Starting a new business isn’t the hardest part. Making it survive and grow is the key challenge.
In the UK, there are a growing amount of new business start-ups – 589,000 in 2017 alone at one estimate. But how many of those will go on to thrive remains to be seen. Some may have already hit the wall.
Once established, successfully ‘scaling’ a business is seen as the next big challenge. A successful small business won’t necessarily translate to a successful medium or large-sized business. The latest data shows that just under 31,500 businesses successfully ‘scale up’ annually. Given more than half a million launched last year, that’s not many.
Fortunately for people in recruitment, starting a new business is a lot easier than in some sectors. A talented recruiter with several years of experience under their belt, good local knowledge, a decent contacts list of clients and a driven and enthusiastic personality, has the potential to run a very successful business.
The Recruit Venture Group’s established model already offers these experienced recruiters all of the finance they need to get started, as well as providing all the back-office support needed to allow the business to focus generating revenues from day one.
But the Recruit Venture Group’s unique joint venture model not only gets these businesses established but actively supports scaling up. Here’s how.
A robust trading statement for the first year or two may be encouraging for a new business, but it might not necessarily impress the bank manager enough to part with the finance needed for serious growth. The Recruit Venture Group’s outlook however is to be ambitious and positive about the businesses it helps support. If trading is going well, it will unlock finance to open additional offices and expand the workforce, for example, without the onerous terms and conditions of a traditional lender. If the growth is there, the finance is there to support it.
Taking on more staff, for example, means more demands on payroll and HR. Opening new offices requires legal, marketing and other administrative support. Fast growth requires additional help from the accounts and IT side. These are all material considerations for most small businesses, costing time and money, and potentially holding back growth. But The Recruit Venture Group’s back-office support framework is designed to cope with the expansion of its partner businesses. In short, businesses can scale easily because the back office infrastructure is already in place, and with no financial or time cost involved for the person running it.
Business is a lot to do with networking. Knowing other talented people is vital and experienced contacts to call upon when opportunity knocks is hugely valuable. However, many small business owners don’t have fully formed networks to call upon at a moment’s notice. The Recruit Venture Group, however, has a huge array of talented individuals with vast experience in the recruitment sector, and in business generally. If there’s a barrier to growth that crops up, the chances are that one of The Recruit Venture Team will have come across it – and knows the best approach. If there’s a legal issue, marketing opportunity, HR problem, or simply an occasion where an experienced head is needed to bounce ideas off, The Recruit Venture Group is there to lend advice when its needed.
One of the best ways to grow a business is, to be frank, to copy the success of others. The Recruit Venture Group has 43 such success stories already up and running. That’s 43 businesses, all in the Recruitment Sector, but serving different industries, in different geographies, in different local economies and all with individual strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. That means The Recruit Venture Group is the hub through which all of those experiences and learnings can be shared (without giving away anything confidential, of course). This growing vault of knowledge can be tapped into whenever barriers to growth emerge.
Good recruiters don’t always make good statisticians and accountants – and they shouldn’t need to. But the numbers and data coming out of a business is vital to understanding how it can grow. Accountants and other consultants are expensive – but can be crucial to spotting a trend or opportunity that could unlock growth. The Recruit Venture Group has a skilled team of accountants and data analysts who can take a good look through the books and spot weaknesses and opportunities for growth. Doing business is a lot about gut instinct and drive, but when the numbers tell a story in black and white, that is usually something worth listening to. Understanding what is driving the growth of business, and, crucially, holding it back, might hold the key to successfully scaling up. The Recruit Venture Group offers that insight as an integral part of its unique business model.