Real Velona

This is the fourth post in a series Things I learnt while building my first company

Once you’ve navigated the initial whirlwind of starting up your company, you quickly need to get things stabilised to ensure that your company is robust, has sound, repeatable operational processes

Bringing in Specialist Expertise

As we scaled our business, our first management hires in each function brought a level of professionalism to our operations. This was particularly evident in back-office functions like accounting and tax compliance, legal, and HR compliance. We relied heavily on their experience and expertise to set up these functions, as we didn’t have the know-how ourselves.

In our business plan, we had identified “Don’t go Broke” as a key objective in both the startup and stabilise phases. I often emphasised to our finance team that our two most important business processes were receivables and payroll. Timely and accurate invoicing was crucial for cash flow, while payroll was essential for keeping our team happy. We learned the hard way that missing payroll deadlines, even due to public holidays or long weekends, resulted in immediate and loud feedback.

Getting Precise on Your Core Value Stream

While you can bring in expertise to help with back-office functions, you’re the expert on your core value stream. This refers to how you create value for clients and how your team collaborates to deliver that value. Before hiring managers to oversee these functions, you need to document your operating models.

We developed detailed operating models for each core value stream function, including:

• Client and Account Management
• Sales and Go-to-Market
• Consulting and Capabilities
• People and Culture

These models explained what good looked like and how things should be done. They worked in conjunction with our roles and responsibilities definitions and became a key management tool. It’s essential to have repeatable sales and customer success processes, but these shouldn’t be rigid or set in stone. Instead, they should be living documents that evolve with your business, I will talk more about that in the next post.

Management Roles: External Hires vs Internal Promotions

As your business grows, you’ll need to decide how to scale your value stream. This involves choosing between promoting from within or bringing in outside experience. We initially tried hiring external experts, but ultimately found that promoting from within was more effective. By promoting team members who already understood our value creation and delivery processes, we could teach them management skills more easily than teaching external managers the intricacies of our business.

Establishing a Strong Brand

While networking and sales are crucial in all business phases, establishing a strong brand is essential for stabilizing your business. This brings new opportunities and reduces the risk of famine if there’s a problem in the business development funnel. To achieve this, we invested heavily in supporting community platforms like conferences and meetups. By sharing our expertise and knowledge, we established ourselves as thought leaders in our industry. This approach paid off with increased brand awareness, as our community became our advocates, directing new clients to us whenever the need arose. By building strong relationships and supporting our community, we created a loyal network that drove our business growth and success.

Conclusion

In conclusion, scaling a business requires more than just growing revenue – it demands intentional focus on building a strong foundation. By bringing in specialist expertise, documenting your core value stream, making strategic management hires, and establishing a strong brand, you can set your business up for long-term success.