Is Your Startup Growing too fast?

When you start your own business or company, all you can think about is how good it will be once the growth starts becoming noticeable. So growth is a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily. A phrase that should be most applicable here is all in its due course which means, that gradual growth is a thing you need rather than growth at all costs. Here are some reasons why it is a bad thing for your startup to grow too fast and what are some symptoms of this problem.

Do not Make False Promises

The greatest problem with growing too fast is lack of knowledge about your possibilities. When you start, you will clutch on to every client and do everything to keep them. The more work they require, the more they will pay, so you will welcome every new request from their side with hope of monetization.

If you start growing too fast, you may find yourself overwhelmed. You may be willing to agree to everything that is requested of you and even promise to do so, however you may not have the means to follow it through.

If this starts to happen on a regular basis, this means that you should slow down a bit and try and build your infrastructure bottom up, before you further expand your client basis. The inability to do so might cause you to gain bad reputation and lose even some of your best and most reliable clients. Because of this taking one step at the time might be a good idea.

Manage Your Workforce Properly

Your workforce grows in accordance with the amount of work that needs to be done. Unfortunately, this seldom happens in real life. You either hire more people than you have the need for or try to do business while horribly understaffed. The best way to deal with this issue would be to invest in quality more than in shear manpower.

What you need to do is gather the best staff around you so that when the going gets tough, they are able to hold the line with effective work and not with their numbers. Because of this, you will need to find a way to successfully attract young talent to your company. As famous Greek philosopher Plato once said, one man is better than a thousand if he is the best.

Importance of Middle Management

Just a while back you were able to do most of the work on your own and now, for some reason, this is no longer the case. If this is a symptom that you are encountering it might be that your business has grown so fast that you did not manage to develop middle management. Supervising everyone, managing the finances and meeting with the clients is no easy task. However, these days you will spend most of your time meeting with bankers, brokers, journalists while there is nobody to fill in for you.

In order to avoid this, you need to start looking for your replacement in time. You will need someone to take your place once your presence becomes needed elsewhere, and finding this person is usually not an easy task. Therefore, you will need to start in time or even groom one of your younger employees to one day assume this vital position.

As you can see, where there is a will there is always a way, but you must remember that paving your way to success always takes time. After all, even Rome was not built in a day so maybe your startup shouldn’t be either. Arm yourself with patience since this is never a race but a proper marathon.