When it comes to growing a small business, there are a plethora of challenges that need to be overcome if you want to have a chance of growing. While there are many articles that address these types of challenges, few of them discuss the solutions in detail. They’re too specific in their solutions, making it extremely hard for people to reach a solid conclusion on how to overcome a specific issue.
So in this post, we’re going to take a look at some of those small business growing pains and give adaptable solutions that can easily be tweaked for your business to use.
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Challenges when finding specialists to work within the industry
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome as a small business is finding suppliers and specialists. This is especially true for situations where you’re using fairly unknown or specific pieces of equipment and you’re unsure how to repair or maintain them. For instance, medical facilities may need infusion pump parts for Alaris, but trying to source these can be challenging if you’re not rooted in the industry and have contacts to get in touch with.
Thankfully, this is a challenge that is easy to overcome through networking. Networking ensures that you’re able to discover new opportunities to work with different supplies and vendors throughout the lifespan of your company. It’s an incredibly productive activity and will become easier as you get to know more businesses within your industry.
Creating an office culture that represents your values
Another huge challenge that we often see in small businesses is developing an office culture that can represent your values. Entrepreneurs tend to overlook the importance of creating a sustainable and positive office culture that builds respect among employees and creates a comfortable environment that makes new recruits feel welcome.
A great solution to office culture challenges is to establish order within your business. Small businesses can often feel like lawless environments because the manager is too busy focusing on growth and building their company. By establishing a clear set of rules as soon as you can, you’re far more likely to create a stable office culture that paves the way for a future business that welcomes new employees and makes everyone feel comfortable.
Failing to adopt scalable solutions from the start of your business
Growing a business often means taking on higher order volumes and recruiting more staff, but this can introduce many scaling challenges that could slow down your company’s growth. To take your business to the next level, you need to start adopting solutions that can be scaled easily. When you start your business, you should be looking to use cloud-based solutions and processes that can accommodate an infinite number of employees and customers.
Scalable solutions are cost-effective and they can make things incredibly simple when growing your company, but they need to be implemented early on. Retrofitting a scalable solution can lead to a number of inefficiencies and it could require you to shut down your business operations (or cut back on them) for a couple of days.