Long Jumps
When growing a business, entrepreneurs face many hurdles. At some points in that journey the growth challenges are amplified. That is what I am experiencing right now.
Going from a Company of One to a team of 2 or three is one of the first hurdles a business needs to leap over to expand its reach. This is not easy to do because how do you manage the workload when there is not enough work to go around for 2 people but there’s too much for just one person? And what about payroll (and all the fancy deductions and WCB that come with it)? All at once, productivity has to more than double in order for the second person to take home a really good paycheque. Once a core team of 2 or three people is established, adding several more people is no big deal. The infrastructure is already in place, and an incremental work increase can be handled by adding one person at a time. This is very different than from going from one person to two people where you are literally doing a 2x.
Our business is currently at 10-11 people. I love this size. It feels manageable and I can get around to everyone. But with our current workload and rate of throughput, we need to add several more guys. All at once. Here’s how the shed building and delivery hamster wheel looks with the spray foam component added to it:
Add a paint and trim person.
Ensure our current framers are cranking.
More buildings through the shop means hiring another delivery driver.
Hire a high drive sales guy.
Frees up our current sales guy to optimize current sales locations and sell more spray foam projects.
Ensure we have the people in place to get the spray foam projects done in a timely manner.
And all at once, we’re bringing in 3-4 people, which feels like a massive leap. To me it feels like we either take a run at this and do the long jump, or stay at our current size. Here’s the kicker. In order for us to sustain a payroll increase of 30-50% more, we also need to sustain sales that drive overall revenue at a higher level than before, because work doesn’t just materialize out of thin air.
Taking the leap will bring all sorts of challenges. I suspect that the most significant challenges will be organization and communication. A group of 14-15 people is not a small, tight team anymore. This will likely require departmental leaders and communication between the departments to be the glue that syncs us together. Personally, I hope that my leadership is at high enough of a level to take the organization to the next level without too much pain. The reality is that I will be stretched and will need to grow. Probably, a lot. At the end of the day, an organization can only become as great as its leader(s).
