How to Rapidly Grow a Small Business

Are you trying to grow your business as quickly as possible?

We talked to Kyle Friedman about how he achieved large growth in his businesses in a short time and the advice he has for others to do the same.

Identify your Business Strengths

Kyle’s first point is to identify what it is you’re good at. You should be skilled and knowledgeable in this area. In his case, he used his painting business as an example.

You first need to identify your target market and ensure there potential for profit in that area. Once you have accomplished this, chase the work you want to acquire. In his case, he compares the business of painting the interior of a single dwelling to a group of new construction houses returning larger capital. From here, multifamily buildings where low to mid rise buildings provide more work due to the quantity of apartments per complex.

Onward and upward led him to high rise vertical multifamily buildings going from 48 to 448 units. As much effort goes into selling (or acquiring work) for a large job (high rise) as a small job (single dwelling). In fact, the consistent job location provides benefits in lesser time and resources spent travelling, making estimates and differences in project architecture (such as start and stop times).

Research your Potential Business Clientele

How about when it comes to getting work? Kyle states that being successful in acquiring work is based heavily on cold calling. However, his cold calling method is preceded by some in-depth research into the company developing the project. This involves investigating their core values and mission goals. He then aligns his company goals with theirs and demonstrates this by finding related similar goals demonstrated in past work.

He investigates the company to determine the relevant decision maker and contacts them. After acquiring an email address, he will send them a package containing the researched materials. This material will indicate how they would be a good fit.

Where to Start in Growing a Small Business

Tips in growing a small business can be almost universally applicable. When challenged with a project that is not in his area, Kyle suggested some tips on how he would encourage growth in a restaurant.

The first step is to identify the unique offering of the restaurant. Once this is known, identify the demographic this applies to.

How can this be sold to the said demographic e.g. foot traffic or online supply and demand. These factors are important in determining a location followed by marketing. Marketing may need to be dependent on the location.

A further expansion of the scenario is a restaurant broken down into lunch, dinner and weekend traffic.

Lunch traffic may be identified as primarily targeted toward local businesses. Incentivizing these businesses to try the service out is an important step so they may determine this service suitable for their business e.g. hosing a meeting. Incentives such as discounts or complimentary services while visiting those businesses is a good start.

Dinner traffic may be more local residential customers. Due to this, aligning with other locally populated businesses with large traffic such as the local starbucks or gymnasium can provide an excellent source of advertising.

For weekend targeted marketing, this is mostly dependent on the unique factor of the restaurant such as theming. The unique offering of a business is what would determine its target audience.

Importance of Marketing in Growing a Small Business

Kyle finishes with some comments on how having the best product is not a guarantee of success. It is execution of your business in marketing and acquiring sales/contracts. He states how a website is not specifically for business. It is a trust/reinforcement tool to allow people to find and learn about you.

I hope these tips can help you develop a business plan for your starter business or in growing a small business.