Our second area of practice focuses on Emerging Growth.  This may sound like it only relates to new, start up businesses.  However, this is not the case.  Emerging Growth refers to those businesses and organizations that are ready to move into the next phase of development.  They have reached a plateau and are ready to move forward.

Before getting deeper into a discussion about how to grow a business, I want to talk about what growth means.  For many of you, your business is your dream.  It is not just something you wake up and go to, you live and breathe it every moment of every day.  You have a passion and a vision of what you want the business to be and accomplish.  So, the first step in growing your business is understanding that vision and knowing what your goals are.  Some things to consider are:

• What are your short, mid, and long term goals for the business?
• How big of a business do you want to grow?
• What does growth mean to you? Increased revenues?  More locations? Franchising?
• What steps need to be taken prior to growing the business?
• With what services or products will growth occur?
• In what target market segments will growth occur?
• Will new market segments need to be targeted?
• Will the business need to expand the geographical reach?
• What are the most efficient methods of reaching the new target markets?
• What are the needs, desires, and motivating factors for each market or customer set?
• What is the current depth of each targeted market?
• What is the projected cost of acquisition for each $1,000 of new business?

The key is to truly understand your goals for your business.  Growth is not just about hiring more employees or increasing revenues.  Growth can come in many forms, as illustrated in the above questions.

Growth, in some form or another, is typically the goal of every entrepreneur.  But, there are many dangers in growing a business.  Growth usually means that additional capital will be needed.  How much capital will be needed?  Where will the additional capital come from?  What measures need to be taken to safely grow the business?  During a growth phase, it is very easy to outpace existing capital sources and revenues.  Additional acquisitions; whether employees, equipment, or facility upgrades; can easily create more debt than can be fulfilled by the business.

The keys then to growth are to know where you want to take your business then develop a plan and a timeline to accomplishing those goals.  Just be sure that your timeline is reasonable and not too aggressive.