the head of all of your business’s departments can be exhausting! I want to talk about that moment where you realize your business is doing well. Maybe you finally feel a moment of financial stability. Maybe you find yourself having a consistent customer base. Congratulations! If you are anything like me, I would be asking myself ‘What’s next??!’. How can you move from the start-up phase to the growth phase of your business. What should your next moves be to scale your business and go from ‘doing well’ to ‘THRIVING’? Here are some of my recommendations when you get to this point and want to take the initiative to grow your business.
The first thing you should know is that there is a tipping point where you need to hire more people. This can be a difficult realization because investing in expanding your team can be scary. Financially, you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew when it comes to hiring more employees. But if the time is right, adding more superstar employees to your team will allow for more output and more revenue in the long run. Most of my recommendations for a growing business actually have to do with hiring more people. Finding the right people that you can rely on will ensure growth in the future and free up time for you to become an owner rather than a worker.
The first position you should look to fill is a bookkeeper. In my experience, hiring someone to keep track of your expenses, taxes, income, etc is life changing. Having one person dedicated to this area of your business frees up a lot of time for you to manage your business from a growth perspective. Before hiring someone to do my bookkeeping, I was finding that I would work full days and then come home to do invoicing and organization. I know a lot of small businesses work this way but it is not sustainable or efficient. Hiring someone in a bookkeeping or financial position should be the first thing you do when your business is growing.
The next person I would hire would be an office manager or receptionist. Depending on your business, someone to greet customers, answer phones, and schedule appointments is incredibly helpful. For this position, you need to find someone who is organized, reliable, and acts as a friendly face of your business. This person would have to have great communication and leadership skills in order to manage your other employees. Having this person deal with customer service or employee responsibilities will clear up a lot of your day-to-day work. Again, hiring someone in this position will allow you to spend more time strategizing how to grow your business.
Maybe your business doesn’t have many other employees at the moment or maybe you don’t need someone in a receptionist-type position. If this is the case for you, maybe you should consider hiring a virtual assistant. Similar to a manager or receptionist, this person should also be incredibly organized and reliable. There are many types of assistants out there but you can tailor this position to exactly what you need. Responsibilities could include anything from scheduling, to social media planning, to invoicing. Look for assistants who have skills that will take day-to-day tasks off of your hands.
If you are needing to expand further, the next person I would hire would be someone in a sales position. Once you expand your sales team, expanding your marketing team is next. Marketing will be important to your workflow because they will generate leads and deliver them to your sales team. Once both of these departments are built out, administration will have to increase. This cycle will continue as you continue to expand your business.
The bottom line is that if your business is starting to shift into the growth phase, take advantage of this exciting opportunity and don’t be afraid to start delegating work to more employees. I know that Bulldog Steel would not be where it is today without our amazing team. Taking on more employees can be a scary investment at first, but I really think it is the first step to scaling your business to new heights.
