Lessons Learned from Rapid Growth

Here is the list of lessons learned or key areas that business owners tend to bring up the most.

Cash(flow) is King

Cash Flow Management

No pun intended, the bottom line is that maintaining a healthy cash flow to fund operations and investments is critical. Effectively managing revenues and expenses as well as planning for anticipated investments in expansion, people, technology or equipment takes diligence and focus.

Financial Planning & Investment Strategy

Create detailed financial projections to anticipate needs and potential challenges and have them a part of your regularly occurring cadence of strategic and operational meetings. Involve the right people and the right mix of legal and accounting consultants to help you weigh your options and what the outcomes will be of your decisions.

Culture and People

Culture

Having a strong culture and bona fide dedication to a positive workforce culture is an underrated aspect to a company’s success. So often, a company’s product or service, developing market opportunities and innovation get the attention. But, if you do not have a strong culture with people invested in the beliefs and values, there will always be problems impacting growth and success.

Talent & Employee Development

Hire the right people with the skills and experience to drive growth while investing in their development to retain top talent and foster a positive company culture.

Leadership

Develop strong leadership within your organization to guide and inspire your team while ensuring your company’s hierarchy and organization chart properly focuses on growing the next tier of talent, regardless of level.

Beyond those first two, business owners also bring up:

Scalability

Ensure your infrastructure can handle increased demand, from technology and facilities to human resources or company processes. And, keeping it a consistent focus to ensure existing operations are running smoothly while monitoring new implementations carefully to help troubleshoot or simply improve.

Customer Focus is Paramount

• Prioritize customer satisfaction to build loyalty and attract new business as well as ensuring you are taking action with their valuable feedback. Actively seek customer feedback through surveys, one-on-one conversations and proactive engagement through communications, personal or through marketing. From that, what client experience areas can you improve? Even if you are implementing one or two improvements a year, it goes a long way to building a customer-first culture.

Be Adaptable

• In a world that never stops changing, be prepared to adapt to changing market conditions, customer preferences, talent and labor force, innovation and, well, everything. Look at how much has changed in the last 20+ years from labor and employment to economic conditions to customer expectations and more. Even the U.S. tax code has had significant changes from corporate tax rates to estates and gifting to pandemic-related changes. In 2024, artificial intelligence (AI) burst into businesses as an unexpected tool but with many unknowns. Innovation and adaptability are required in today’s business.

Trust

• Trust has never been more critical. Is your company culture one where employees and leaders of all levels trust those above and below their reporting structure to handle the required tasks and responsibilities to run your business? Do people feel empowered to make intelligent and considerate decisions? Is accountability a part of your culture?

Guidance and Mentoring

• As a business owner, you are often the one mentoring, guiding and helping smooth out any number of problems or issues. But, successful business owners also are smart enough to know that they themselves need their own group of colleagues to vent, discuss issues or even just to talk business. Build a strong network of industry contacts for support and collaboration.