7 Things I've Learned from Working with Small Businesses

I've spent years working with businesses in different roles, from finance and planning through to working alongside business owners on the day-to-day reality of running and growing a business.

And, although every business is different, you do start to notice patterns.

The same challenges appear in completely different businesses. The same things make running a business harder than it needs to be. And quite often, the things that make the biggest difference aren't particularly complicated.

Here are seven things I've learned from working with small businesses.

1. What's normal in a business isn't necessarily what's working

Every business develops its own way of doing things.

A customer emails, so you manually send them the same information. You copy something from one system into another. You create the same spreadsheet every month. There's something only you know how to do.

Eventually, you stop noticing those things because they're just part of how the business works.

But normal doesn't necessarily mean effective. 

Some of the best opportunities to improve a business are hiding in things you've done the same way for so long that you don't even question them anymore.

Every so often, it's worth looking at the things you do repeatedly and asking:

Does this still need to work this way? 

Or, if you were to start from scratch again, would I still do this this way?

You might be surprised by the answer.

2. More sales don't automatically make a business better

More customers and more sales sound like obvious signs that a business is doing well.

But growth has consequences.

More sales can mean more admin, more customer queries, more stock, more deliveries, more work to complete and more pressure on the person running the business.

If the rest of the business can't cope with that growth, selling more can actually expose problems that weren't particularly noticeable when the business was smaller.

That's why I don't think growth should be about getting as big as possible, as quickly as possible.

The aim is to build a better business, not just a bigger one.

3. Focus on the information that actually matters

One of the easiest ways to make running a business harder is to convince yourself you need to track absolutely everything.

You don't.

Businesses can produce an enormous amount of information. Your accounting software has reports. Your website has analytics. Your social platforms have insights. Your email platform has data. Your sales system has more.

Having access to all of it doesn't mean you need to look at all of it.

The useful information is the information that helps you understand what's happening and decide whether something needs your attention.

For one business that might be five numbers. For another it might be ten.

More information isn't automatically better information.

The goal is to know what matters in your business.

4. A good opportunity can still be the wrong opportunity

This is one I think is particularly easy to forget when you're growing a business.

An opportunity can be genuinely good and still not be right for you.

A new product. A big customer. A partnership. Another sales channel. A new service.

There doesn't necessarily have to be anything wrong with the opportunity.

The question is what happens to the rest of your business if you say yes.

Do you have the time?

Can you actually deliver it?

What else will get pushed aside?

Will you need to spend money before you see any return?

Does it take the business in the direction you actually want to go? 

Sometimes saying no isn't turning down growth. 

It's choosing the right growth.

5. Doing something manually isn't automatically a problem

There's a temptation in business to automate everything.

But automation isn't always the answer.

If something takes you two minutes once a month, spending hours finding, setting up and maintaining a system to automate it probably isn't improving much.

The problem is when manual work is repetitive, time-consuming, prone to mistakes or starting to get in the way of more useful work.

That's where a better process, system or automation can make a real difference.

The goal isn't to have the most sophisticated business.

It's to make the business easier to run.

Sometimes technology helps you do that.

Sometimes the simple way is already the best way.

6. The owner often ends up holding the whole business together

This happens incredibly naturally.

When you've built the business, you know how everything works. 

You know which customer needs something slightly different.

You know what happens when an order goes wrong.

You know where that document lives.

You know why you do something in a particular way.

You know who to call when there's a problem.

None of that necessarily feels like information you're storing. You just know it.

And while you're doing most things yourself, that might be perfectly manageable.

The problem comes when you want the business to rely a little less heavily on you – whether that's because you're getting busier, bringing in some help, taking time away or just don't want every answer to live inside your head.

You don't need to build corporate-style processes for a tiny business.

But gradually getting some of that knowledge out of your head can make the business much easier to manage.

7. The businesses that improve aren't necessarily making huge changes

Big changes are noticeable.

The new website. The new product. The big investment. The new system. The major growth plan.

But a lot of business improvement is much less exciting than that.

It's noticing that something takes longer than it should and changing it.

Realising customers keep asking the same question and making the answer clearer.

Looking at something that isn't performing as expected and finding out why.

Changing one part of a process that's causing problems.

Then doing the same thing somewhere else.

None of those changes necessarily transforms a business overnight.

But put enough of them together over time and the business can look very different.

Small improvements compound.

And perhaps that's the biggest thing I've learned.

You don't need to completely rebuild your business every time something isn't working.

You need to notice what's getting in the way, work out what would make it better and take the next step.

A better business doesn't have to be a more complicated business

There's no single formula for building a successful small business.

Different owners want different things from their businesses. They have different customers, different priorities and different ideas about what success looks like. 

But after working with businesses for years, one thing I keep coming back to is that making a business better doesn't usually mean making it more complicated.

Know what matters.

Question the things that aren't working.

Choose growth that makes sense for you.

Make improvements where they'll actually help.

And keep doing it.

That's really what The Next Steps Way is about: building a business intentionally, one practical improvement at a time.