Raising a Business: A Woman's No-nonsense Guide to Successfully Growing a Small Business

By Sonia Williams

Raising a Business is aimed at women who have recently started, or are planning to start, a business. It is designed to teach women how they can successfully prepare their business for, and manage, growth. It outlines the key areas that business owners need to look at to create a profitable, sustainable and successful business.

The author, Sonia Williams, interviewed several successful Australian businesswomen, who share their strategies, tips and advice for growing a business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781118319635

Sonia Williams

Sonia Williams is a native of a small town in Jayess, MS. She graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a bachelors in Psychology. In her spare time she loves to write and spend time with family.

Book preview

Chapter 1

What does it take to grow your business?

Business growth doesn’t just happen. You don’t just wake up one morning to find your business has grown overnight — you need to plan. Many women start their own business as a way to improve their work–family life balance or make a winning idea a reality, but they will stall unless they plan for business growth.

Enthusiastic business owners tend to forgo planning for growth because they don’t realise the importance of this activity. These are the proprietors who find themselves working flat-out just to keep their business afloat. They end up ‘wearing all hats’, and fail to take the time to consider how they will grow their venture from the small owner-operated business it started out as. They often miss out on real opportunities and eventually find themselves struggling and exhausted, and disillusioned with the idea of owning their own business. They may even decide it is too hard and give up.

This chapter reveals what it takes to successfully grow a business. It’s about planning — there is no such thing as an overnight success. Ask yourself, do I have what it takes to grow my business?

Business growth

Business growth is about taking your business to the next level. This can include increasing sales, gaining a greater market share, expanding your customer base, acquiring new staff or increasing your infrastructure — all while ensuring healthy profits prevail. Business growth is about proper planning to ensure your business goes from a small business to a medium-sized business. Achieving growth does not necessarily equate to success, because the process may be accompanied by a great deal of additional work and stress. Many owner-operators are happy to keep their business small; if this is in line with the ambitions you have for your endeavour, then you are already a success.

The ideal business-growth model

The foundation of any business-growth strategy is built on the extent to which a business owner can generate and motivate positive word-of-mouth promotion. Word-of-mouth promotion is an extremely powerful and cost-effective way to grow a business. When customers are positively singing your praises they naturally influence those around them. There is no greater endorsement than customers promoting your wares to others. Stories about products and services are told again and again, and serve as free publicity. It is advertising you simply cannot buy.

As customers, we buy into these stories, particularly if they are told by people we know and trust. In order to successfully grow your business, you must turn your product or service into a topic of conversation that will be mentioned at dinner parties, tearooms, mothers’ groups and so on. People are more likely to try a new product or service when influenced by positive word-of-mouth promotion from friends, family, trusted colleagues and associates.

Larissa Bright established DIVA Cosmetics in 1998. Initially the company had no advertising funds, so DIVA Cosmetics relied solely on word-of-mouth promotion to generate publicity. Larissa attributes DIVA Cosmetics’s high level of word-of-mouth promotion to the company’s high-quality products. As Larissa says, ‘Create a great product, don’t deviate on quality or integrity, and people will talk’.

Like Larissa, Naomi Simson of RedBalloon Days says her company’s growth is definitely due to word-of-mouth promotion. RedBalloon Days achieves significant growth because its mission is to take care of the quality it delivers. Naomi explains her company’s philosophy below:

At RedBalloon Days we make very strong promises to our customers. It is because we fulfil these promises [that] our customers are naturally delighted — so delighted with their experience that they tell someone else.

To create positive word-of-mouth promotion, your plan for growth should focus on addressing the key areas depicted in figure 1.1 (overleaf). Figure 1.1 outlines the ideal model for generating business growth. The extent to which you plan, design and facilitate strategies that support all steps in this business-growth model will have a positive effect on your ability to grow your business.

Figure 1.1: the ideal business model for growth