Starting a business is relatively easy. Growing a business to achieve greater sales, deeper market penetration, achieving brand awareness, while reducing costs and increasing profit, however, is much more difficult. After all, a high percentage of new businesses fail to make it past their second year.

Many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs (e.g., Melanie Perkins, Jeff Besoz, Devaki Raj, Elon Musk) and recognized brands (e.g., Canva, Apple, Walt Disney, Nike, Google) started from humble beginnings. Yet all have something in common – they have all found a way to transition from a one-person operation to a thriving business.

Ironically, business growth requires substantial investment: an investment in resources and an investment in hiring the right people. For the purpose of this article, business growth is when it becomes successful and needs to find new ways to make more money and in this article we will explore a few tips to help you understand what is required to grow your business so that you can prepare accordingly.

Delegate Or Outsource Responsibilities

Many business ventures start off being bootstrapped with owners of the business wearing many hats and juggling many tasks on any given day. Doing so keeps operating costs lean but it comes at a huge cost. That is, one person has limited bandwidth each day and certains tasks should be given to other people.

For example, a dentist specialises in all things teeth and gum related. Therefore, taking on administrative tasks, organising payroll, and project managing inventory supplies and reordering would not be a good use of their time or expertise, and thus, should be responsibilities that should be delegated to others. If they were to juggle all these tasks themselves, not only would their ability to service more customers be limited, but also, customer service would very likely suffer as a consequence.

All new businesses can adopt a growth mindset and this can be achieved through hiring additional employers, outsourcing to contractors, or delegating responsibilities to existing staff. For example, even a freelancer can outsource components of their work to others if they provide clear instructions and have a feedback loop in place, just as an online business can look to delegate web and email hosting responsibilities to an external party.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has a list of functions that can be outsourced that you can read more here, but here are just a few examples:

• accounting
• marketing
• sales
• IT management
• customer service

Get Access To More Funds (also known as Financing)

But hiring new hires costs money and it is often one of the largest costs of doing business. This is also why many new businesses fail to achieve growth because they simply do not have enough cash flow to support the headcount required.

According to chatdesk, outsourcing an inbound/outbound call centre can cost anywhere from US$13,000 to US$17,000 per month. Similarly, hiring an agency or freelancer to look after marketing channels (social media, digital marketing, SEO) can easily cost north of US$3,000 per month.

Growth costs money and one way to fund these required activities is to get business financing, or in other words, borrowing money.

Here are a few of the most common business loans:

• loan term (typically offered by a bank)
• business line of credit
• merchant cash advance
• business overdraft
• business credit card.

Other financing options you can explore are:

• crowdfunding (e.g., setting up a GoFundMe campaign)
• government grants
• angel investment
• apply for personal loans
• bank of mum and dad (even Mark Zuckerberg took a $100,000 loan from his father to start Facebook – source).

Before you proceed, we would like to remind you that this article should not be treated as financial advice. You should seek professional advice before committing yourself to any of these options. And to help you understand what options are available to you, see this guide from Westpac on business growth financing. In addition to this, further your understanding with this Shopify blog post.

Seek Professional Advice

As you can see, there are many business lending solutions available. All have advantages and disadvantages and their own fine print. This is why we recommend that you seek the advice of a professional financial advisor who can assess your situation and provide you with tailored advice.

When seeking professional advice, be wary of gurus and loan specialists as they may not have your best interests. Instead, look for a qualified and licensed financial advisor or financial counsellor, preferably one that does not offer advice free of charge.

Your first point of contact should be your accountant as they will have the most visibility on how your business is performing. They can tell you if you can afford to take out a loan and how doing so will impact you.

Share Article

Follow Us

Return to Previous Page