How To Grow A Business, The 11 Ways

1. It's A Team

How To Grow A Business: Build a team rather than hire employees. Ensure the team members share your vision. People who share a common vision will work for something greater than money. Building a culture where the vision is the motivation will build an entity faster than a culture where money is the sole motivation.

Thanks To: Chase Barfield of NorthStar Global, Inc

2. Shared Risk/Reward Pricing Model

How To Grow A Business: A pricing model that has a shared risk/reward component lowers the clients' risk (and costs) up front, in exchange for sharing in the revenue upside. This kind of partnership aligns everyone's interests and is simple to administer. It's a great way to scale.

Thanks To: Stephen Antisdel of AVID Commerce, LLC

3. Cash is King, Baby!

How To Grow A Business: I'll say it again, cash is king.

Healthy cash flow (and reserves) allow your business to weather sudden increases in business and fund expansion. It also helps insulate you from the effects of a sudden drop in business (as shown by recent economic times). While challenging with limited resources, remain frugal - always.

Thanks To: Valerie Reddemann of Greenfeet.com

4. Hire People You Trust

How To Grow A Business: Hire people you trust and then trust them to do their jobs. You can't scale your business up if you're going to keep running it like a one-man shop where you touch every thing. Build a talented team of people and then focus on your own role -- which is to provide vision and leadership.

Thanks To: Elizabeth Baskin of Starter Cards

5. No Salary? No Problem!

How To Grow A Business: Ignore your preconceived notions of what you can and can’t do based solely on money (or lack thereof). When a consultant suggested we hire salespeople, I balked because we had not budgeted for their salaries. 45 people who answered our Craig’s List ad agreed with the consultant that they would LOVE to (and PREFER to) work on a commission-only basis. We now have two FABULOUS assets in our business we would not have had if I had based the decision on what I thought we could afford.

Thanks To: Laurie Lamoureux of Out of the Box Unpacking Service

6. It's More Than You

How To Grow A Business: Make sure that the uniqueness of your business is not you personally. Too many entrepreneurs make themselves their business differentiation. That works until you try to scale.

Thanks To: Mitchell Gooze of Customer Manufacturing Group, Inc.

7. Go With The Flow

How To Grow A Business: Remember your business plan is your business plan. Be flexible, but stay true to your mission.

Thanks To: Andrew Esserman of Coffee Bean Direct

8. Systems, Systems, Systems

How To Grow A Business: Want to scale your business? Here's what you need - systems, systems, and even more and better systems.

Thanks To: Steven Schneider of Kramer Industries, Inc.

9. Duplicate Everybody

How To Grow A Business: Make sure every job in the company can be done by at least two people. Start with all the jobs you (the owner) do. This doesn't mean one person can replace you - perhaps one person can learn to sell like you do - and a different person fix the machines like you do - another can run the numbers like you do etc. Just make sure that EVERY single thing you do can be done by someone else. Then make sure every thing done by every person can be done by someone else. Then make sure the best person for each job does it.

Thanks To: John Seiffer of Better CEO

10. Have Passion Or Get Out

How To Grow A Business: Passion! With out it you won't grow & with it you will exceed beyond your largest vision of what your corporation will be. If you don't have passion for what you are doing keep it real & go in a different direction.

Thanks To: Sonya L. VandeKerkhof of Conscious Budget & Debt Reduction, Inc.

11. Entrepreneurial Minds

How To Grow A Business: An entrepreneur of a small company who wants to grow it doesn't have to hire like minded entrepreneurs, but they do have to hire entrepreneurial people. There's a critical difference between being an entrepreneur (who is also entrepreneurial) and hiring entrepreneurial people. Entrepreneurial people don't necessarily want to start their own organization, or necessarily have visionary ideas, but they are willing to do what it takes, create systems on the spot, not get scared off by the fact that certain processes aren't yet in place (in fact they relish creatively creating them). Your team can't just be willing to do one thing.

Thanks To: Pamela Hawley of UniversalGiving