If yours is one of the many home businesses that has flourished in the last couple of years, then you are probably now at something of a crossroads. You want your business to grow bigger and reap the financial and professional rewards that go with it, but you are unsure about how to go about it.
This can mean that you stay still while your competition overtakes you, so you will need a plan to follow that means you can take things to the next level with the minimum of cost, stress, and disruption.
#1 Moving your business to its own address
The first step is to realize that your home business can’t remain a home business. You will have outgrown your spare room, garage, or even garden office space and will need to move to a flexible unit that you can use regardless of what type of business you have.
A company like Tradestars can offer this and provide you with a secure space to rent surrounded by other businesses whose resources you might want to tap into as well.
The space that you are looking for should have other facilities as well, like kitchens and showers for more practical matters, as well as studios for promotional photography and podcasts. As this will be a new cost to your business, you will also need reasonable rents and flexible deals to suit your needs exactly. Don’t forget to let your customers and clients know that you’ve moved address though! Make sure to update your location and contact details on your site and social media, while you might also wish to set up a mail forwarding address if you receive a lot of physical correspondence and need to keep on top of it at your new office.
#2 Hiring employees to help you
Part of the reason why you need to take your business up a level is that there is simply too much work for one person, and you will need help.
With the right business space, you will have room for these people as well, but you can still expand further when it comes to ad-hoc, one-off jobs that do not require you to hire somebody full-time. Here, you can hire experts on a freelance basis and pay them only for the amount of time that you need them, which is likely to be cost-efficient.
#3 Build processes for guidance
Now, it is more than just you working in the business; you will have to provide guidance so that people do things your way. In addition to putting together in-person training and guidance for those you are going to be dealing with face-to-face every day, you will also need to put together some procedures so that your workers know what to do should you not be available to ask.
This means that your business can still tick over nicely while you take a vacation, something that you may not have been able to do in the past.
#4 Invest in scalable products and services
As your business gets bigger, the infrastructure around it will need to grow as well. This could mean moving your IT over to Cloud software so that you have no physical restraints or ensuring your suppliers can meet increased demand.
It could just mean simply moving to a dedicated courier rather than just taking parcels to the post office yourself. Regardless of what it entails, you need to think it through in detail so you don’t get any nasty surprises.
