Just how do you make a business survive and flourish? We hear the term business growth all the time. Turn on the TV, flick through the newspapers and talk about businesses and the economy growing – or struggling – is constant. But for a sole trader or small business growing in terms of people, profit, products, customers, market reach – or all these things – can be especially challenging personally, emotionally, strategically, operationally and financially.
For the Soul Trader it can be especially tricky as their values, drivers and desires are often different to many traditionally-minded business owners. For the Soul Trader lifestyle, life-balance and purpose are as important as any other factor – often more important that financial results, scaling a business or traditional growth. The term growth for you may well also not necessarily be about taking on staff or growing an empire. That said as you do progress in business – whether you simply seek to gain more sales and customers – or whether to expand in other ways – will require help, support and expertise.
If you are in a situation where your sales, demands, client base, workload or aspirations are growing then this topic will be especially relevant for you. Or indeed if you’re feeling that you’re stuck where you are.
To explore this topic I caught up with Jane Middleton, founder of Authentic Associates. If you’re a regular here a Soul-Trader.biz you may have seen the inspiring interview with Jane about her own life and story. Jane has worked in operations director and finance director roles in her career and set up her business to help owner managers on that growth journey helping business owners to navigate the business structure, systems, staffing and finance issues key to grow.
In this interview I ask Jane to walk us through all these issues from being a one person brand starting and perhaps needing to bring in a little help through to getting to a stage where you may need to hire staff, expertise or funding – especially in the key areas of finance, marketing, operations and overall business strategy and growth.
