With your research, strong research within the market, innovative marketing strategy, and strong business plan you have not only set up a business, but your business has gained traction and is now a success. All the initial objectives have been met and succeeded. You’re now considering and aspiring for more and pondering how you can grow it even more.

You might be thinking about taking on employees to allow more business to be taken on, taking your home-based business and getting new business premises, or even being able to sell more variety of products or services.

Starting a new business and expanding a current one, however, are very different. If you expand in the wrong way, you could compromise your existing business.

Are You Ready to Grow Your Business?

Before finalizing your decision to expand and grow your business, you need to make sure that it is the right time. What is making you think of expanding?

If you are in a position where you are unable to take on more work, turning away prospective clients, or are having to decline sales or business, you are ready. If you are being asked for services currently not offered, it could be time to expand your range.

If however, your business is not consistently meeting its maximum capacity on a monthly basis. It is unlikely that you are at this stage yet. Expanding comes with costs and potential risks. You need to have the confidence in maintaining its ongoing success in order to ensure it can carry the changes you need to make.

Before Expanding

Before starting any expansion plans, you need to ensure that you optimize your workflow and clear and streamlined processes in place to efficiently work. Where possibly going digital can cut down significantly on timescales and allow you to utilize automated systems.

With any business decision, it is important to ensure that these changes will enhance your business. It is well known that in small businesses it is the finer details and personal touches that make your business shine. It is still important these are kept.

Also, you need to think about what you need before expanding. Do you have all of the relevant tools, equipment, merchandise, and resources in place currently to support further growth in your business?

If you need to buy a new platform scale, new computers, or upgrade any software, how will this be funded? When can you get your business ready? There is no point in pushing the expansion of your business until you are ready for the extra demand.

Finally, before you expand you need to ensure that you have the time available to do this. When you set the business up, you were writing the blog posts, implementing your marketing strategy, doing the book keeping, invoicing and every task needed. To expand you need to free up your time to allow you to strategize and focus on the business’s development. Working with freelancers is a great way to allow you to delegate tasks and will allow you to put your focus where it is needed.