Are you someone who’s navigated the highs and lows of your first few years in business?
Have you got through some successful financial years, solved problems and dodged obstacles along the way? Maybe you’ve managed to get a product to market, or have loads of satisfied customers or clients?
Whatever you’ve done - congratulations!
As well as taking the time to recognise the effort you’ve put in and the lessons you’ve learned, now might also be a good opportunity to take stock and think about where you want to go next.
When you started your business, what did your business plan look like - and how have your first few years played out when you look at it in the light of that plan? Have you kept to all of the steps you planned, or have you had to adapt and change things in order to stay successful? And as with any other venture, you’ll have faced unexpected issues and challenges – what did you do to resolve them?
In a way, you have to go back to the mindset you had when you were starting out – you have to look ahead, account for possibilities and plan accordingly.
But now, you get to use the experience you’ve built in your start-up years to inform what you do next. As you find yourself pulled between two mindsets - one a learner and the other a teacher - it can be difficult to find your feet and look ahead.
But as confusing as all of this can seem – don’t worry! There’s a few steps you can take to help guide you on the next steps of your business journey.
1 – Go back to first principles
This doesn’t mean going back to square one. Instead, it means you try to remember all of those things you were considering when you started your business. What metrics did you want to hit? Which clients did you target? What were the prospects for your product, or service? Did you bring along any investors or partners?
Now, you’ve got the opportunity to see what your successes were. Maybe you’d planned to win a big contract, and achieved it after months of planning and negotiations. Or perhaps you wanted to hit your first hundred, five-hundred or one-thousand customers – and got them before you even knew it!
When you see where you did well, this – in addition to being a good boost – will let you know what works. You’ll be able to see where you were able to make good moves – perhaps without even knowing it. And you’ll know you can put the same skills and strategies to good use during the coming year.
You know what you’re doing – you just need to know that you know it!
2 – What needs to change?
Just as you’ll have seen successes, you’ll also have discovered things you’d like to improve. Maybe you were tracking sales data on a platform that didn’t give you all the information you wanted. Maybe you were pushing yourself to achieve targets that, upon reflection, didn’t matter as much you initially thought.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s to be expected that some things didn’t go the way you’d expected.
But now, armed with some experience and knowledge, the end of your first chapter in business is a great time to review what might need changing.
That’s not to say that you have to make all of those changes instantly before you start your next year. But it gives you a good idea of how you might want to change things over the next couple of years – and you can factor those changes into your plans going forward.
3 – Review; adopt; plan; do!
You don’t need us to tell you the importance of putting your plans into action.
Once you’ve got all the data, experience and learning from your first few years, and had the chance to think about it strategically, you’ll immediately start getting ideas about what you want to do next. You’ll know what needs to change, and what needs to stay the same.
The key thing is giving yourself the space and the time to make those changes, where you can. There will always be things you can’t change – or at least, can’t change right now. But you’ll know better than anyone else what’s in your control. The key thing will be making those changes you can make, when you can make them, without rushing ahead or over-reaching to make changes you can’t make yet.
4 – You can learn from it; so can others!
You’ve got a few years behind you. That’s a year of insights and experiences, all of them hard-won. And you should be proud of them. But learning exercises and changing plans isn’t the only benefit of that kind of lived experience.
Because now, you’ve got something to share. To promote. Just as someone hunting for a job doesn’t hesitate to put a year’s worth of work experience on a CV, or to mention it in an interview, you’ve now got a few years’ worth of business learnings. And they’re not just valuable to you – other people will want them, too.
Whether they’re potential new clients, complimentary business partners or potential investors, the things you’ve seen and done so far are impressive. You can talk about them, and pass them on.
Maybe you didn’t know where to pitch for investment or support when you were starting up. Maybe you thought you didn’t have enough experience to make those calls.
Well – guess what? Now, you’ve got experience! So don’t hold back in putting it to good use in helping others, or attracting investors. Networking can be a great way of leveraging your knowledge, while also getting some great insights from others.
5 – Consider growth
So now, you have a good idea of where you’ve been, and where you want to go next. You’ve cut your teeth in a competitive and complicated world, and have come to the end of your foundational years with some wisdom and new contacts. So now’s a great opportunity for you to think about how you might want to grow.
Maybe there were some opportunities you spotted – opportunities where you feel your product, service or determination could have made a real difference. But maybe you were held back by a lack of ready capital, or didn’t think you were at the right size to take it on.
Maybe you spotted ways to make improvements to your business’ energy output, cutting bills and carbon in one go. Or was there a venue going for sale which you thought would make the perfect shop-front for you?
At the Development Bank of Wales, we help businesses across Wales with the loans and investment they need in order to take the next step in their business journey.
Whether you need loans, equity or mezzanine finance, we offer a wide range of investment options to help you grow your business the way you want, with loans available from £1,000 to £10 million.
As you take a look back at how far you’ve come, it’s also good to consider how much further we could help you go.
For more information, take a look at our growing a business page.
