People have probably told you several times that your business needs to grow. And it certainly seems like pretty sound advice, right? Growth is how you get more money, after all. But growth isn’t always the automatic success story many people seem to think it is. If you’re not prepared to take on sudden success, then your business may actually get killed in the process.
It’s important that you learn a little more about the dangers that come with business growth. Only by learning about these dangers can you truly appreciate the need to prepare yourself appropriately.
The danger of rapid growth
Ideally, growth should be moderately slow but steady, at least in the earlier periods of your business. A lot of people don’t like the sound of the term ‘slow growth’ – the term ‘rapid growth’ is definitely a lot sexier, right? But be careful what you wish. Expanding is a risk unto itself. When you grow too quickly, you have to deal with a waterfall of issues for which you may not be prepared. A sudden rise in attention means that more people are going to want a piece of what you’ve got to offer – and if your website, stock, and funds aren’t ready to face the crowd, they may just trample you six feet under the ground.
Additional website strain
You must have seen several instances in which people suddenly rushed to a website en masse, causing it to crash. This happens a lot with musicians whose websites aren’t quite prepared to deal with the demand when they release a new album on their website. Back in December, rap duo Run the Jewels released their hotly-anticipated third album for free on their website. The resulting flood of users sent the website down for about half a day! So you need to make sure you’re working with a web agency that can deal with upscaling. Have a look for the all-in-one website service for your growing business.
Dealing with demand
With Run the Jewels, their product was something digital; it can be reproduced countless times, free of charge. As many people as you can count can visit the website and download a copy. But most businesses don’t deal in downloads; they deal in tangible products that need to be manufactured and sent out individually. If you don’t have stock ready to go when it’s growth time, then you risk missing out on all that business potential. What if people have moved on by the time you restock? You would hope that customers aren’t that fickle, but you never really know.
Money problems
Getting in a bunch of new stock isn’t cheap. Upscaling your website costs money. Getting more employees to deal with the influx of customers requires cash. Basically, you need to make quite a few investments in order for growth to occur – and then to sustain the momentum from that growth. The adage says that you gotta spend money to make money – and that’s true when it comes to expanding your business on the back of sudden growth. So make sure you’ve always got strong cash reserves!
