The Business Build Up: How To Stack Success
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Starting a business is hard, but building one up is even harder. In truth, anyone can start a business these days. It’s as simple as offering a service through Instagram or any form of medium to a wider public. Stacking success is where things become a little more complicated. The majority of businesses fail in the first five years. If you manage to go for four or so years you know you’re doing something right but it’s in the stacking of the success where you have failed. This is why it’s super important to try and build on success and build outwards to new horizons.
Not everyone can do it properly but the truth is this is the most important part of a new business. It’s where costs can spiral out of control and where you really need to focus on your overhead. A new business can survive because the overheads can be low but one around for a few years will start to accumulate overheads that need to be paid off. This is why so many businesses went out of business during the Covid crisis. As soon as money stopped coming in, overhead punished them. Not that they did anything wrong of course, but there’s a lesson in there somewhere around business continuity and how you set up to succeed. These tips can carry your forwards to success.
Your Cash Flow Is Everything
The best plans turn to ash. You might have started off with a foolproof cash plan or budget. They go out of the window a lot of the time when the overheads start rolling in. Try to keep on top of it. Keep your cash plan alive as best you can. It isn’t always easy, but it’s certainly doable; it just takes time. As the business grows, your time becomes less prevalent.
If you get into trouble, you may end up looking at Wise Loan online installment loans, or other capital injections to get you back on your feet. If you feel like it's all getting away from you, consider hiring an accountant or tasking an employee with it. Make sure you stay on track and keep your contingency money aside. In reality, your plan should look exactly the same, just the amounts will increase as your business grows. These things should be easy enough to manage as you grow and build. The point being, don’t lose track of the money as you progress because it could come back to bite you.
Recruit Right
You don’t want to end up paying for an employee who simply isn’t right for your business. If you end up in that situation, it can be completely disheartening, and depending on where you live you might have to jump through hoops to get them out of your business. The remedy is proper preparation when you employ. For a start, your job advert needs to be on point. Describe exactly what you need and want. Then you need to specify your criteria. It has to state clearly what they need to have. This might be experience or qualifications like a degree. This way, you cut out a lot of the potential applicants who don’t fit the bill. It saves them time, but it also saves you time sifting through applications that aren’t suitable. Then come the interviews. If you’ve never done them before consider getting someone in to help. You should never really do them alone any way to cover yourself, but having that extra person in there helps you pick up on the nuances of the conversation. It helps you spot things that might be hard to pick up all on your own. Try to upskill yourself with employment law too, you don’t want to run afoul of anything. Basically, you need to recruit someone who can help build your business with their experience and technical know-how.
Extend Your Product Base
Stacking success comes in many forms and one of the best is in building into multiple product streams. If you’re selling one well, start another and sell that too. It doesn’t matter where you’re selling either. It could be through Amazon or through your own website. Try to keep the products as closely aligned as possible. You might even get to the point where one product is bought merely to make the other one better. These create a kind of circle where one supports the other. You keep doing this and you’ll have a whole ecosystem of products that people can buy into. If you don’t offer products but offer services instead, you can do the same thing. Just be careful you don’t go too far where you have a stupid amount of add ons taking customers down a rabbit hole where they’ll feel slightly cheating. Some would rather pay a larger price for one service than that split in half for two services. Bear that in mind when you’re doing your research around extending
Look To New Areas
If you’ve done well in one area, you can do well in another too. There might be a reason why one geographical area has succeeded. It could be the demographics, like students for example. Is there another student area in your city? Or perhaps you can target the student population in a different city. Expanding should be done as close as possible at first. The closer you are to your target market the less you have to think about logistics. This is of course compounded by the fact you’re not crossing international boundaries. Start small, then move outward until you find another market like the one you’re successful in...focus on that one and be successful there before moving out to the next again. Point being, don’t bite off more than you can chew. If you overextend it could come back to haunt you. Slow and steady, gradually employing more staff as you hit each area.
New Advertising Streams
If nobody knows about your business then how do you expect them to pay money for your products or services? It just doesn’t work that way. You need to get in people’s faces and push for sales. You’ve probably done this a little because you’ve made a success out of your first venture, but to keep stacking that success you need to keep moving. The type of advertising that works depends on your business type.
Does traditional advertising apply to you? Would you be better off getting out with the local community and passing on leaflets and flyers, or would you be better off instead looking to digital methods of advertising? What’s worked for you once might work again unless that first time was targeting a geographic area and demographic. Go for different ones. If physical advertising is the one for you it might be worth paying for some key locations in your city to get up and running with some visual advertisements. These are better for restaurants and local businesses. You can of course do the same online by paying blogs or relevant websites money for banner ads etc.
Social Media
In the same vein as editing, social media is a gold mine worth tapping. Again, it depends on your business type but most people are on social media these days. Some are on all forms of it, others just on one or two. It’s a great way to advertise. Get on there and start garnering likes and follows. Your social media page will link back to your own website and product pages. Some people search for local business solutions via Facebook these days without even looking at results on Google so it is certainly worth tapping into. Once you’ve set up your business page you need to post regular content updates around what you do and how you do it. Around key industry activities around your business area.
Never be too opinionated as you don’t want to alienate anyone at all. Then think about repeating this over social media sites. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Sites like Twitter are great if you want to speak to your customers. It’s great to interact with them this way because it shows that you’re listening to them and actively engaging with their opinions.
Network
Networking is huge in terms of keeping your business on even footing and getting the best prices you possibly can. This is because you can end up meeting and speak to people in various supply chains. It means building trust. Trust often results in better working relationships which means you may be in line for a discount or two.
These discounts allow you to have a better profit margin with more money for yourself or more money for your business to thrive. This means pushing yourself to get involved with industry events in your local area or even internationally. It means that you can forge long-lasting relationships which can help if you run into any form of trouble in business. Debts can be put off a bit longer, goods can be given without you paying for now because they trust you to pay later, etc.
