Bob Phibbs

Author: “You Can Compete! The Retail Doctor’s Tools to Double Your Sales”

The challenge you run into is really keeping your eye on the fundamentals that got you into business in the first place. How do you keep your eye on that while you grow your company is the hard part.

As businesses grow their concept, they realize more and more it’s their people that make them successful. There’s not much loyalty and people often times bring bad habits to your brand. You need the right people to juggle so many projects.

You have to hire new employees before you need them. That’s always the challenge. By the time you hire them, usually you’re a couple of months past when you should have done it.

Training new employees takes a lot of time and is very expensive, but it’s not something you can do without. I run into people who ask, ‘What if I train them and they leave?’ and I always respond, ‘What if you don’t train them and they stay?’

The number one goal is never say no. It’s up to you to find a way. Look at new suppliers. Look at pricing. Find a way to make it happen. If you want to be in business, then say yes.

Instead of waiting for things to break and fixing them, you need to look at the things that could happen and have a contingency plan. You have to budget resources, money and time.

Yvonne Randle


Co-author with Eric Flamholtz: “Growing Pains: Transitioning from an Entrepreneurship to a Professionally Managed Firm”

Success is wonderful but it has to be managed. To be successful, you need to change from a market focus to ensuring you have the resources to grow.

A rapidly growing company is successful and is going to have growing pains. But the more severe the growing pains are, the more apparent the company hasn’t invested in the next stage of growth and the more they risk failure.

As organizations grow, they focus primarily on markets, their customers and getting products out the door. If you’re so outwardly focused you ignore infrastructure. You’re like a kid who grows too fast and you outgrow your bones. You can grow yourself into ruin.

There’s a pyramid of organizational development. It builds from the base up. To make the transition from one stage to the next, you have to first get internal systems and processes in place. A primary tool is to implement a strategic plan that not just focuses on markets but also internally on what it will take to get to where you need to be.

Rapidly growing companies are by their very definition successful. But that can also be deceiving. In some cases, companies assume that success will continue because they’ve been successful in the past. That’s an enormous mistake.

I’ve worked with companies that say ‘This is the year we are going to get our house in order.’ They devote resources internally before trying to jump to the next expansion phase. They’re not turning business away, just not going out and finding more.