Growing Your Small Business? 3 Reasons You Might Fail.
Updated: Dec 20, 2022
by Kristen Stover, Moxie Administrative Services
Growing a small business can be challenging. Do a Google search of ‘small business challenges’ and you’ll get over a million results: 1.3 million (I checked).
Click on a few of them and you’ll start seeing a pattern:
Finding customers
Lack of financial planning
Lead generation
Lack of proper marketing
Burnout
Fatigue
Lack of direction
What I didn’t see were these 3 reasons you might fail:
Procrastination
Time management issues
Back office inefficiencies.
This really surprised me. Small business owners often find themselves wearing many hats because when they’re starting out, they have the time but not the money. But before too long, those resources are reversed; the money is there, but the time is limited. But still, they try and do everything themselves. It’s kind of like muscle memory. They’re so used to just doing it themselves, they forget that there are options.
It's funny, I can tell within five minutes if a business owner might need some assistance. They hear that I help solopreneurs repair inefficiencies in the back office and I’m promptly given a list a mile long of all the things they’re doing that are keeping them out of their genius zone.
If your back office isn’t running efficiently, you’re setting yourself up to fail.
If your goal is to grow your small business and make more money, hanging out in your back office is not going to get you there. If the activity you are working on is not moving you toward your goals (growth and income), you have to find a way to spend more time in your genius zone.
The way I see it, you have a couple of options:
Keep doing what you're doing. Your hamster wheel will keep your business going, but not growing. There's nothing wrong with doing things this way, but the chance of burnout is great.
Outsource the activities that are not MMA (money-making activities). This looks different for every business; social media activities are only money making if you're a social media manager for someone else; they are not generating income if you're doing it for yourself.
Automate the activities that happen the same way each time you do them. This can be anything from creating rules in your bookkeeping platform (so categorizing your transactions is a button push) to automating the onboarding flow of a new client.
Running a small business is a challenge, but there are ways to make those challenges more manageable. Spend as much time as possible doing what you do best, and let others do the rest for you.
You've got this.
Moxie Administrative Services provides professional administrative support to small businesses and individuals, virtually or in person (depending on your location and ours).
Kristen Stover
CEO, Moxie Administrative Services LLC