5 Effective Ways to Grow Your Business in the Early Years

Lizzie Weakley

May 15, 2014

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One of the most difficult periods for any business is the first few years of existence. During this time, it is either sink or swim. To help, below are five effective ways to grow your business in the early years.

1. Launch a Website

Unlike starting another physical location, the overhead costs of starting a website are extremely low. Most new businesses are unlikely to receive a ton of web traffic, so hosting expenses will not hurt you too much in the wallet. However, simply having a website can allow you to market your products to a worldwide audience.

2. Delegate Responsibilities

Although it may be tempting to have complete control, a business owner should not be doing every physical task in a business. If you wish to grow your business naturally, you’re going to have to trust in others to complete some of those core tasks for you. You are never going to grow as a business if you only stick to a single employee.

3. Allow Your Products to Evolve

Certain companies succeed at only doing one thing. However, these are in the minority. Most businesses, whether it is retail, food service, recreation or any other kind of company, try to diversify their offerings. Do not be afraid to experiment with new products and services when appropriate.

4. Hire a Scheduling Service

When you grow, you want to focus more on the core aspects of your business such as your actual products and services. To facilitate this, you may want outsource some of the tasks not related to your core business functions. Scheduling is one such example. If you have an outside firm like Service Line Up who provides scheduling software to perform your scheduling and other HR functions for you, you’ll have a lot of extra time and energy to spend on expanding your business.

5. Team Up with the Business Community

You shouldn’t be on your own. You should get other local businesses involved in your success. This could mean cross promoting your stores through advertisements. It could also mean using local suppliers to create your products. These kinds of relationships tend to be reciprocal. Your partners will probably refer customers to you and vice versa.

The first few years in the life of a business can be tough and stressful. However, if you take the right steps during this turbulent period, it could be mean insuring success for years to come. All it takes is some strategy and plenty of hard work.