This may seem like a crazy question to ask in what many perceive to be tough economic times but seriously is your business smaller than it should be? Are you afraid to let it grow because you’re not sure you can afford employees? Are you doing a lot of the work yourself or between you and one or two other business partners - i.e. the stereotypical “mom and pop?”

Every business starts off somewhere. Most of the time it’s the vision of a one person or a few partners and while not everyone can be a large “enterprise” all too often small businesses stay “too small” and are tied too closely to the owner. This may be fine for the owner as he or she is comfortable with the work load and income stream but I have learned from watching some situations with other companies keeping a business too small or all the tasks tied to one person can be a disservice to both family and customers.

If you are a small business owner and have a family along with a loyal customer base would everyone be taken care of if something happened to you? Even if you had a business partner be it a spouse, other family member or a business associate or friend would they know how to take care of things and keep the business running?

I know it can be hard for a business to grow for financial reasons but all to often it’s more a matter of comfort and resistance to change or dare I say fear of added responsibility. I urge you to think about going to the “next level” but instead of being overwhelmed by large steps like;

• Larger office space
• More computers
• Full-time employees
• Other large equipment investments

Instead of thinking about the large hurdles consider the following options;

• virtual “office space” through web services like Basecamp or Highrise or literally office space you can rent where you share conference rooms, Internet connections, etc. with other small businesses
• Outsource those jobs to services that specialize in such things. For example we recently signed up with a local service that does a lot of our administration, billing and other jobs that we can do but it’s not our area of expertise. This frees us up to do more production work as well as sales.
• Rent equipment instead of buying it unless you need the tools on a day to day basis.
• You may be be very skilled and have a lot of your business secrets in your head but unless someone else knows all the procedures your best assets may die with you. Consider crafting an easy to understand manual. Hire a good technical writer if you have to. (we can help with this)
• Before going the route of hiring full-time employees consider hiring freelancers who can telecommute and work with their own equipment be it a computer or other tools.

Other than the funds needed to buy new equipment or hire new people what is your greatest challenge to growing your business to a point where it will survive if you are not around anymore?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Innovation, Tips, networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.