Five Things That Helped Me Grow a Small Business
I was in the Press and Journal business section this week. The headline read "Designer turns setback into business success", and you can read the full piece here:
Seeing your story squeezed into a few hundred words makes you think about what else you'd add. These are five things that helped me grow a small business.
1. Finding the right crowd
It took me a long time to find my own network. Then I moved up here and had to start again. The old network was local, and it turns out local doesn't travel well digitally. So I rebuilt it, from nothing, in a new place.
Business Gateway was fantastic when I was starting out, with downloadable resources and seminars. Federation of small businesses (FSB) came later, for the day to day, legal questions and templates included. Different networking groups filled in the rest.
None of it happened by accident. I had to go looking for the groups and rooms before anything useful could happen in them. I recommend signing up to as many as you can to try them out and find a “go to” community, as these will be your people and in time, your support group.
2. Building a Nexus Network
Being in the room is only the start. The people worth keeping from it become what I call my Nexus Network. This is a special section of your network where a particular type of person resides.
Ambassadors open doors and connect you to people. Advocates either overlap slightly with your services or have already worked with you. Between them, they send the right people your way, long after the event itself is forgotten. Your Nexus Network should be nurtured every so often, so keep in contact with these people to stay in the loop. This network should also be pruned every so often as people change roles, businesses and sectors - some might not be able to get you in the right rooms any more, so keep that in mind.
3. Start now, get perfect later
I used to be a perfectionist. I would hold the finished vision in my head and try to jump straight to it. Rob Moore's book Start Now, Get Perfect Later changed that. I now build the skeleton of the vision first and launch it. Then I dress it up over time, until it matches what I originally pictured.
It also made me a reader. As a student I avoided it. Now I read factual books for pleasure.
4. Curate your toolbox
Signing up for software has never been easier. Trello, Asana, Slack, all a tap away with your Google login. As a sole trader, you often don't know how you'll use a tool until you've paid for it.
Test as much as you like, but test with a system. Check regularly which tools you still use, and ask whether something better exists. Then ask the sharper question: if this tool disappeared tomorrow, would my business still function?
Mine used to be Adobe Creative Suite and Notion. I moved to Affinity because it's free and does everything I need. I'm still looking for a Notion replacement for something I can use offline where I own everything.
5. Build your own operating system
I could handle the design side. The consultancy and businesses side, with CRMs and networking, went over my head and i felt overwhelmed. I needed a system to record things I could easily update. There were too many out there which tripped me up with hidden costs, limited features and annoying quirks. So I built what I needed in Notion: a CRM, a networking tracker and even at one point a job hunting system and much more. My CRM has databases for contacts, businesses, meetings & activities and projects. All of these have properties which are connected to other databases in that CRM. Each database as unique views, meaning I can switch contacts to a pipeline view so I can see who I need to be contacting.
That's also where finding my crowd paid off twice over. I turned networking itself into a piece of the system, and out of that came what I now call the Pitch Ladder, a set of pitches at different lengths for different rooms. What started as just showing up became something structured enough to repeat.
If anyone is interested in this, I have a fantastic contact who has a business that offers exactly this and I’d be happy to setup an introduction.
The five things that helped me grow a small business
These are the five main insights I've gained as my business has grown.
There's a sixth I nearly missed, and that's marketing and design. It's what I offer other people, so it comes naturally to how I develop my offer and position myself in the market. It's second nature, and it's not something I've had to think or worry about. I realise many small businesses have. Some fill the gap with DIY design, some lean on AI, and some choose to ignore it completely.
If marketing and design are eating the time you'd rather spend running your business, I can take that off your plate. I might not be the right designer for you, though. That's why I speak to every prospective client and get to know their business before we decide whether we're a good match. If we aren't, I have a network of other creatives who could suit your project better.
A final thank you to Mike Duncan, North Scotland manager at FSB, for the opportunity to be featured in the Press and Journal.
Looking back has been fun. Now it's back to the work.
— M
