Real. Growth. Potential.

Small or mid-sized business owners often find themselves faced with daily “melt-down” levels of stress. We look at employees who don’t want to work but expect to get paid, financials that either don’t work or aren’t making sense, and operational issues that we can’t even understand having happened.

It is difficult to think of growth potential when you have to wear your fire-stomping boots and eleven different paper hats to work every day. I’m going to give you 4 things you can do to help you realize your maximum growth potential inside of two years.

Two years may seem like a long time but think about how quickly tax-time drops by for a visit, and you will probably have no trouble realizing that a two-year commitment isn’t too bad in the face of not growing or increasing revenue.

According to 2021 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only about 25% of new businesses can make it to 15 years or more. If you want to be among that 25%, attention to these tips is a good start, but certainly not exhaustive. Being a business owner means being in a state of constant learning and adapting.

1. Get Organized

2. Tighten up the Books

3. Review Employees

4. Evaluate and Update Operations

1. Getting Organized

Organization: is integral to the growth and success of any business. It will help you complete tasks and stay on top of things that need to be done. A good way to be organized is to create a daily to-do. For my purposes, I keep an online calendar with reminders that come via email every morning, and I make it a priority to start every day by checking emails and calendar reminders. As you complete each item on a “to-do list”, check it off your list, (or check it off your calendar. Most phones have “to-do lists” you can use). This will ensure that you’re not forgetting anything and completing all the tasks that are essential to the survival of your business.

Another side of this category is to go through the company files, whether they are digital or physical. Make sure that files are not only inclusive of the documents you have for employees, vendors and clients, but that they have necessary legal documents as well.

Vendors: should have a W-9 on file and if they have ever done work for you on-property, you should also have a certificate of insurance on file for them to reflect that they are covered to be on your property. This will avoid any issues you may have in the rising cost of worker’s comp insurance in the event of an audit.

Customers: should have an intake sheet in the front of their file that has all of their contact information available. (Also a good place to put project checklists.) It’s important to have one of these so you can routinely send them post cards or coupons, or other items to keep yourself current in the forefront of their mind should they ever need you again, or run into someone who does. At the very least, you’ll know how to reach them if they leave their cell phone at your office.

Employees: files should have their application and/or resumé in the file, along with any accolades or disciplinary actions. There should be a separate, locked file for I-9 forms and W-4’s along with coinciding documents. Knowing what is actually in your files and having them organized will make running your business so much more fluid that you won’t be spending your time looking for things and you can focus more on earning revenue.

2. Tighten up the Books

The Books: are important for keeping track of your money and a proper general ledger will help you do that. GL coding is so important and if you’re an inventory-based business, you may be having issues following the trail of purchases to the sales, which causes critical issues not only at tax time, but if you’re ever audited for any reason. These issues are tied to GL codes, and data entry errors can be very costly.

Depending on the software you use for accounting, you should be able to set up a GL that is conducive exclusively to your business.

Best advice: get professional help if you are unsure about anything or if you are having financial issues. You must be prepared to accept that help as constructive criticism and not a direct negative inflection of your current business practices. Sometimes we get into business with a better way of doing things than others but fall into the same mistakes other companies make in their bookkeeping when business takes off.

3. Review Employees

Employees: are responsible for making your business work. If your operations are suffering, it may be time to have a talk with the people who work for you. When you’re the boss, you have a lot on your plate, and you may have an HR department or person who does employee reviews for you.

“Why should I evaluate employees when I have HR staff to do it?” you may ask.

To assess if they feel connected to you and/or your business is my answer.

Even the lowest person on the totem pole likely has some idea how they would effect change for the better in the workplace, and as they are the people actually doing the work, who better to help you out operationally? If you’re not a talker, or just don’t have time, come up with a short questionnaire and have it distributed to employees for their operational input. You might even ask how much they like their job, (anonymously, of course), based on a series of smiley faces depicting their happiness on a scale of 1-5.

In order to maximize a company’s potential, you have to know who’s making it tick, and possibly? Who isn’t.

If you aren’t sure about your workforce, it’s always a good idea to hire a consultant to help guide you in that area. A consultant can give you a bird’s-eye view of operations, interact with employees and evaluate ways to improve, without being emotionally connected to the company or its people.

4. Evaluate and Update Operations

As a business owner, it’s easy to get immersed in the actual work and lose sight of overall operations. Practices and processes are an integral part of any business. Make sure to have company-branded safety measures in place and posted for employees to view.

Always establish SOP’s wherever possible to ensure that should something happen to the person currently performing a task in your company, you or someone else could step in until a new candidate is found. SOP’s not only show people how to complete tasks in an appointed position, they emulate your company culture to the people who you employ.

Just tightening up/streamlining overall operations to ensure less waste and more operational functionality can increase growth by cutting unforeseen losses and giving you a larger number on your bottom line to work with.

Whether you’ve grown too fast, or have plateaued and don’t know where to go, visiting these four things will certainly put you on the path to increasing your business’s growth potential. While these measures are intended to get you moving in the right direction, let me also encourage you to be community-minded. Connect with people in your community through events and social media and make sure you are in the public eye. All of the tips above cannot replace you, (or someone who represents your company), shaking hands with someone and making eye-contact. Besides, who couldn’t use a little time out of the office to regroup?

Best of luck!

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As a Small Business Strategist, I thought it might be nice to write about what I know. I've been rescuing businesses for over 30 years and hope this article helps.