Growing your company can often be just as challenging as starting it because it throws up problemsyou can’t anticipate before you start your company. Starting from scratch is difficult, but it is at least a linear process that can be planned for. If all goes well, one minute, your company does not exist, and the next, it does. It is easily quantifiable.
However, this linear projection stops when you hit a wall of commercial growth. There are countless reasons why it is difficult to grow a business, ranging from lack of staff, a flawed product, and skewed pricing plans to fashion changes and unforeseen market shifts.
Hitting that wall
It can feel like a wall you are unable to climb. You managed to struggle through the hard work of starting your enterprise from scratch, and your momentum begins to grow. It is all the more crushing, then, when you hit the ceiling and can’t progress.While this does not necessarily mean the end of your company entirely, it can stunt its growth and leave you in a vicious circle of botched product launches, fleeing customers, and lack of staff morale.
Of course, this is not to say it is impossible to overcome these issues. In fact, one of the most powerful yet underrated solutions to your business growth struggles could be further education, such as online MBA programs.
While it does not cater for fundamental problems with your product or branding, by developing your own skills and accepting responsibility for a portion of your company’s issues, you can attempt to work through the problem constructively.This is because, in many cases, a small business struggles to grow because its founder or manager fails to grow with it. Learning new skills and widening your perspective can help alleviate this stagnation and inject new energy into the business.
Here’s how further education could help you to grow your business:
Online MBA programs help you improve in many areas
It is easy to believe that, as a business owner or manager, you already understand everything you need to know about commercial ideas and processes. However, there is always more you can learn, and often it is the small details that can make all the difference to your business.With online MBA programs, you have the opportunity to learn a variety of skills, including accounting, finance, marketing, and leadership. While you may believe you already have a basic understanding of these areas, there may be glaring details you are overlooking.
Studying deeply gives you the chance to develop fresh ideas
A fantastic aspect of online MBA programs is that they encourage you to think critically and independently. It is not like going back to school, having to learn and recite a set curriculum from a textbook. You can think for yourself and explore whole new concepts you were not aware of before.
Furthermore, by combining independent work with group work, you have the opportunity to share your ideas with other corporate professionals and listen to theirs. This incorporates the mastermind principle utilized by many business leaders to develop innovative ideas and grow their companies.
You don’t have to revisit old ground
One misconception with online MBA programs is that you will have to relearn subjects you already understand perfectly well. As the manager of a business, it can be easy to think it is a waste of time to go over old ground.
In reality, these online courses offer personalization options for the course in order to accommodate students from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels. You can decide which areas you are most interested in and avoid the theories you already understand.
Online MBA Programs can provide you with greater flexibility
A challenge of being tied to a business is that your time is precious, and your personal circumstances are built around it. Resultantly, you cannot simply up-sticks and move to another town or city to study at a university or spend all your time revising. Again, this is why online courses are so useful.
You can fit online MBA programs into your existing lifestyle, working from your laptop rather than commuting to a university lecture hall. It allows you to maintain your job without having to make difficult sacrifices or feel like you are going backward by becoming a student again. Ultimately, your time is under your control.
The trick is to combine real-world and online MBA programs
Another reason why further education could help you grow your business is that it provides an extra dimension to your personal development without sacrificing the real-world experiences that are so crucial to learning new skills.Although you may learn a great deal every day simply from running a company, in reality, you may be missing out on faster growth by not basing it on theory learning. This is because you can become more proactive with anticipating problems rather than relying on reactionary and instinctive decision making.
It is crucial to understand the core pillars of business
While the world of commerce is incredibly diverse, there are a number of fundamental theories, processes, and approaches to commerce that you can learn or improve your understanding of.
Of course, this can only benefit the day-to-day running of your enterprise, and by understanding these concepts from a different perspective, you can find fresh solutions to help grow your company.
Not all great leaders are born that way – education can help
It can be tempting to believe that great business leaders are inherently charismatic and can inspire their companies to greater heights with nothing more than wit and instinct.Nothing could be further from the truth. While, of course, some people have naturally stronger people skills than others, it doesn’t mean that a great deal of effective leadership can’t be learned. In the same way that many impressive actors are naturally shy, it is actually an advantage to study online MBA programs deeply to grasp the underlying principles you can use to help your company grow.
Of course, you can learn these vital skills through a number of means, whether online MBA programs or even YouTube tutorials and leadership experts who hold one-on-one coaching sessions. Capitalizing on these details can help you to push your company forward and achieve the necessary growth.
Keep on top of tasks
A huge challenge faced by many small business owners is that they run their companies completely by themselves. If you run a business by yourself, further education can help you keep on top of your daily tasks. This means they have to handle finances one second and sales the next. If you find yourself in this situation, further education could help your overall efficiency.
For example, if your accounting skills are not efficient enough, you could face major tax issues or spend hours wasting time, trying to keep track of paperwork.Although it may feel like too much of a burden to dedicate your precious time to studying rather than trying to grow commercially, in reality, this mindset is a false economy.
After all, being busy is not the same as being productive. If you can develop your skills in crucial areas such as finance and accounting, you have the potential to save yourself significant amounts of money in the medium term, which can then be freed up to hire dedicated staff members.
Like any worthwhile investment, it may feel painful in the short term, but the long-term results can be highly lucrative.
Take advantage of the increasing trend of one-person businesses with well-rounded expertise
A growing commercial trend in recent years has been the increase of small, single-person businesses. This is a result of the wider economic and cultural shift towards digital nomadism, whereby individuals work from their laptop rather than an office. It has shattered the preconception that you need continually increasing quantities of staff and office space to expand your company.
In reality, nothing could be further from the case. While you may need to increase your number of staff in order to create and process more orders and products, it is not necessarily true for many companies and can actually hinder their progress.
This is because you may not be lacking the necessary people, but the necessary skills, in order to expand. If you run a marketing agency by yourself, for example, you can easily grow by creating a more effective funnel of products. You could create an email list promoting your products with little effort needed or enter into a joint venture agreement with another marketer.
You can learn how to use these simple techniques by learning online without having to sacrifice your lifestyle or neglect your business.
Trust
It is important to know who to trust when it comes to learning complex business and accounting principles. Although there are a number of places you can turn to online for business training, it is crucial to choose who you listen to wisely. This is because there are, naturally, a great many disreputable sources you can waste time and money with, leaving you no better off than when you started.
Naturally, one of the easiest ways to avoid this happening to you is to choose an established online university course, but if this is not an option, you should simply avoid any internet teachers who claim to offer ‘get rich quick’ style products and unbelievable promises.
You should not be looking to dramatically transform your business overnight but search for incremental improvements in order to help grow your company. It is normal (and even necessary) to combine various different sources of learning – whether online courses, eBooks, podcasts, or YouTube tutorials – but you must be cautious of who you learn from, especially when handing over hard-earned money.
Use a range of different teaching methods to learn on the move
When you are running a business, free time is a luxury, not a certainty. This is why it is important that you implement your learning into your day-to-day routine, rather than attempting to work late into the night, exhausting yourself.
For instance, if you’re looking to learn new sales techniques, you could listen to a sales podcast again and again while out on your daily jog or while you’re getting ready in the morning. The same is true of audiobooks or other recorded audio products. By integrating your learning into your existing lifestyle, you will require less willpower and feel less strained by the extra effort while increasing the chances of making lasting change.
An online MBA is not just about theories
It is easy to assume that any university-based course is purely based on theory and quantifiable subjects you can be examined on. As a result, it could be argued that there are many crucial elements of successful business management that cannot be taught, only developed through real-world experience.
This assumption is wrong because online MBA programs can teach you many basic skills that can stand you and your business in extremely good stead. For instance, by developing the ability to make more effective ethical decisions, or at least sharpening your ability to make the best decisions for your business, can boost staff morale and make your inputs as a business manager more positive and productive.
Before you can hire great staff, you need to know what their roles entail
Of course, if you do need to take on new staff members in order to grow, you will need to understand their roles to assess whether your candidates would be a good fit. Many business owners make the mistake of hiring the candidate with the most experience or grades without really understanding if their personality or experience is a good fit for the role’s specific requirements. As a result, the owner could easily become suspicious or even hostile towards the employee if there is a problem, rather than working through the issue with them.
This often stems from simple ignorance, as the owner never learned anything about different departments of their own company. This can be disastrous for staff morale, corporate strategy, and the overall growth of the company. Instead, by taking the time to develop skills in a variety of core areas, it is easier to understand what is required in each job and department and set more realistic targets for employees.