Expanding Your Business Without Expanding Your Resources

Let’s be honest: business growth is never free. 

So why are we even talking about expanding your business without expanding your resources? 

Because sometimes you’re just not in the position to hire someone new. You’re not in the position to outsource anything else. Or buy those additional supplies or machines. You don’t have additional funds. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t grow organically. After all, that’s the spirit behind our Bootstrappers Breakfasts®. There is always more than one path to success.

There are ways to expand without a capital infusion or spending lots of cash. 

Growing LEAN

If everything comes at either a time cost or a money cost (and it does), then the trick is to ensure that every investment you make — even the small ones — pays off.  

First things first: make sure you’re operating lean. I don’t mean operating thin, without the resources you need to succeed. 

I’m talking about asking yourself these important questions: 

• Are you doing the least amount of work to get the result you’re seeking? 

• Are you testing your assumptions? 

• Are you starting small and iterating? 

Zero in

In today’s “More Is Better” culture, it’s easy to see all the opportunities out there and build a business that’s wide instead of deep. 

One way to expand with limited resources is to see if you can get a little bit more focused. I did it with a SaaS company I worked with a bunch of years ago. They were growing, but they weren’t profitable. Every time the CEO added clients, he had to grow his team. 

So yes, there was growth. There wasn’t scale. 

We looked at his revenues and at his clients. We put them in buckets — small, medium, large, behaves in this way, behaves in that way. Essentially, we did a cohort analysis. 

As you might expect, the CEO found that one bucket outperformed all the others. For the next phase of growth, he focused on that bucket only. And guess what? His profitability increased. 

When you do that analysis and figure out what’s working best, you start to control your resources. You stop trying to do everything for everyone. Addressing a single market or more narrow definition of customer allows you to grow in a way that creates more profit — which you can invest back into your business. 

Get efficient 

If you started small and scrappy, you may not have many opportunities to cut waste. Almost every company can create more efficiencies, though.

Make a list of all of your key processes and your team’s accountabilities. You likely will discover that you and your team are spread too thin. Reduce them.

Map out all the steps of the remaining processes.You will identify areas that cost too much or are too cumbersome or redundant. Tighten them. Eliminate steps.

If you only need two touch points to make a decision instead of six, you’ve saved yourself time or money (or both) that could be invested in your growth. 

Find a partner

Building on the work someone else has done is one of the best ways to expand without spending much of your own resources. Yes, finding those partners takes time and energy. And the return on investment for these relationships can far exceed the time spent creating them. 

Successful complementary partnerships can allow you to develop a new product or service without putting up all the resources yourself. They can also help you reach a new market while providing valuable cross-promotion to your own audience.

Partnerships can range from small projects, like co-branded email blasts, to huge collaborations, like working together to build a new app or piece of software, or even a joint venture. 

While your business definitely has competitors, focusing on finding businesses that could be collaborators can help create new opportunities for expansion — ones that might be available even if you have limited resources.   

Prioritize cost

You have to make a lot of decisions about how you’ll spend your money — and often on things that could make you much more profitable in the future. Marketing. Software. Automation. Sales funnels. 

Every single thing you purchase will have high-cost options and lower-cost options. The more costly options aren’t always the best ones for your business. 

Take marketing, for example. Social media and earned media (like PR) costs less than paid advertising. In fact, it could be a completely DIY option that allows you to engage with your customers in a way that better serves your goals.

Big trade conferences might cost you thousands of dollars and give you access to thousands of potential leads who may or may not stop by your booth. Active engagement in a free industry-specific virtual group could cost you nothing and connect you to dozens of highly qualified leads. 

Test a lower-cost option before you spring for the higher-cost one. Not every smart choice comes with a big price tag. 

Redevelop

Have you exceeded the capabilities of your current business model? Maybe it’s time to redevelop it. I’m not talking about changing your strategy because the one you have isn’t working — I wrote about that here. 

What I am talking about is diminishing returns, realizing that you’ve hit a ceiling and figuring out how to break through it and continue your growth. 

For instance, a brick and mortar business might be hitting all its numbers but also be limited by its physical space. If they don’t have the cash to take on a major physical expansion, the owners might consider starting an online store or may open a small pop-up or satellite location and test out the concept of franchising. 

A services business could add a software component, develop a new service, slowly expand their team by first hiring freelancers, or offer a new training or certification program. 

Final thoughts

How might you grow organically and lean?

• Zero in, get focused and operate more narrowly

• Get efficient, reduce costs and eliminate redundancies

• Find a partner where expansion is a mutual benefit

• Prioritize costs, consider the less expensive options

• Redevelop your model, building out of the box.

All of these ideas have one thing in common. 

They all require you to approach your existing business with a sense of curiosity. What could you change that would move you closer to your goal?

Rather than looking at what you’ve done up to this point as The Way Your Business Works, you can see it as the starting point for something new. 

Where you go from here isn’t mapped out yet, and there are many paths to organic growth. We work with companies on the brink of their next big move, providing them a critical outside-in perspective before they leap. Contact us to get help expanding your business.