Every time we turn around, we read or hear about another company that has achieved a new stage of growth. People in the same industry, and business readers in general, are asking themselves many questions. They want to capitalize on that positive feeling they get when they hear the news. If you are among them and wanting to grow your business, your questions might look like these:
+ How did the business owner do it?
+ Why isn’t my business having the same success?
+ How can I get a hold of some capital so I can expand and increase my revenues?
+ What helps some small businesses like that one succeed more than all of the others?
We are here to say that running a small business is something that many people have the prerequisite skills to do. This is often because they have managed businesses or other kinds of organizations for others but have never thought about going into business for themselves. If you haven’t been at the point where you are trying to make a profit and your family depends on this for their economic stability, keep reading. The reality is that you can use the same skills from your previous employers to turn a profit as those business owners you read about, but you must understand the fundamentals of what makes a small company grow and become profitable.
Vision
Every small business starts as an idea in the mind of a single person or a group of people. It takes root and begins to have a life of its own. There are certain decisions that the company founder makes in the beginning that will affect the company’s success. Over time, a typical small business owner will also come across customers, business contacts, and other individuals who will influence the business strategy. The company will grow and change over time. The strategy may change direction, but hopefully it does so under the direction of the company’s founder. Hopefully, the company doesn’t become something so different that the owner wants to sell.
Profit Orientation
Small businesses are known for having limited resources and also for capitalizing on a very specific market or perhaps marketing to only one geographic region. The owners of the most successful small firms are concerned with how to pursue continuous improvement, but they do it differently than larger businesses. When a business owner wants to improve something for customers, it’s not really a matter of assigning a team to study a problem and then choose a solution. There just isn’t time or money for that. For a small business owner, continuous improvement is about using as few workers as possible, or perhaps just one worker for the duration, to solve a business problem. Or, the business owner might have to solve the problem in his spare time. A business owner finds better ways to do business with limited resources because she wants to make a profit. She realizes that her resources have to be used differently without sacrificing the company’s overall business model. She has to make tough decisions while keeping the business running.
Business owners like you can better develop ideas for improving products or services with additional funding, from experts such as Advance Funds Network’s talented staff. Get some ideas today on how much cash it will take to expand your current operations, to target new markets, or to solve a business problem.
