You’ve done something that most people only dream about: you’ve not only started a business but also brought it to the point of sustainability.

It’s a great accomplishment, and some would want to settle there — but not you. You have grander ambitions, and your next objective is to expand your business, though there’s an issue: you either don’t have the funds to hire new staff, or you simply don’t want to do any recruitment (maybe you’re happy with things as they are). 

Sounds tricky, doesn’t it?

Expansion means more work, and without new staff to handle it, you’d expect it to get overwhelming. Thankfully, with EOR services, it’s never been more viable to build a global team — acquiring overseas talent is as easy as Googling ‘employer of record Texas,’ for example. But growing your business isn’t just about how many employees you have on your payroll. It’s all about how you expand, and there are ways to build your company without hiring new staff.

Here are four essential things you should think about.

4 Ways To Expand Your Business Without Hiring New Staff

1. Invest in long-term training schemes

Over time, your staff members should get better at their jobs: more efficient, more versatile, and more knowledgeable. This will make it possible for the company to achieve more without adding to the roster, but it isn’t guaranteed — if you want it to happen, you need to invest in meaningful and relevant training on an indefinite basis.

There’s also the possibility that your employees aren’t in their ideal positions. For instance, you might have hired someone as a graphic designer — and they may be very competent in that role — but they might actually be much more effective working in sales. It’s only by encouraging your workers to try different things (and letting people know that you’re open to them changing their roles) that you’ll discover that type of underlying potential.

2. Use automation to free up working time

Plenty of small businesses are riddled with operational inefficiency. They get used to figuring things out on an ad-hoc basis, coming up with solutions that work but are far clumsier than is practical. By implementing automation, you can ensure that repetitive tasks get dealt with without any significant manual intervention, allowing workers to focus on more creative tasks.

As for what you can automate, it depends on how inventive you can get. Various standard business tasks can be handled through free tools (worker payment can be automated through Wave’s free payroll system, for instance, and the scheduling tool Calendly has a free tier). If you want to get more advanced, you can try using broader automation tools with myriad integrations (there are various viable choices such as these).

3. Focus on high-value clients

Not all clients are equally significant to your business, and a common issue faced by small businesses is spending excessive amounts of time and money trying to keep low-value clients happy. It’s all but impossible to expand when resources are being allocated in this way. The bright side, though, is that there’s a good chance that getting rid of those low-value clients will free up the resources you need to expand (with your high-value clients keeping you going).

Look carefully at your cash flow, think about where your money is coming from, and relate that to what your employees are spending their time doing. Things should be proportionate: if a client is paying 50% of your income, then there should be a 50% cap on how long you’ll spend doing work for that client. And if a client is only paying you enough for a couple of working hours each month, don’t do any more than that. It isn’t worth it in the long run. Find better clients.

4. Partner with other businesses

That you’re not hiring any new staff doesn’t mean your work needs to be limited to your team because you always have the option of finding other businesses to partner with. This is particularly useful if you’re looking to expand into a new field or a new location because you’ll benefit significantly from getting some assistance.

A good business partnership will be mutually beneficial from a financial standpoint and will also provide your employees with new opportunities to expand their skills and get better at what they do. Try arranging a creative ideation session to come up with some viable partners, then come up with a pitch to explain the value you bring to the table. After that, it’s all in the presentation.

Conclusion

If you have long-term ambitions for growing your business significantly, you will almost certainly need to hire new staff eventually (whether full-time or part-time), but even if you’re not at that point yet, you can still expand using one or more of these tactics.