On the opposite end of the spectrum is business growth. Big picture stuff! And, yes, it can be done in 10 minutes. Well, not JUST ten minutes. But in ten minute increments. Here’s how:

First you need to think of your business growth as a project, but not many people think of business growth in that way because projects have an outcome and business growth is often a little foggily defined. When you take the project management approach to your business growth, you’ll find that 10 minute increments are actually quite easy to create and achieve.

Step 1: Create outcomes. (Duration: 10 minutes)

Some people call these business goals. That’s fine, but in my opinion it minimizes the concept of the project (and often business goals are poorly defined). Avoid goals/outcomes like “I want to be able to retire” or “I want to be as famous as [a famous person in your industry]“. Instead, think of your goals and outcomes as measurable achievements, not unmeasurable ones. So, for example, some better goals would be “I want to earn $20,000 in a month” or “I want to work 6 hours per day but maintain my current level of income.” Notice the difference? Compared to the retirement goal or the infamy goal, the latter examples are far more measurable.

Step 2: Identify the influencers. (Duration: 10 minutes)

Every outcome will have factors that influence it. Earning $20,000 per month, for example, is clearly going to be influenced by the rate you charge, the hours you work, the number of days you work, and the number of clients you take on. Maintaining your current level of income but working fewer hours probably has less to do with the number of additional projects you take on but rather the efficiency with which you work your current tasks.

List as many influencers as you can think of. The more detailed you get at this point, the easier it will be later to make an improvement. If you can only think of three or four influencers, that’s fine, although I’ve seen a dozen or more influencers on a project. In most cases, you’ll always have more than one or two influencers.

Step 3: Add metrics. (Duration: 10 minutes, maybe longer)

This is the part that everyone wants to skip because metrics seem boring. But they are the key to actually growing your business. Beside each influencer from the previous step, add metrics: Write down how you measure each influencer and what your current measurement is. A coach who currently earns $14,000 per month and wants to bump that up to $20,000 might have current metrics of $100/hour for 7 hours a day of work over 20 workdays. They write down those metrics and current numbers beside each influencer. This step might take you longer than 10 minutes if you have a lot of metrics or if you’ve never worked with concrete business numbers before.

Step 4: Create a plan for incremental improvement – Part 1 (Duration: 10 minutes)

Using your list of influencers and metrics, create a plan for incremental improvement spread over a period of time. The coach who wants to go from $14,000/month to $20,000/month may not be able to make the $6,000 jump in one month. They may need to make a series of increases over a period of time. Those increases might come in the form of rate increases, days or hours worked, or some combination. For example, they might start by bumping up their rate from $100 to $120 in the first month, which gets them to $16,800 in the first month. Then they might increase the number of hours they work in a day from 7 to 8, earning them $19,200 in the second month. Then they might increase the number of days they work in the third month to 21, which earns them $20,160 per month. This plan may not be right for you; I just wanted to show you how incremental improvements over a period of months can help you achieve the business growth outcomes you were hoping for.

Step 5: Create a plan for incremental improvement – Part 2 (Duration: 10 minutes)

Now that we have an incremental improvement overview, it’s time to get more detailed. In what way will you do each of the activities you’ve listed? The coach in our example above will need to think about how they will raise their rate: Will they just do an across-the-board increase? How will they communicate it? Will they not raise it for current clients but make it the new price only for new clients? How will clients perceive the increase in price compared to the value they get? Can the client be replaced if they are driven away by the price increase? In this narrower focus, you need to consider as many possibilities as you can and list what to do about them. In our example, the coach might first consider intentionally highlighting and increasing the sense of value each client feels from the service they receive and then follow it up later with a letter outlining the coming price increase.

During this part, two things are going to happen:

First, you need to break individual projects down into 10 minute segments. In our example above, a letter to clients telling them about a rate increase might take a couple of 10 minute segments to get just right, and then another 10 minute segment to print it or upload it to your email distribution system and test it.

Second, you may have to adjust the timeline you created in the first part of the plan. In our example, the coach wanted to make one incremental change each month for 3 months but, as we’ve just discussed, the coach probably needs one month of lead-in time to improve the perception of value. So that necessitates a timeline adjustment.

You should end up with a big list of 10 minute tasks that will contribute directly to the influencers that will impact your intended business outcomes.

Step 6: Implement. (Duration: 10 minutes a day)

Now to start implementing. Make sure you include implementation in your schedule each day. Spend 10 minutes working on one of the incremental tasks. Cross it off your list. On the next day, do the next one. And so on. When you do the other steps, this one is easy: Schedule… and do!

Bonus Tips:

I find people generally trip up in a couple of areas so I’m going to give you some tips and pointers to help you stay on track:

• Your goals need to be realistic. Remember that there is always a relationship between the size of the goal and the timeline you assign. A big goal in a short time is not possible. A small goal over a short time or a big goal over a long time is much more possible. Remember, you are making incremental improvements so a big goal over a long time is actually a whole bunch of small goals over a short time, with each one building on the other.

• During the plan development stage – steps 4 and 5 – it  can be tempting to add ideas that sound great… but not all ideas directly impact the metrics you have identified. Be honest with yourself and ask yourself after you’ve written down each one: “Will this actually contribute to the improvement?”

• When building your business growth plan, it’s easy to default to tasks that require increased effort on your part. In the example mentioned earlier, the coach increased the number of hours they worked in a day and the number of days they worked in a month. Those are often the first influencers that come to mind. But don’t forget that other opportunities exist as well, such as passive income opportunities. It’s not always about increasing your effort.

• Business growth can sometimes also increase business expenses. Make sure that you are prepared for those expenses. In our example above, the coach who increased his or her income from $14,000 to $20,000 probably had some expenses rise as well. They would first need to decide whether the increase was net or gross and make necessary adjustments in the plan. (For example, if they wanted a $6,000 net increase, they would need to make more in order to allow for taxes and expenses).

Business growth is an exciting and a long term effort. But you can do it in just ten minute segments every day.

Related posts:

1. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3

In this article of Tips In Ten, I’m going to give you a plan to grow your business using only ten minutes a day. Now, that might sound humorously insufficient but I would disagree: Ten minutes may not seem like a lot of time but the more widely practiced alternative is for an entrepreneur to think about business growth only when they remember. Instead, short and consistent improvement can be achieved even in just 10 minutes.

So, my very first piece of advice is this: Spend 10 minutes a day working on business growth (I’ll show you how in a moment). If you need to spend longer (and you probably will from time to time) do so, but at the very least take the 10 minutes. What you’ll probably find, as I’ve found, is that the 10 minutes is a required minimum you set for yourself to ensure that you actually focus on it every day. And, from time to time, you’ll need to do (or delegate) additional work.

Growing your business in 10 minutes a day: The preparation
Business growth sounds like a big, unwieldy concept that is not easily mastered so don’t sit down during your 10 minutes of scheduled business growth and ask: “How am I going to grow my business today?” It doesn’t work like that.

Instead, think of your business as a number of different systems that all work together, much like your body is made up of a number of different systems (respiratory, digestive, etc.) that all work together. This whole business growth concept is based around dividing up your business into smaller systems and making small, measurable improvements to each system.

Dividing up your business: Here’s a good way to divide up your business into a series of systems or functions (although you might find that your particular business or industry demand slightly different ways to divide up your business’ systems or functions):

• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer Service
• Production & Delivery
• Accounting & Finance
• Organization & Management
• Innovation
• Human Resources

If you can improve each of these systems, your business will easily outpace your competition.

Determining metrics: Next, think of a metric for each system. This is where a lot of entrepreneurs fall down because they know that they need to grow their business, and they can usually identify what elements of their business need to grow, but they don’t take this critical step of identifying the metric to measure improvement.

So, sit down and think of a metric that applies to that particular system. It doesn’t have to be the only metric that perfectly measures everything in that system; just working on some aspect of that system is going to make a difference. I’ve written an example metric beside each system, below, but you might think of something more appropriate for your business:

• Marketing: # of blogs per week
• Sales: # of conversions per week
• Customer Service: # of complaints per month
• Production & Delivery: # of returns
• Accounting & Finance: Profitability
• Organization & Management: # of total hours worked
• Innovation: $ invested on innovation
• Human Resources: Staff turnover

Figuring out what to elements work on: Once you have your list of systems and you’ve determined metrics for each one, brainstorm what elements contribute to that metric. For example, “# of blogs each week” is pretty easy: The element that contributes to that metric is quite simply the number of blogs you publish. “# of conversions” is a little more complex because it includes how many people are in your prospect list and how “warm” they are and how often you communicate with them. “# of complaints per month” is also complex because it includes the quality of products you make or services you deliver as well as the speed with which you deliver them.

These three preparatory steps of dividing up your business’ systems, determining metrics, and figuring out what elements to work on, may not actually take very much time and once you’ve done those steps, you probably won’t need to do them again for another quarter. Just spend the next three months – doing just ten minutes a day – and work on the elements that contribute to the metrics.

Now schedule it in. During each scheduled 10 minute period of business growth, focus on one of the areas you’ve listed above. (I’ve listed 8 business systems to work on. I’ll use that as an example but you might have 6 or 7 or 9 systems.) So I might schedule 10 minutes on Monday to work on Marketing, 10 minutes on Tuesday to work on Sales, 10 minutes Wednesday to work on Customer Service, and so on. I skip the weekends and loop around into the following week so that over 8 weekdays I’ve spent 10 minutes on each of the systems I want to focus on. Then I start over and I do that for an entire quarter.

Growing your business in 10 minutes a day – the easy and fun part!
Okay, so you’ve arrived at the 10 minutes in your schedule that you want to work on business growth. Just work on some of the elements that contribute to that metric. The goal isn’t to make a profound change today that will skyrocket you to success. That’s not realistic and probably wouldn’t happen in one day even if you spent more than 10 minutes on it. Instead, the point is to just improve the element so that the metric improves.

If it’s Monday and you’re working on marketing and your metric is the number of blog posts published, write a blog post for each day of the week. If it’s Tuesday and you’re working on sales and your metric is the number of conversions, analyze your successful and unsuccessful sales to see what common points led to successful sales and what common points led to losing the sale.

(And now we’re going to pause here for a moment while you say: “Wait a second, Heather, I thought you said I could do this in 10 minutes. Writing blog posts from Monday through Friday will take far more than 10 minutes; analyzing sales will take more than 10 minutes.” To which I respond: Yes, that’s true. However, the point of this 10 minute business growth session is to springboard your business growth, not necessarily accomplish everything in such a short time. So, take 10 minutes to brainstorm 5 blog posts and then delegate the writing to your assistant or a freelance writer. Or, Take 10 minutes to pull together the information so you can look at in the evening between episodes of your favorite TV shows).

Now just do that every day. When your 10 minutes of business growth arrives on your schedule, something with those elements to improve the metric of the system you want to work on that day.

Here’s the result: You’ll have small but consistent, measurable and incremental improvements across nearly all areas of your business. Ten minutes won’t feel like much but it adds up. Just make sure you “move the needle” a little every day and your business will grow. Come up with something in those 10 minutes to move the needle and either do it in those 10 minutes, get it ready to do later, or delegate it to someone else. However it gets done, you’ll contribute to your business growth in a surprisingly short time.

Business growth doesn’t happen on its own. It takes attention and effort but all too frequently it’s something that gets pushed aside for more urgent matters. You can easily correct this by spending just 10 minutes a day working on business growth. It may not seem like much but it will add up!

Bonus Tips:

Here are a couple of final recommendations:

• For some of you, “# of blog posts” isn’t going to be a great metric. I just used that as an example. Perhaps you use AdWords, so improving your click-through rate might be a better metric. Whatever you choose, just make sure it’s a metric of significance to your business. There’s no sense in choosing a metric that doesn’t actually contribute to your overall business!

• Do these 10 minutes of schedule business growth sessions early in the day. I’ve found that if you schedule it later in the day, it’s too easy to put off for something else that seems more important. However, if you schedule it as one of the first things you do in the day, it’s far easier to actually do.

• Do this for one quarter. Then, when the quarter is up, you have three choices: Either work on different systems (if you only worked on a few in the quarter), or create new metrics for the systems you’ve already been working on, or just continue doing what you’ve been doing.

Related posts:

1. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3

10 Minute Tip #1: Get Started Now.

I always have lots of projects that need to get done and I’m always thinking of more things to do, too. So I’ve got a list of projects that are “do them right now” projects and a list of projects that are “it would be nice to do these when I’m less busy” projects. Guess what: Items from that second list rarely get crossed off. It’s not a procrastination problem, it’s just that the projects in the “do right now” list take precedence, usually because they are revenue-generating work for clients.

However, that big “nice to do” list still needs to get done and, in my case, often includes long-term business growth ideas that will ensure my business is still running a decade from now. So, how do I do these? I use the 10 minute tip of Getting Started Now. I recognize that it might take me a while to finish and maybe I don’t even know what the project will look like when it’s done, but I sit down and I do something – anything on the project – for 10 minutes. For example, if it’s an ebook, I’ll sit down for 10 minutes and maybe start writing the introduction or perhaps a table of contents. It’s not much but it’s something. Here’s what I find: By the time 10 minutes is up, I’ve figured out what I need to do on the project and I’ve even figured out if the project is right for me to continue on. That time is valuable to me to help me figure out if I should move it to the “do it now” list or not.

10 Minute Tip #2: Touch projects every day.

My day is filled with lots of little projects that, once done, can be crossed off my list. But my day is also filled with big projects that I don’t actually complete in a single day (or often in a single week). But I’ve found that I am far more productive on these big projects if I do something on them for 10 minutes each day. This keeps them at the top of my mind so when I sit down to do a large amount of work on the project, I don’t have to spend my time getting refreshed.
Just take 10 minutes and move the project forward somehow. I don’t know how; it depends on the project. It might be just adding a couple paragraphs of ideas or creating an outline for the next chapter. One thing you don’t want to do is just review the work because that is less valuable and doesn’t keep the project’s momentum going.

10 Minute Tip #3: Take time to remember why you do this.

I try to make my tips really practical – stuff you can use in your business. And this is less practical but I think it is still pretty important: Sometimes, when you’re bogged down in details and you’re frustrated at your clients or your payables or your receivables or your productivity or the quality of your work, it’s good to take ten minutes and step back from it all and remember why you do what you do. Chances are, you got into your business because you have an interest in the industry, you have some talent in the work you do, you don’t want to work for someone else, and you want to build something of value for the future (perhaps to retire or perhaps to pass on to your kids). Those are four big reasons and you might have other reasons as well. Take a moment and remind yourself of these. It helps to put your day back into perspective when the frustrations and annoyances seem bigger than they really are.

10 Minute Tip #4: Avoid distractions.

The web is a great thing to be connected to… most of the time! But sometimes we find ourselves happily working away and then suddenly struck with a tangent of an idea and – bam – we’re distracted with something that isn’t the best thing to be doing at the time. To solve this, I keep a piece of paper at my desk. It’s just a scratch paper – the kind you might use to doodle while you’re on the phone. I never write anything important on it, but it usually gets filled up by the end of the day with little scribbles and notes and whatever. But one thing I use it for is distractions.

Rather than immediately following those mental rabbit-trails that are not EXACTLY related to the thing I’m working on, I write down my idea on the paper. And later, when the project I should be working on is done, I look up the non-related rabbit trails. My big weakness is business-related rabbit trails that often have to do with extending my current business in some way. But I do know of someone whose weakness is stock market quotes and when he thinks of something stock related, he drops everything and goes in search of the stock quote. And someone else I know is a recipe fiend and she’ll suddenly think of a delicious idea and she pursues that rabbit trail. So, put a piece of paper on your desk and when you have that great idea, write it down for later instead of following it up right now.

10 Minute Tip #5: Scrutinize your actions and shave off the seconds.

I have a big calendar on my wall with all of the days of the year on it. In theory, it’s there for me to glance up and see what’s coming up. The problem is, every single time that I look at it, I end up searching for the month that I’m in. Yes, of course I know what month it is. But it’s a big calendar and, once you get into the middle of the year and the months are clustered together, it’s easy to catch yourself looking at the wrong month, just for a moment. So I’ve started putting an “X” through the months that are done. It’s not a big thing but it’s enough for me to quickly see where we are. With the amount of time that I look at that calendar every day, it’s just enough to shave a few seconds off every time I look at the calendar. And those seconds add up.

And here’s another example: I sign into a bunch of sites first thing in the morning – project management sites, social networking sites, etc. But not all of the sites give you a place on the first page to sign-in. Sometimes you have to click through to a second page to sign in. So I’ve bookmarked the sign-in page, not the first page of the sites I go to. Again, it’s not a big thing but it shaves off seconds of unnecessary clicking. And those seconds add up. Scrutinize your actions and look for unnecessary things that might only take a second here or a second there but have a cumulative impact on your productivity.

On their own, these ideas aren’t huge. But it’s often the little things that add up and make a big difference. I have a few more of these ideas and I’ll post another Tips In Ten like this in a few weeks’ time.

Related posts:

1. Mastering the First Ten Minutes of Your Day
2. Building and Maintaining a Compelling Website in Just 10 Minutes a Day
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible

Are You Trying to Be Too Smart?

Travel’s with Leo-Sydney (Beautiful photographs!)

Twitter Adds Local Trends Tracking Tool

The Simplest Secret to Business Growth

iPad Web Design and SEO: First Looks

What the Web of Tomorrow Will Look Like

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Happy reading!

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Hilarious FarmVille Parody Ad Tells It Like It Is [VIDEO] – This totally cracked me up.

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And that investment starts with something that you might not have considered: Separating your business and personal finances. Surprised? Here are the reasons.

First, you’ll want to separate your business and personal finances for tax purposes. If you keep them combined, you might not be eligible for certain deductions, but if you separate them, you may be entitled to deduct expenses for your home office and mileage allowance. Likewise, you may be responsible for paying certain taxes on your business that do not apply to your personal income. Separating your finances is the only way to ensure that you properly follow all tax laws and receive all advantages to which you are entitled by law. That can grow your business by clarifying your paperwork and possibly making more money available (because of more deductions) which you can reinvest in your business.

Another important reason for separating your finances is to get a loan or a grant so you can invest in your business. Separating your finances helps to establish a paper trail and helps you to create financial reports that demonstrate the business’ performance. If your finances are separated it will be much easier to determine which income and expenses belong to the business itself.

Third, separating your finances can help you decide how best to grow and develop the business as well. You will be able to see the areas in which the business excels as well as those areas in which it needs some extra help. You can generate targeted, accurate reports and financial statements that show at a glance how the business performs in various areas.

How Can I Separate My Business and Personal Finances?
The easiest way to separate your business and personal finances is to open a business bank account. If you use credit to make business-related purchases, apply for a card in the name of the business. Have all payments made to the business account, and use only those funds and the business credit card to make purchases.

How Do I Get Paid?
You have multiple options for paying yourself. Some business owners find it best to write themselves a set paycheck every week. If you are confident that the business will retain enough funds to pay your salary each time, this will streamline the process and make it easier to accurately pay your personal income taxes.

However, if your business is new or unstable, you may find it better to pass funds through the business account to your personal account. You might decide to retain just enough money in the business account to pay for expenses, and transfer everything that is left into your personal account. This is an ideal solution for those who have many personal expenses but few business expenses and earn wildly different sums on each contract.

Setting Up and Maintaining Bookkeeping and Accounting
Many business owners find themselves confused and overwhelmed by the paperwork that is involved in maintaining separate accounts. Consider hiring outside help. A Virtual Assistant company can set up and maintain your bookkeeping and accounting. Your VA can even handle payroll, writing your paycheck each week. You can maintain as much or as little control over the process as you desire. You can hire the VA for a set number of hours per week or per month, or simply retain his or her services on a per-project basis.

Ultimately, separating your business and personal finances can seem like a complicated task in the short term but in the long term it is an effective way to grow your business.

About the author: Heather Villa, MBA CMA MSM, is a Business Coach and Entrepreneur. She helps business owners achieve success in operations, productivity, project management, and social media. Read her other articles at http://hireheathervilla.com/resources/articles/ and visit http://heathervilla.com for more information.

Disclaimer: © 2009 Heather Villa. Permission is granted to repost this article. Article must be published in its entirety, including author bio, and all links must remain intact.

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In a recent blog, The Three Natural Phases of Successful Small Business Growth, Jantsch talks about the 3 phases that he sees small businesses progress through.

The first phase is foundation, the second phase is growth, the third stage is momentum. Jantsch describes each phase and encourages readers to identify where they are.

To recap (and to add on to what Jantsch has said):

• Foundation is the early start-up phase where entrepreneurs start their business and work through all of the initial stage work, like creating systems and developing the business plan. In this stage, the business owner is often working solo and the work, although thrilling, might not be extremely profitable.

• Growth is the next phase where the business moves from a solopreneur who runs it all into a revenue-producing machine that probably includes additional staff and refined products or services. Jantsch wisely says that businesses feel the pull to add new markets and products but the better choice here is to narrow your markets and focus.

• Momentum is the third stage and businesses owners who achieve this stage hit a “zen” stage in which they just keep doing the smart, profitable things again and again to consistently build a strong business. But this stage is so easy to fall out of that mindset and it needs to be carefully cultivated and nurtured to be successful. Jantsch also says that this is a stage when other businesses want to partner and align with you.

Jantsch’s blog is so relevant to the work I’ve done and it mirrors closely the clients I’ve worked with over the years as well as the businesses I’ve been involved with.

As a consultant, I’ve helped businesses jump into that Foundation stage. As the owner of IAC Professionals, my staff helps businesses (often those in the growth stage, run by entrepreneurs who need to delegate in order to grow).

If you’re a small business owner looking for the next step in your business, you should consider where you are in this spectrum and how you can advance your business to the next level.

Until next time!

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. These People Will Destroy Your Business

So far, I’ve talked about out-of-control business growth that costs so much up-front, the business cannot keep up. And, I’ve talked about business growth that spikes (increasing then decreasing) so that the business is stuck with a high bill from the brief burst of business.

And in this blog, I want to talk about yet another problem of business growth that I’ve seen:

Problem 3: The lack of control over the business. When a business grows – whether it’s a sustained increase or a spike, the business owner/director/manager tends to lose control over that business. In some cases, customers “take over” in the sense that they might demand additional efforts which might not normally be granted but which are added because the money is there. In other cases, business partners “take over” because they see the money coming in from a certain market and they want to follow those dollars. In other cases, resellers “take over” because they feel that they are bringing in enough money for the business to make demands on the business. One example I’ve seen is a consultant who was asked by a client to design his website. Business was busy and the consultant should have said no, but the client was generating so much revenue that the consultant couldn’t say no. It didn’t go well and the consultant lost a client and the revenue. And another example I’ve seen is a reseller who earned so much money for a manufacturer that the reseller started demanding price cuts and excessive promotional considerations.

Solution 3: The best thing to do is stick to the business plan. (Uhhh…you have a business plan, right? MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN…then stick to it). If you’ve done your research and you start the business with the confidence that the plan is going to work then you should be okay (assuming that your research led you in the right direction). Yes, you may need to shift with the market, but that needs to happen carefully and thoughtfully and not “on the fly” based on whoever is sending the most money right now. Your business plan should be your North Star that guides your business. And when you need to change your business plan, you take time to do it carefully.

There are certainly other problems that result from too-fast, unmanaged business growth, but these are three common ones that I see from time to time.

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 2
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day… IS Possible

But in my last post I mentioned that not all business growth is good. Growth that happens too fast, for example, without any warning, can cause financial, manufacturing, warehousing, and customer service problems galore.

In this blog I want to talk about another problem of too-fast growth.

Problem 2: Rapid growth that is unpredictable may decline and leave a burden on the business. I’ve seen this recently in a colleague’s business. Just two years ago, business was inferno hot for him! He was so busy he couldn’t keep up with orders for the product his business created. Then the economy slowed. Today, his business is sound enough to pay his bills and allow him to put a little away for the future so he’s not worried about feeding his family. But he is concerned about his tax bill. The spike was unexpected and when he pays taxes this year on last year’s income, he’s paying taxes out of less money this year than he was earning last year. Not only that, as a manufacturer of goods, he has a small storage unit full of unsold items. That’s because he ramped up production quickly during that busy season, but he didn’t anticipate the decline… so he was still producing a high number of goods when the slump struck.

Solution 2: When your business grows, manage it carefully. Don’t just ride the rapids with an oblivious smile. Be aware that it may eventually slow down. Make sure you have money put away for taxes and other expenses that might lag into a slower period. And, watch the warning signs very, very carefully to make sure that your production doesn’t match today’s demand… but rather, that it matches tomorrow’s demand. Warning signs might include slowing orders, but even that might be too late. Get in the habit of proactively calling your customers and estimating capacity into the future. Offering discounts on bulk orders, even when times are good and customers are willing to pay top dollar, can help you keep your finger on the pulse of your customers’ needs.

So, business growth that is not carefully managed and spikes, then falls, can also be costly for a business in inventory and warehousing, taxation (and other lagging costs).

In the next blog, I’ll talk about one more business growth problem I’ve seen.

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day

But the reality is, ALL business growth is not good.

Business growth is good when it can be managed and carefully cultivated. It’s good when a business owner can watch the growth and feel good about the pace and where it’s taking the business.

But when a business speeds up faster than expected, problems can happen. Here are a few problems I’ve seen in businesses that grow too fast, and some suggested solutions.

Problem 1: The business’ orders outpace its ability to fill those orders. This seems good, especially if the money is paid up front upon receipt of the order, and not upon delivery. But many businesses accept payment upon delivery. So, imagine that you’ve got a business that normally gets ten orders a month. And the money you earned from last month pays for the raw material for this month. That’s fine. But then you suddenly get 100 orders. Where will you get the money from to buy the raw materials? Will you have a supplier who can ramp up supply as quickly as you ramp up demand? And, if you lack the production capability to fulfill those orders, what will your unhappy customers do?

Solution 1: As bizarre as it sounds, make sure you have a contingency plan in case you grow to fast. If you suddenly get a huge amount of publicity and orders start flooding in, you might have to outsource, work weekends, get a bridge loan, or even buy from the competitors. And that’s just a short-term, stop-gap solution. Long-term solutions need to be ready to go once you discover that your growth is not a random spike but a sustained increase. Of course, you won’t want to buy up extra warehouse space or manufacturing capacity on the vague chance of business growth, but you want to make sure you at least know where you can get it quickly if you need it.

This problem is more common than people think. Have you ever heard the statistic that a depressingly large percentage of businesses fail in their first year? While there are many factors, this is a surprisingly large factor contributing to first and second year business failure.

In my next post, I’ll talk about another reason that some business growth is bad.

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 2
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3
3. Business Growth in Ten Minutes a Day