You’re starting out on your journey as a business owner, you’re still at just the idea stage, and growth seems like a dream not within a reachable distance. The dream to grow into a medium or big successful business/company seems foreign and impossible, but of course that is the ultimate goal. So when you as the business owner see yourself beginning to grow and success beginning to form within your business, you feel like you are really heading towards these goals. You imagine yourself as an owner of a nationwide company, striving. You’re excited right? Of course you are, but this growth can also be very scary. Seeing and facing this growth head on, ironically can also serve as one of your company’s biggest challenges.

“One of the biggest challenges we faced as a fast-growing company was the fact that we had grown before, quickly, but had to revert back just as quickly because we didn’t have the foundation for growth,” said Ryan, “The scariest thing about growing fast is that it feels like you could loose it just as fast.”

After facing a quick growth, something every business owner dreams of, Ryan and Ken realized that they had to go back to the basics and create this foundation so they could in fact continue to grow and not have to keep reverting.

“This time around, when we changed business models, we had the foundation for growth, the right people, and the right systems,” said Ryan, “Going from one to three trucks was a nightmare, but then going from three to eight was a pleasure.”

So what has contributed to the success the brothers have reached today? There are two factors that they believe single handedly changed their business path for the better:

They started to work on themselves as individuals. Inspired by a quote by Jim Rohn, “You need to work harder on yourself than you do on your job,” they began working on themselves. Ryan and Ken began to read self-help books for business, they worked on their personal traits and they really invested in themselves and bettering themselves as business owners, and people. “It’s not people who fail, it is systems,” said Ryan, “You can be disappointed in an employee’s performance, but often, we weren’t giving them the tools they needed to succeed.” They believe this is the number one sole factor that has contributed to their success, “Invest in yourselves and then you can invest in others. When you invest in yourself it pours out into everything else you do,” they said. They then passed this “work on you” attitude onto their employees, making book reports and reading a job requirement to advance in the company.
They stopped making emotional decisions and started making decisions based on numbers. When making this change to a quantitative method of measuring success as a business, they really had to get to know their business better and dig deep into the numbers. They not only had to work hard to understand all of this, and calculate where they were going wrong, but they also set defined goals based on intelligent data and numbers, rather than emotions and whims. “This is when our business was actually able to grow at a measurable rate,” said Ryan.

Starting a business can be scary, it can be challenging, and it can be completing deflating, but it can also be so rewarding. Today The Brothers that just do Gutters is a successful nationwide franchise, which surely Ken and Ryan believed to be only a dream when they first started. Learning from your mistakes and working on yourself first can be key to your success as a business owner. Not looking to reinvent the wheel? You could always become a Brother Gutters Franchisee!

Starting a Business: Growth & Challenges