Learning how to grow a small business takes effort and knowledge. But you’re not alone. This guide will help you with practical tips on key aspects. These include writing a current business plan, getting the right tech, building support, funding, building your team, marketing and more.
Every great business starts with an idea, but turning that idea into a thriving company comes with challenges. Not only do you have to balance finances and discover the right customers, but you also need to grow sustainably and maintain a strong online presence. This is where expert advice from experienced business owners and entrepreneurs is key. They can help you take your business to the next level.
Experts like Logan Shinholser, owner of the Contractor Growth Network in Charlotte, North Carolina, and executive Bob Marshall stress the value of a clear business plan and careful financial planning from the outset. Meanwhile, leaders like Mark Madrid highlight the importance of building strong support networks to guide your growth. Their proven track records of growing successful businesses and guiding hundreds of entrepreneurs makes them ideal mentors for anyone looking to scale a small business.
That’s why we created this small business growth guide. In just a few minutes, you’ll gain actionable small business tips, growth strategies and insights from today’s experts to take your business to the next level. You’ll learn how to create a growth plan, build a strong support network, scale your business effectively and more.
8 Tips and Resources to Scale Your Small Business
Deciding what part of your business to scale up can be overwhelming. Where do you start? Operations? Hiring? Funding? When deciding how to grow a small business, the possibilities are endless. Here are eight tips and resources to get you on the right path to sustainable scaling.
1. Write a Business Plan
Shinholser wrote a business plan before quitting his full-time job.
“My father-in-law told me to write a business plan just so a bank wouldn’t laugh at me if I needed a loan, which was great advice because it made me think through my market and highlighted what I didn’t know about my business,” Shinholser says.
“Every business has different startup costs, but they all have one thing in common: having a financial cushion,” says Bob Marshall, a business growth and strategy executive at Wells Fargo. “First, you need to understand what service or product you want to sell and figure out who your customers are. You need to know what your costs will be and whether your business is scalable.”
According to Marshall, a written business plan is crucial to clarify your plans and your finances. “You need to know the cost of your business, how money will move through your business and how you’ll become profitable,” Marshall says.
2. Upgrade Your Tech Stack
As you learn how to grow your small business, another key to scale is by upgrading your business software. Nowadays, AI is giving small business owners a leg up—even if they’re competing with large corporations. In fact, there are many automation tools that can be powerful small business resources as you grow. Here are some AI tools you can start using immediately to scale your operations.
| Small Business Tools | Category | Key Features | Best Use Cases |
| Jasper/Copy.ai | Content generation | Create blog posts, SEO briefs, website copy; multiple templates; multilingual support; editing and refinement tools | Marketing, SEO, website content, social media |
| HubSpot AI CRM/Zoho Zia | Customer relationship management (CRM) | Consolidates customer data and insights; automates sales data entry, lead scoring and forecasting | Sales, customer relationship management, lead nurturing |
| ChatGPT | All-in-one assistant | Generates content, analyzes data, writes emails, brainstorms, creates images and acts as a virtual business assistant | General business support, marketing, customer communication, data analysis |
| Tidio/Intercom | Customer support chatbots | Real-time multilingual chat support; personalized responses; Intercom mimics tone, follows policies and performs customer actions | Customer service, sales support, lead qualification |
| QuickBooks (Intuit Assist) | Finance and accounting | Automates invoices and expense records from notes/emails; personalized invoice reminders for faster payments | Accounting, bookkeeping, cash flow management |
| Grammarly/Hemingway | Writing enhancement | Grammar corrections, rewriting and suggestions; Hemingway highlights readability issues and applies AI-powered fixes | Marketing, blogging, email communication, reports |
Build Your Support Network
Shinholser says his business is thriving because of the support of mentors and mastermind groups. Mastermind groups, which are also sometimes called an “advisory board” are small groups of business owners that provide each other with support and the expertise they’ve gained.
While Shinholser was fortunate enough to have his father and father-in-law give him advice about starting a business as well as his mastermind groups, not everyone gets that support—or finds success. Around 20% of businesses typically fail in their first year, according to LendingTree’s analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and almost 50% fail in their fifth year.
“To manage the challenges of running your own business, you need a relationship with a lawyer, an accountant and any other professionals specific to your business,” Marshall says. “It’s also smart to get to know other entrepreneurs through the Chamber of Commerce or other business networking groups.”
Marshall recommends establishing a “kitchen cabinet” or advisory board of three to five people you trust to support you and provide advice.
“Some may be business owners, but they don’t have to be,” Marshall says. “These should be people who will give you feedback on your business plan and help you define it.”
Secure Financing to Upgrade Your Operations
Many early-stage entrepreneurs need financial support for supplies, marketing or to hire employees to scale their business.
“The Small Business Administration (SBA) offers grants and loans, including microloans of less than $50,000, to help entrepreneurs get started,” says Mark Madrid, founder and CEO of Breakthrough Mavens and former SBA associate administrator. “The most important thing is to know the difference between loan products and what you may be eligible for depending on your business.”
SBA programs such as SCORE, which provides mentors to entrepreneurs, and Small Business Development Centers, which provide technical support to business owners, can connect people to funding sources including lenders and investors in their region, Madrid says.
Know What the Different Types of Funding Are
A key aspect of working on how to grow a small business involves funding. However, not all types of financing for small businesses are created equal. Marshall explains each type below.
Business Loans
“Whether you choose to borrow money or fund your business with investment capital depends in some way how you feel about debt,” Marshall says. “A loan has the advantage of having terms that you can match to your needs. Once you’ve repaid it, you’re done. But the payments have to be made no matter how your business is doing. And in many cases, you need to pledge your personal assets as collateral, which could mean you would face personal losses and damage to your credit score if you default.”
Equity Financing
If you choose to have investors to help scale your business, you don’t have to pay them dividends immediately and can avoid time-bound obligations, Marshall says. “You can gain insight from your investors if they have experience with other businesses,” he says. “On the other hand, you’re giving up some equity in your business and possibly some control over how you manage it. Equity costs more than debt because investors assume more risk.”
Marshall says business owners shouldn’t relinquish control lightly.
“What you pay back to your investors may be more than they put into your business,” he says.
Connecting with a business banker and an accountant are crucial steps for any entrepreneur to build a strong financial foundation.
Need a bit more of a boost? Here are some extra resources on funding for small businesses:
- The SBA’s “fund your business” section on their website explains the various financing options for entrepreneurs.
- The Opportunity Finance Network provides a searchable database to find community development financial institutions, which offer small businesses in underserved communities financial support, coaching and advice.
Add More Team Members to Your Roster
For many companies, hiring more staff is the gold standard of growth. While it might not be the same for small businesses, hiring additional personnel can still prove to be a boost to your business’ bottom line—if done correctly. Here’s how to use it well in business growth strategies.
Find Gaps in Your Organization
When you choose to hire a new staff member to fill a role or to supplement a current one, it should be done based on gaps you see in your business. To find these gaps as a small business owner, try asking yourself:
- Are there areas I am struggling in?
- Where am I not keeping up on a day-to-day basis?
- What department(s) are overloaded and continually missing deadlines?
- What are my short- and long-term business goals and how can a new hire help accomplish them?
Once you know where your organization is lacking, you’ll know who to hire to fill in the gaps.
Hire for Now and for the Future
Making the decision to simply fill a short-term role isn’t the right approach. Instead, aim to hire someone that will grow with your company and provide value throughout its lifespan.
Part of hiring for the future includes successfully onboarding the new hire. They need to know how to do their role properly if they are to have a long and fulfilling career in your business.
Need some help creating an onboarding process? Check out our Ultimate Onboarding Checklist.
How to Grow a Small Business With Smart Marketing
A key part of scaling your business is learning to market it successfully. More customers equals more revenue and more capital to grow. Marketing for small businesses doesn’t have to be complicated, either. Here are some strategies you can implement immediately.
Research Your Target Market
The first part of a successful marketing plan is knowing who to target and if your current marketing strategies are working.
To learn about your customers through market research, simply start by implementing actions to engage with your customers to learn about them. This can be done in a number of ways including:
- Create customer knowledge surveys
- Conduct group and one-on-one interviews with clients
- Create focus groups
- Review how customers interact with your product services (e.g., read your Google reviews posted online)
Once you have multiple types of information on your customers (e.g., demographic, career, location, age) put these into a single document to review and organize.
Create Targeted Ads and Campaigns
With this new customer information in hand, creating ads and targeted email campaigns should have higher conversion rates and allow you to reach more consumers effectively. Here’s an example: Let’s say you operate a financial advisory firm. After doing swaths of market research, you come to realize most of your potential clients are seniors. So, you create personalized ads promoting your retirement planning services.
As you learn how to grow a small business, good marketing matters. Proper marketing doesn’t need to be complex, but it does need to be intentional.
Don’t Forget About Your Current Clients
Keeping your clients satisfied is another way to scale your business from a marketing standpoint, and it doesn’t require breaking the bank. Simple strategies to reward your clients might be:
- Creating a loyalty program to reward returning clients
- Prioritizing customer service at all levels
- Contacting previous clients to offer them promotional deals given their previous business
- Following through on promises made to clients
Don’t Scale Your Business Too Quickly
Discovering how to grow a small business is exciting, but it’s important to go at the right pace. Once established, your advisory board can help you clarify your business strategy and adapt as your business changes and grows. They can also connect you to other resources within their network and provide feedback to help you manage mistakes.
The biggest mistake Shinholser felt he made was just “going with his gut” to scale as quickly as possible. He joined a mastermind group that focused on coaches and consulting, but that pushed him to scale too quickly. Now, he belongs to a mastermind group of marketing agencies that help him focus on growing a healthy business.
“It was too much of a strain on my business and we lost money because of it,” he says. “We learned that the right way was to go slower and take our time to learn what our customers really needed.”
Scale Your Business One Step at a Time—Starting Today
Scaling your small business can feel daunting—what worked when you were smaller might not work when your operations grow. While there is risk in growing your organization, there is also a chance for more revenue and, more importantly, more fulfillment. But it requires strategic planning, leadership and a stomach for risk. These small business growth tips can help you get started on scaling.
Are you ready to take the next step? Check out our Goal-Setting E-Book for more resources and strategies to meet your business goals.
This article was updated September 2025. Photo courtesy of mavo/Shutterstock
