Bates International RV Blog

Consultants, classes help business owners sharpen their skills, grow their enterprises.

Perhaps your business ran well when you started it.

A couple of years later, though, your work force and your sales are multiplying and so are the issues you face in serving your customers and accommodating your employees’ needs.

For many entrepreneurs who reach such crossroads, one answer can be found in continuing education.  They want additional training to guide them through the rough spots that come with an expanding business.

Options abound for professionals on the hunt for fresh business skills.  Getting the most out of continuing education requires knowing what’s available in the market, and how much it will cost.

Small-business consultants say there’s a sweet spot in the business-startup are during which entrepreneurs should think about seeking additional training.

Plenty of business owners know they need help launching a new company, and businesses that have made it past the five-year mark are often in growth mode and have worked out their biggest operational questions.

Problems generally emerge in the period between startup and maturation – the two years to five years after a company opens, said Anna Seifert, operations manager of the Nevada Micro enterprise Initiative and project director of the Women’s Business Center in Las Vegas.  That “emerging” phase is a potential trap for many business owners.

“For most people who go into business, all they can think of from the start is getting to that growth phase (in five years),” Seifert said.  “They forget to plan for in between startup and their growth place.  They leave a big gap.  That’s why 85 percent of businesses fail in their first three to five years – they didn’t plan for that emerging phase.  They flounder because they didn’t plan.”

Michael Waters, president of Phase 1 Sports in Las Vegas, have attended training through Siefert’s group several times.  He said continuing education has been essential to the growth of his athletic-scholarship business.

“It’s helped me learn about expansion,” Waters said.  “I’ve been trying to progress from a small business that I started and ran for three or four years on m own to bringing in a team and hiring people to handle different parts of the business so we can grow.”

For most entrepreneurs, concentrating on a few key areas can pay major dividends for their business.

Just about any owner or manager of a smaller concern could benefit from even rudimentary accounting training, said Rene Colen, a business counselor with the Service Corps of Retired Executives.

Colen has guided a number of small-business operators whose companies were doing well and began to stumble.  The usual culprit:  Their administrative processes weren’t equipped to properly manage accounting functions as their enterprise flourishes.

“Things start to get out of hand,” Colen said.  “They don’t understand why they’re doing so well business wise, but they don’t have any money in the bank.”

Because financial oversight touches so many aspects of a business, there are benefits to streamlining and upgrading fiscal skills, he said.  Tracking numbers properly can allow business owners to identify  their best customers and vendors – and their worst – and enable swift redirection toward a company’s more lucrative elements.

Inventory management also hobbles many small businesses particularly companies in manufacturing and retail.  The flow of goods and services changes as a company expands, and that can challenge many managers.

Marketing, advertising and sales are also essential to a broad range of businesses, and they’re top issues that drive entrepreneurs into SCORE’s offices for guidance.

Other concerns, such as intellectual-property rights or labor law, are often prime candidates for outsourcing, because they don’t often affect a company’s broader survival.  Rather than developing intensive knowledge in such areas, entrepreneurs should consider hiring consultants to deal with patents or to write or review human resources manuals.

Company owners can establish their own list of continuing education priorities by weighing their particular professional strengths.  Ask where your time is best-used, Craft said.

Any entrepreneur considering continuing education will need to determine whether the expense is worth it.  And there are major differences in the prices business owners will pay to upgrade their knowledge base.