Dangers of a Fast-Growing Business

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A fast-growing business is exciting and stimulating for any business owner, at least for a season. However, as a business grows, so does the complexity of day-to-day operations.

At this point, when a business owner doesn’t take the necessary steps to maintain control of workflow processes, systematically; owner-burnout is just around the corner. In fact, many fast-growing businesses can suffer less profit, even while experiencing record-breaking sales.

Over the years, I’ve had countless phone conversations with small business owners claiming they simply don’t have time to systemize their business. Why? They say they are working long hours just to keep up with growing sales. “No time to invest in BPM (Business Process Management software)!”

On the other hand, business owners with only three to five employees will say they are TOO SMALL to consider systemizing their business.

I ask them, “Do you plan to stay at your current size, or do you have plans to grow to 10, 20, or even more employees?” Their answer? “Yes, but considering systemization NOW is not important!”

Crossing That Bridge

I would be rich if I had a dime for every time a business owner told me, he or she was going to “cross that bridge” when they come to it.  Sadly, many owners wait until their business is drowning in chaos, and they find the “bridge” has washed out!

The perfect opportunity to cross the bridge to turnkey systematization is while sales are still manageable, and time is available.

Thank God, when we had only four employees plus me, we decided to put the brakes on sales until our existing operations were under control!  Fact is, we stopped making any sales calls and concentrated on giving our existing customers great service — systematically.

We did that! To our surprise, the more we systemized our workflow and other internal processes, the more our business grew. WITHOUT chaos!

The reason our business started to take-off at that time, without making new sale calls, was that our reputation for proven quality and on-time delivery began to spread around town, word-of-mouth. In fact, we had salespeople calling, wanting to work for us, because of the poor service their customers were receiving from their current employers.

How to Gain Control of a Fast-Growing Business

We recommend NOT waiting until a business is out of control; whereby, quality products and service is erratic; like many a shoot-from-the-hip organization.

If yours is a business with five or fewer employees, begin NOW systemizing. However, if you are beyond that point, you can still gain control. However, you will find the process harder, because, as an owner — time or no time — you must be involved in the systematization process or it will fail.

The good news is, there are those whose business and mission are to bring businesses to order one-system-at-a-time.

We have helped thousands of small businesses around the world to gain control of their business, via books, videos, software, and operations manual templates, etc.

In short, we are bridge builders for business systematization; whereby, crossing is less dangerous and just a matter of a decision by those who are ready to CROSS!

Did I mention? Great systems work!