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Struggling with how fast my business is growing. Don’t know how to scale :( (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by Zoe_Rae@alien.top to c/entrepreneur@indiehackers.space

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Hey everyone!

I’ll get straight to the point. I am a first time entrepreneur and run a family business with my mom(she handles inventory maintenance and new hire custom builds) + sister (she is my part time assistant)

We have an event hire business that is at referral + corporate client stage- I’m hardly running ads to attract new clients. My biggest struggle as admin is creating systems and process for the business growth

Right now some event hire orders fall through the cracks, I don’t have an inventory management system and other things I probably don’t know I need. I’m still treating this business like a small side hustle and it’s not working for us anymore. My strengths are in marketing and sales so I have no idea how to handle the scale of a business internally or do customer care well.

Please provide advice on:

A good inventory manage system
New employee process that have worked for you (this might vague)
How do you handle customer care? After and before a transaction
Who should I look at as my next 2 hires? Right now it’s the 3 of us and we are overwhelmed. We have a driver that is a contractor + we have a pickup truck
How to get over the fear of a growing business. I’ve traditionally been afraid to hire and grow the business because of my control issues. No one does it better than us mentally

Thank you for all advice! 💕

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[–] Active_Cantaloupe810@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

If funds are limited set up inventory in excel. If you can fork out a bit then yes buy a software system to handle bookings, inventory and client management. EG what if the client needs to change their orders/reduce/increase/change location. Is this handled by email/calls? This would mean many email threads.

Inventory - if you do not get alerts how do you know when to stock up again? Excel could list items but alerts etc. would have to be handled manually.

Read up on various methods of handling inventory such as JIT. If you order stock last minute, storage costs less but you might not be able to handle last minute orders.

If you don't know where equipment is, it might be difficult to deliver. So you need an operations manager to handle that side/your mum/partner need to brush up on operations.

Customer Service: This could be a ticketing system or clients sending emails - once again emails/different thread wouldn't be well-organised. A basic CRM would help you here.

Hope this helps. And avoid AI. You don't need the extra expense. It won't solve your current issues.