If your business has made it to the point where you’re making enough money to sustain more than just yourself and can look at growing your team as well as your market, then that’s a success worth celebrating. However, it also comes with its fair share of new responsibilities that you have to be aware of, as well. Here, we’re going to look at how your growing business can become more complex, and what you can do to better manage it.
Growing Your Team
You may already have an employee or two, but as you scale up your operations and production, you’re likely to hire more people. As a result, managing your team can become more complex. Hiring decisions become more critical, and the wrong fit can impact productivity and morale. You’ll need to create structures for onboarding, performance reviews, and conflict resolution. Internal human resources practices, such as payroll and employee development, need to be streamlined to be able ot handle bigger volumes of people, too.
Tax Obligations
The more your business grows, the more tax obligations you take on, as well. If you start exceeding a certain amount of revenue, then you qualify for VAT, which means that you need to register for it. For those unfamiliar with the term, what is VAT? It’s a value-added tax applied at each stage of production or distribution, ultimately paid by the end consumer. This means that you have to charge VAT on applicable goods and services, file VAT returns, and potentially adjust your rates to stay competitive. VAT return software can make a lot of the added responsibility a lot easier to manage. However, you may want to hire an accountant to make the best of your taxes in general, too.
Legal Complexities
The bigger your business, the more responsibility and, indeed, liability that you may have. Aside from the increased financial responsibility of payroll, benefits, insurance, and the like, your business will have to deal with additional legal needs. This includes more contracts, intellectual property, compliance with employment laws, and industry regulations become regular considerations. You might even need to switch from a sole proprietorship to a limited company. It may be time to get in touch with a business lawyer to help ensure that you’re keeping everything above board as you continue to grow.
Moving From Survival To Strategy
When you start to grow, you’re no longer the scrappy underdog simply trying to survive and make is a business. You have kept the business alive, now it’s time to think about how to make it thrive. Long-term planning is vital, such as setting goals, evaluating data, and making deliberate decisions about product development, customer segments, and investment. You get to start thinking about what kind of business you want to run in the long term, what new opportunities are open to you, and what opportunities you can start saying “no” to if they don’t align with your goals. It’s a mindset change that’s important to make if you want to aim for even further growth in the future.
The best way to manage a growing business is to ensure that you’re able to adapt to the role of a leader, rather than getting stuck in the front lines. A birds-eye view is a lot easier when you’re able to delegate the work you used to do.