Your Business is Having Growing Pains When...

At some point in our lives we all feel the pain of growing up. For some of us it occurs in our knees and legs and keeps us up all night. As your mother always told you, “It’s just growing pains; it’ll stop soon, just wait and see”. But it’s easier to handle when your body is expanding to become a “big kid”. What do you do when you are feeling those pains in your business? Mom’s advice is somehow inadequate when it’s your business growing. Increasing your staff by 50% in one year, going through multiple changes in staff, and even getting a new building can all be very challenging when you’re trying to run a business. After just over twelve years of business I and my team over at Coco Design Associates are feeling this pain. We are discovering that growing pains are both a blessing and a curse.

Here are just some of the common pains a growing company experiences and the ways we are handling them:

1. Not meeting goals: One of my primary goals for the company was to return all calls the day they were received. To me the first sign that the company would start feeling growing pains came when we did not meet that goal. It may have resulted from a combination of too many people calling, not enough people on staff as well as no formal system for tracking the calls. Other goals not met were time and quality related as well. This problem of not meeting goals (and its solution) ties very well into the next problem a growing company might experience.
2. Billing issues: Another sign of growing pains came when billing was not being done in a timely manner. Some invoices were taking weeks to be processed and delivered and money was not being deposited in the bank quickly enough. This problem was fairly easy to take care of. We adopted NetSuite’s software to help them with billing and hired an Operations and Accounting Manager to head up operations and accounting management. These two steps were instrumental in easing growing pains, after we went through the long (9 month) set-up and orientation process. But now that a computer program and person have been dedicated to track both calls and invoices, things have gotten a bit easier.
3. Double duty: In the beginning when the company was still small and had a manageable client list, it was simple for me and my partner to do many things all at once. Once the company got a bit larger, this multitasking created problems for me. To begin with, it became more and more difficult for me to personally support existing clients and also develop relationships with new clients. It also started taking more time for me to accomplish my tasks for the week which took time away from my family. Going from being a small company and spending a lot of time with my son to having two jobs in one medium sized company pained me. The best way to fix a double duty is to only have one job and give the other to someone else. In December of 2006 we hired a Vice President of Business Development. This way we had someone dedicated to gaining new business.
4. New people: Hiring someone usually means a company is making all the right moves. New employees make things easier and bring on new ideas. So why is it on this list? It is because hiring someone has a whole set of problems that are only amplified during a period of growth. Hiring means training and paying a new employee. Sometimes I am too busy doing the job of the person I hired to train them to do their job. It’s important to balance doing tasks and teaching tasks and not end up just shoving a new employee into the fray. Although the new people we have taken on have survived, it’s mostly due to their experiences and natures and not to any formal on the job training they may have received, even if that only means meeting the crew.
5. Asking too much: Having growing pains of your own is never any fun. The only thing that makes them worse is when you see your pains hurting other people. Good businessmen, managers, and friends know when to ask for help. Better businessmen, managers, and friends don’t need to because it is often offered to them. I’m lucky enough to have a devoted staff that is willing to help because they understand the greater goal of the company. While I feel guilty that they are at the office outside of traditional working hours, I know they just want the best and I couldn’t really stop them if I tried. The best thing I can do is show them my gratitude and treat them all with the respect they deserve for being so devoted.
6. Decline in service quality: During periods of growth work is often done reactively instead of proactively. It doesn’t help when you’re trying to grow to have your clients upset with something you’ve done. This pain is especially felt when the problem in question takes some time to solve. This takes away time and programmers from other projects being worked on. Hiring our Operations and Accounting Manager helped a lot but the best solution here was to just try to adjust to the new way of doing things and keep in constant communication. This way everyone knows what everyone else is responsible for and no problem gets left behind. For this reason we implemented BaseCamp which is a good tool to track projects and even assign tasks. It’s really great once we get a client in on it too!
7. Space: The space you work in creates the environment you work in. Although the office on Intendencia Street was really good for a smaller company and was a beautiful building, we felt the space when the company doubled in size. Now the company is based on Baylen Street in our equivalent of the bachelor pad. While we have enough space to breathe and can alter the space to fit our needs, the move has not been completely wonderful because a new space creates new issues like costs incurred with renovations and new leasing terms. It also expands the amount of people you are responsible to or for. In addition to managing my team, I am managing sub-contractors and other people who work on the building. But every time we finish painting a wall or fixing the floors, I realize it’s worth it.
8. Relieving old pains causing new ones: As mentioned, moving into a larger space created more issues. The new building needed a lot of work before the team could move in. It had to be gutted, cleaned, and it needed reliable power and connectivity, two very important aspects of working at a web design company. The building was not complete when we moved in and we are constantly moving furniture and work stations around the building. Often there is work being done in the building while there is work being done to the building but no one seems to mind. Most of us either go to lunch or drown out noises with headphones. We all like that we can mold and shape the space to fit our needs so it’s a pain we’re willing to take and we often tell ourselves that it couldn’t go on that much longer.
9. Unexpected events: No matter when they happen, things beyond our control always mess us up. When you’re already in pain from your growing, these things are just that much worse. Coco was a brand new company when Hurricane Opal came along and halted production for 7 months. Fast forward years later and Coco is still growing and along come Hurricanes Ivan, and then Dennis. These two hurricanes didn’t cause any damage to the building (on Intendencia at the time), but they did stop production for about a week. Normally it’s not too complicated to catch up. Things get a little more difficult when you’re already starting to fall behind a little bit. It took the team three months to get things back to normal, which is a little longer than expected.

This is by no means a full list of the issues we deal with, these are just the big ones. Smaller ones include having to adjust to the way a larger company has to do business, and we discover new issues every day. What’s important for companies to remember is good peer and mentor relationships. You have to know when to ask for help and even try to anticipate and ask ahead of time. For me, having people to count on has helped me through the harder times of the growing pains. Communication with these mentors as well as communication with the team has been the most important aspect of dealing with our pains. But when will it all be over? What marks the turning point for everyone at Coco Design Associates? Whenever my stress indicating left eyelid stops twitching, things might be getting back to normal.