These days the over 50s are increasingly being encouraged to start their own businesses as a way of solving many of the nation’s and their own economic problems. For some people it is a very good idea and at the initial stages there’s plenty of practical advice available on how to go about it.
But sustaining your business once the initial excitement has receded and maybe your motivation and customer levels have dipped is a different matter, a thorny issue that you don’t hear much about.
If you’ve started up a business in later life and have survived your first year or two, you may now be in the position of wondering how to cross the divide between successful start-up to sustainable long-term enterprise. What should you be doing? What’s most important to focus on? What advice should you be seeking - and from whom?
Identifying the issuesResearch with small business owners shows that every year the majority are keen to expand and optimistic about their chances of doing so. However the link between desire and realisation for many is as frail as that between an English summer day and sunshine – largely based on hope, expectation and very little experience.
Exactly how to grow the business and achieve expansion is a source of mystery and frustration.
If you’re in this position the first step is to recognise that you probably do need to seek external help, even though as a small business owner you may have been used to doing everything yourself. This is because, quite literally, although no one knows your business better than you, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Generally, most successful and enduring small businesses are good at delivering their core business and know the market in which they currently operate. However, the extent to which they will struggle or succeed when it comes to expansion is inextricably linked to their ability to see themselves and their position clearly in relation to actual and potential customer needs and their competitive market standing.
What this means in practice is that although no one else can or should attempt to tell you how to run your business, you possibly suffer from a limiting inability to “see the wood for the trees” and take an unbiased and realistic view of the opportunities available to you.
Knowing and doingBut even if you take advice in this respect, what realistically do you feel you will be able to do as a result? Could it be that your problem is actually twofold:
1. You can’t identify what your problems are
2. You probably won’t know how to put matters right
The value of coming to this realisation is that it will help direct your search for external assistance. For the first of these problems you probably need fairly generalist strategic management or marketing consultants, with experience in advising small and medium-sized businesses (This is crucial – whether or not they have experience in your particular type of business really isn’t that important).
To deal with the second of the problems you need to establish that they are experienced in implementation also; without this, quite frankly, you won’t be much better off as simply having a clearer idea of what your problems are without any idea of how to solve them isn’t a great deal of help.
Finding an adviser who can assist you in recognising opportunities, developing your business to meet them and who can help you to realistically assess your ongoing success in doing so, could be the key to a whole new level of future success for you and your business for many years to come.
Click here for more information on “Starting and Sustaining a Small Business”
