When you choose to set up your own business, it often means establishing yourself as a one-man-band. You might have the freedom of working for yourself, but you are doing everything yourself. It takes up a lot of your time, and it limits just how much you can do and earn too. If you’re ready to take your one-man band to another level, you can start taking steps to expand and find your place in a competitive market. The question is, how do you take your business to where you want it to be? There are some key steps that you should take.
Get Up and Running on Your Own
If you haven’t already, you first need to establish yourself as a legitimate business. It’s worth giving some thought to your future at this stage. You might be starting as just a single person at the helm, but you can consider what you want your brand to be and how you want to be viewed. Setting up as a family-run business can be great for certain industries and trades, but being Jones & Sons might not be such a good look for some other types of business. You want to be able to grow your business smoothly without a major transition from a sole trader to a larger company.
Reinvest Your Profits
While it’s tempting to take any spare money that you have for your salary when you’ve started your own business, there are better things to do with your profits. Of course, you need to pay yourself a wage, but it’s important to put your profits to work too. You should be reinvesting them in the growth of your business so that even if you can’t secure funding from elsewhere, you still have your own funds to keep expanding. Securing funding from other investors will obviously help you too.
Be Selective with Staff
When it’s time to expand your team, you should be careful about not just hiring but also training staff. If you want to hire commercial drivers, it makes sense to ask yourself how to get the most out of them. How can you select the best talent, even if they might not have the right qualifications yet? If you need to help them get the right license, who has the best CDL training? Your staff will help you to grow your business and will become part of your brand.
Avoid Burnout
Doing everything on your own isn’t easy. It can be a lot to juggle, but it’s important that you work smartly. Instead of taking on everything yourself, you should look for ways to get help, even if you’re not taking on permanent staff. Reducing the amount of time you have to do admin gives you more time to work on the core goal of your business. It’s easy to find solutions to help you with this, from hiring a virtual assistant to using the right software.
If you want to grow your one-man-band business, create a plan to help you reach your goal as soon as possible.