8 tips for growing a successful business
Business success doesn’t happen overnight. Building brilliant businesses can mean long nights at the office, making tough decisions that affect others or taking risks that don’t always pay off. To help you avoid the pitfalls, we’ve collected our top 8 tips for growing a successful business.
Believe in your own ability
If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? Whether you’re taking that first step to start your business or looking at expanding into a new market, you have to believe in what you’re doing. Peter Hill, from Dominic Hill Chartered Accountants, is one of the many business owners who took the plunge at a young age, leaving college early to focus on creating his now thriving accountancy business.
2. Find your niche
It may take time to find your niche. After Pam Loch from Loch Associates Group saw first-hand how many employment tribunals were being lost by businesses she worked with, she saw an opening. These businesses simply weren’t investing enough in HR. So, she pivoted her business to include HR support alongside legal services.
3. Work with a team you can trust
This one’s simple, but you have to trust the people you work with. That might mean working with colleagues or friends you’ve worked with before like Jon Traquair of MacMan. Or, if you’re not as lucky, by ensuring you recruit people based on their personality and suitability and not just their CV.
4. Create a brand presence that resonates
Brand identity has never been more important for businesses. In an increasingly online world, creating a strong brand can not only help you stand out from local competitors but might open you up to new opportunities further afield. If you have the skills, you may decide to build this brand and web presence alone. Or, link up with any number of fantastic digital agencies, like Tunbridge Wells’ very own Studio 44.
5. Learn from your mistakes (and others)
Mistakes are a rite of passage for all business owners. Whether it’s investing in a dud product, hiring the wrong staff or not adjusting to a changing market, accept they are going to happen. Once the dust has settled, pick apart what happened so you can learn what went wrong and avoid doing it in future.
6. Ride the waves when they come
You can’t always be on top. Seasonality will affect your sales, but you may also see troughs and dips due to things you can’t expect – a pandemic or a recession, for example. As Fiona Russell of McQueen Hair and Beauty puts it,“…business is like a tidal wave, we get the real troughs and then it calms and then it picks up.” All you can do as a business owner is trust the process and ride the wave till business picks up again.
7. Adapt so you can grow
Like many businesses, Longbridge Print has had to adapt to a world focused on increased sustainability. Traditionally just a print business, they’ve adapted to include email and phone marketing. Their customers love it and they’re more sustainable as a result. Don’t be afraid to experiment and change
8. Build a scalable business model
Think about how your business might grow from the start. How will growth affect your costs? How can you find new audiences that will help you grow? Build a business plan that factors all of these things in to avoid being stung further down the line.