Once your business start running, it is critical that you start expanding. Expanding is no longer an after-thought, it is now necessary to think ahead and plan ahead for expansion. This allows you to maximize the YEAH Income formula and bring more income not just to your family and you, but to your existing staff too.
There are 2 common restraints to business expansion
- Skilled manpower or Talents
- Capital
Capital
Financial capital is always an on-going business matter, from the first seed money for your untested, new business, to a much bigger amount for scaling and expansion.
Large transnational corporations can issue bonds and stocks, and credibility for large bank loans. Extremely unique or wonderful startups may have access to angel investors or venture capitalists. Most of us, however, may have to stick to traditional and smaller ways of capital access
These are the usual way of getting capital for business, ranked from the beginning to a larger amount.
- Personal Savings and Investments
- Personal loans, credit
- Spouse, family and friend loans
- Business loans from banks and credit facilities
- Joint Venture capital or loan backed by partners
Personal Money
For most new businessmen, the easiest way of starting a business is via your own savings. You may liquidate some unit trusts, stocks, or even your home for the cash to start a business, or use cash from your savings or fixed deposits. You usually meet little or no objection, since these are your own money. Do note, always discuss with your spouse on this.
Money is the #1 issue why divorces happen, and even if it is your own money from your own career, you should respect your spouse and discuss this. If you are young, you may want to consult your parents too. This is not about permission, it is a healthy form of respect that will help you as you grow in strength.
Personal Loan and Credit
This is another common way, where you can seek personal loans from banks based on your current salary. I have heard of people who have a lucrative career, borrowed large sums based on his payslip, and quit his job to start a business. The bankers would have frowned as the loan was based on his salary monthly repayment ability, but it is completely legal.
I would not suggest this though. It might be better to start off a small scale business with your own savings rather than credit or loans. The reason is that you are new in business and you have 101 things to take care of and learn. Interest repayment, credibility, may not be something you want to add on to your stress.
However, if your business is tested and tried, and you are fairly confident (there is no 100% in life), then you may consider using personal loans because your business probably has not reached the years of operation required and the great accounting needed for banks to consider corporate loans.
I personally used many credit card balance transfers (roughly 2 to 4% per annual interest rate, NOT 24%) promotion rate (only valid for 6-month loans. Not only is the interest rate much lower for short 6-month promotion balance transfer, but it also forces me to be nimble and handle my maths correctly, that I must ensure my goods get sold and I recovered the full capital within 6 months.
As recommend, always discuss with your spouse as personal loans do affect your family.
Spouse, family and friend loans
Your relatives and spouse are the biggest supporters, but please do consider carefully before asking for a loan. You will be hard-pressed to pay back if the business failed, and I have seen my own personal cases where relatives do not speak to each other due to old, bad debts. Do not let this affect your relationship with your family.
Having said that, if you do have a fairly valid business model, and if you seek family help for financial capital, do note on this:- ALWAYS HAVE THE INTENTION TO PAY BACK.
This makes sure you are very careful with the capital and do not overspend, or over ordered the volume of goods. The biggest mistake one can get with "other people's money" is the lack of ownership and responsibility and splurge on risky business expansion and doom oneself to financial ruins. It may not be your personal money but once you lose it, you lose your reputation, your morale, your workflow, and worst of all your relatives or friends.
Be more careful of other's money than with your own money.
Business Loans
Every country and banking sector has its preferred years of operations, but usually, banks only lend out money to a business of at least 2-3 years in operation, sometimes with the insistence of the business owners and directors as personal guarantors.
They will check the accounts for the past 1-2 years to assess the amount of risk you possess and then offer a deal.
In Singapore, companies usually require 2 years of operation, and the business loan interest is around 7-9% from a bank, and 15% and more from finance companies. Financial companies are less strict and provide more loans, at higher rates though.
This is why when you start a business,
ACCOUNTING is very important. It helps you to stay legal with proper corporate tax payment, it is also the key to how much capital banks will lend you in the future.
Talents in your business
There are 2 ways of getting talents to expand and run your business
- Hire experienced staff and let them lead and grow
- Hire inexperienced staff and train them.
Hiring new staff (and possibly training them from scratch)
One of the best ways of building a beautiful business culture is hiring fresh graduates. They are new to society and you can attract those who are similar to your work culture. Do note that they will have a steep learning culture to learn and adapt not just to society, but how things work in real life. Many of them are used to students' life, and non-punishing deadlines or non-serious issues, and you need to adapt to their learning curves. If not, they may leave your company soon.
Some of the best staff we have are hired are fresh graduates, and we are proud to say that because we manage to interview and filter and provide the correct incentive to the correct person to accept the challenge and join us.
Getting Great Talents In
My favourite would be hiring people that have great experience and help you jump start the business. Unfortunately, this is not easy. Let me share why it is difficult to hire great talents
- Your salary offer cannot match what big Transnational companies can offer
- He may not share your same vision, business culture
- He will be concerned (rightly) of the future of your company
For reason #1, unless you are already making high margins and high volume, usually we are unable to match the corporate perks and salary that he may be able to find in other companies.
Business vision
The future of the company and the business culture can be attractive and compelling to pull real talents to join your business.
Business Culture
Small or new businesses have the luxury of starting a brand new business from scratch. There are talents out there who love the challenge of starting something new and learning new things. This can be one of your attractive traits.
Small family and cozy culture
Large companies lack the warmth and family closeness of what small business can offer. You may be surprised how many people may choose a cozy working environment with a small knitted group than over any larger salary increase in a colder, corporate workplace. Many of our existing staff are comfortable and happy with the culture, and we dare say that they are working hard and happily here not because of our salary offers.
Our salary offers are competitive but nothing to crow about. Our pantries are full, but not to the level of tech unicorns with 10 different ice cream flavours and 20 tea bags brands.
They stay because they are comfortable, happy, coming daily to a workplace that has a culture that is suitable for their characters.
Sharing our business culture
Our biggest draw:-
- Simple or NO Dress code
- Flexible working hours
- Evolving Job Scopes
Wear what you like!
When we first started, we were really small, so we started with a casual dress code. Our dress code is: Dress Sensibly. I do not think that there is a need for an office shirt and pants or skirts for the ladies.
Work anytime you like!
I set a simple working hours rule, come at 8 am, finish at roughly 5 pm, and all staff has the flexibility to adjust your working hours, the only request is please check with us and give us your reason. Currently, I have a staff that comes around 5 am, finish at 3 pm or 4 pm, another lady that finishes at 4 pm so that she can go for extra school lessons, and another staff that works longer shift daily so she can have an extra day off for her personal chores.
Evolving Job = More Learning chances!
In evolving job scopes, what I am highlighting is that there will always be different challenges in different stages of growth. A person in charge of marketing may have to cross over to customer service and learn good responsive customer service. A graphic designer may need to go through email marketing training with us to understand what is needed for that 1-second hook.
This is the biggest advantage small businesses can provide for staff:-
simple dress code, flexibility and accommodating to each staff's personal needs, and evolving job scope descriptions.
Use this to your advantage to recruit people that you can work with, for the long term.
Features can attract or repel different people
During the interviews with candidates, I pointed out this dress code, the flexibility of time, evolving job roles, and their reactions will tell me a lot about their characters and preferences. I can guess who will be keen on this job and who I will consider hiring.
There will always be talents that you love, but their eyes do not light up at the mention of simple dress code, great flexibility, and evolving job scope. In our case, I will not hire them no matter how talented they are. They will only reject your offer or leave in a few months' time because the advantages that you are providing is a mismatch for them.
These 3 features, dress code, flexibility in timing, and different job challenges are just features, they are
advantages to the correct candidates but they can be vast turn-offs to some. I know of candidates who do not like evolving job scope, they have the mindsets that they are specialists and should not be doing other duties. For example, a digital marketer may frown that he needs to create an excel sheet to track sales; he will prefer working for large corporations where each staff's duties are narrow and focused.
Retaining your talents
Besides recruiting staff into your company, you also need to retain your staff. If your staff is capable, he or she would have no lack of opportunities outside to work for higher pay or better opportunities. And irony enough, we are in a sector where our staff can learn our eCommerce process and then have their ambition to jump out and start up their own businesses.
This is normal and you should take joy in this. If your staff can go out and make more money, this means he is giving you a lot of value-adds and you are getting great profits from this. The key to retaining them:- give them more value add.
Growing with the company
One of the biggest contributions you can give to your staff is to grow your company. People take pride belonging to a business that is growing by scope, horizontally or vertically. If you stay stagnant, then they are not participating in something new and they will grow tired of it. If their intention is just to make daily living and live day by day, this is not an issue. If your talents want to feel excitement and fulfillment at their career path, they will soon leave you for exciting prospects.
This is an exciting feature for you. If they work hard, you will work harder, if they work smarter, then you will work smarter. Healthy competitive and healthy pride will encourage both bosses and staff to push the company to higher levels.
Training and skills
I offer all our staff time off for them to learn anything, even when it may not be useful to the company. I allow my customer service officer to learn accounting, and promised her a wage increase and a promotion when she has graduated with accounting credentials. Allow your staff to grow with you, both in skills and wages.
Do allocate time and resources to train your staff, both new and old. Let me share this quote:-
CFO: What happens if we train them and they leave?
CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay?
We provide all our staff with opportunities to learn. As a boss, you must be generous to share and train your staff. Do not worry about them leaving, that is an old and traditional mindset that will handicap your company growth. Out of 10 good guys you train, surely 1 or 2 will still leave you. However, those who stay will be able to perform a lot better with the additional skill sets and attitudes.
When your staff knows that you are generous in training, they know you are not keeping special knowledge hidden from them, they will appreciate this and learn more and work better for your business.
Your staff is your multipliers of you.
With good skills and knowledge, they can be even stronger multipliers of your revenue and profits.
