We live in a society of immediate gratification. The desire to want “results now” may work in our personal lives but that desire can hurt us in the business world. Business is delicate and can’t be rushed. The need to step back let your company develop should far outweigh the desire to have those results now.
Rushing a business into growth can be detrimental to the long term substantial growth of a business. Although the time may be right to expand in the early stages of your company, the challenge is to refrain from doing so. Let’s go back to basics for a moment. Simple supply and demand. The demand is there for your business no doubt and I have no doubt that you can supply your customers accordingly. However, let’s not forget that demand fluctuates. Just because the demand is high now, doesn’t mean that you rush to open a new location or expand into a different product line. It means that the consumers like your brand…now. Your focus should be on supplying those customers with your brand as the demand permits.
Now it sounds simple I know. However it is challenge for business owners to step back not expand too quickly, especially when you see the means to do so. Take it from me, I fell into the “results now” trap myself. We were was noticing a demand from our auto repair customers for auto body work. The demand seemed high, we had the means to expand, so we did. We opened an Auto Body Shop. Now mind you, the repair shop had only been in business for 3 years and was still in the baby stages of growth, but it was at the time growing rapidly. So we opened the body shop and supplied the demand of our customers.. all 10 of them. That’s right, that long list of customers turned out to only be 10 of them who needed it. Once they were done, we found ourselves in a frantic mode trying to market for new clients in a very competitive market of a convenience industry. Before we knew it, the lack of demand for the body shop was cutting into the repair shop as we fought to keep it afloat. A year and half later we wound up closing the doors of the body shop and had to fight to save the repair shop from shutting down as well. We managed to save the repair shop, which has now been open for 6-1/2 years, but it took us 2 years to recover from the body shop fiasco.
The problem comes down to impatience. Instead of sticking to our niche, which was mechanical repair, we jumped all over a few customers asking about body work. We wanted the results of that now. We wanted to tell the customer “yes we can do that” collect the cash and grow, grow, grow.
So my challenge to you is to step back and let your company develop. Don’t rush into things, don’t try to grow to quickly. The results will come. If you believe in your brand then the consumers will as well, and when the time is right growth will follow behind.