Scale Up or Save? How to decide if you should grow your business or save for the future by Peter Boolkah
There has been a lot of upheaval in recent months with many changes to our political and industrial landscape.
As the conversation with my client progressed I explored the reasons for them considering their options. Their business is performing really well, growing at 30% per annum. They generate over
There’s a multitude of different opinions out there
£10m in turnover so the business is good but they
about what the future of British business might look
are concerned that in order to maintain growth
like and as a result I want offer my thoughts on
they need to invest in more machinery and, most
whether now is a good time for businesses to scale
importantly, in more people. Due to the nature of
up or should they prepare for another recession?
their business it will be impossible to scale beyond a certain size without increasing their
The idea for this article came about following a
workforce.
conversation with a client when they posed this exact question. I was taken aback for a second,
If we go back to the theory that the last
thinking to myself “what do you mean by scaling
recession finished about ten years ago we could
down? What do you mean about recession?” But
assume there is about another five years before
when I thought about it it’s a perfectly sensible
the next recession may hit. That’s five years of
question. History has taught us that recessions
opportunity that as a business, if you spend all
generally come in ten to fifteen year cycles. If we
that time and money in your marketing engine, in
agree that the end of the last recession was
your sales engine, why would you want to not
around 2009, and we’re now in 2019, then it’s
take the full benefit? The message here is
roughly ten years since the last recession. It'd be fair to say if we take history as an example,
Don't cut your growth plan short
perhaps we've got more good years behind us that we have in front.
06 |
FBM Summer 2018
09 |
FBM Spring 2019