Booming small businesses

There are lots of different ways the business world measures success.

You might rate success in terms of size. You’ve built your business from nothing, and now you’re about to employ another 10 people. Wow, you must be doing well.

Or maybe your order book is bulging: surely you’re successful because everyone wants your product or service. Just be aware that a growing business isn’t always a successful business.

“If you’re wanting to get bigger, make sure it is the best outcome for your business,” says Dr Graham Godbee of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, who I interviewed for The Small Business Success Guide.

Spend the time thinking about it before you do it. “Then, if you decide the time is right, make the growth sensible and controlled,” adds Godbee.

If you’re set on expanding your business, you have to work out the sort of growth you want.

Go back to your original goals for setting up your business. If one of your aims of setting up your small business was to have more free time, does going even more gang-busters achieve this?

Think it through.

Margie