Growing My Business

Planning for the growth of my business is something that I've been slightly uneasy about due to my inherent lack of knowledge and experience in business. From what I have experienced from my talks with Tim Hoover, the founder of Auto Claim Solutions, it is best to start small with minimal staffing, and then work your way up in size and hire more people. I still don't understand how some people are able to start a business with 60 people on their payroll, and not go belly-up. Tim has told me that in his business, he has himself and only three other employees. He has yet to elaborate on what the roles of each of his employees are, but I can make an educated guess that he farms out a majority of the work to other firms.

Knowing this, I think that my staffing would be minimal to begin with, and that I would have to hire a multitude of different firms to do a majority of the development and marketing work, so that I could concentrate on growing my business. Once my business has reached a reasonable size and I have been able to obtain a positive cash flow (probably within three years), I would begin to increase my staffing. I would however probably hire a few information technology guys to maintain the website and the software.

When I did this start increasing my staffing, I would likely start by hiring four salesmen and then strategically place them around the country. This way, I would be able to start increasing the expansion of my business across the country. I could see a large amount of my business coming from referrals between auto repair shops. If you have a good idea, and it works for people, it will spread like wildfire.