Anticipate Business Growing Pains

Do you feel like your business is growing too quickly or hurtling out of control?  Every business will inevitably experience growing pains as you transition from a brand-new company to a booming organization.

There are specific problems that go along with your business too fast.

Preparing for the business’s growing pains can make the process easier for you and your staff.

Here are 5 small business growing pains to consider when starting your business.

1.  Rising sales have quickly outstripped the capacity of the team to perform with the quality that I expect.

In business, there always comes the point where demand outpaces the resources you have gathered to meet it. There’s an inevitable cost of acquiring new customers that you’ll need to account for. It’s a standard issue to find that your current staff can no longer reasonably keep up with increasing demand for your product or service.

At this point, you’ll need to make some tough decisions. You’ll need to hire more staff, which likely means you need to either cut costs elsewhere or increase your prices. There’s no correct answer—it depends on your business and what works for you.  But hiring more people is an antidote to relieve your business’s growing pains. 

2. Finding, hiring, and assimilating talented people in time is much more complicated.

One of the significant business growing pains people encounter is difficulty in finding qualified new talent to hire.  You might be tempted to stick with the staff that has been with you since the beginning rather than take a risk on new hires.  However, even if you feel like no one could know your business as well as your current employees, you’ll need to branch out eventually.

The key is to find people who fit well with your business culture.  Skills can be learned, but a cohesive culture is crucial to maintaining productivity and morale.  Hire people who will mesh well with your current employees. It’s worth the extra training they might need.

3.  We have outgrown our capital structure or resources.

As businesses grow, so do the resources needed to keep them going.  You may find yourself having to borrow money when you were able to cash flow everything before. It’s essential to ensure your product or service prices are high enough to bring in a significant enough profit margin to keep your business humming.

4.  It is harder to effectively communicate with and manage a larger, more sophisticated team.

Communication is the #1 issue encountered by businesses of all sizes.  The bigger the team, the harder it is to ensure everyone is on the same page.  You can head this off by creating a reliable communication infrastructure, ensuring that all departments keep in contact, and not waiting until you have many employees to encourage constant communication.  Avoid this critical business growing pain.

5.  As the owner, I used to be able to be involved in everything; now, I have to learn how to delegate and trust.

As this article from Entrepreneur states, there’s a big difference between being an owner and a leader.  As your business grows, your responsibilities as the owner will change.

You can only accomplish some things by delegating tasks to experienced, capable employees.  It would help if you learned how to trust the people you hire to keep your business running.

Owning a business isn’t easy, but being prepared can help you avoid a lot of the significant business growing pains you’ll experience down the line.  Check out my ebook, The 10 Critical Responsibilities of a Business Owner, for tips to succeed in your business.  If you have any doubts about your competency to be successful, let’s talk.

Coach Dave