Contractors can and do evolve, turning their one-person companies into growth businesses. Sometimes, all it takes is the right support at the right time for a contractor’s great new piece of software, or widget or new service concept, to take off.
Compared to when I started contracting in the mid-nineties, there is considerably more enterprise support available from both public and private sector sources. I had to learn business skills on-the-job, and often the hard way. That’s one of the reasons I wrote and have just updated the Contractors Handbook – so that other contractors, both newcomers and veterans, could benefit from the lessons I learnt about how to start and run a successful, profitable contracting business.
But growing a company beyond a purely one or two person contracting business takes an enhanced skill set that most mainstream contractors don’t have. When I halted my contracting career to work full time on ContrcatorCalculator.co.uk, I went through a similar learning curve. But this time I don’t intend to write a handbook about my experience because there is already a huge amount of enterprise support already available to help contractors grow their business.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing many contractors who want to grow their businesses is securing the finance to do so. It is a surprisingly common scenario when a contractor has a good idea, the client agrees to go ahead but the contractor requires an injection of capital to implement the project. Business planning for growth and fundraising are generally skills contractors don’t have much need for.
One of the first places to start is Business Link. Although much reduced compared to its former glory, when you could attend a huge range of training courses, receive grants and funding, and even benefit from one-to-one advice from a specialist adviser, there is still a useful website and telephone support. The website includes an interactive section on fundraising and even a finance finder database of public and private finance sources.
Local support for growing businesses on the ground can be provided by Local Enterprise Partnerships, or LEPs. They replaced, in part, the direct field-based support provided by Business Link and the Regional Development Agencies, which were scrapped by the Coalition. The level of support you can expect will vary according to where you plan to base your business.
The alternative is to use the many sources of advice and support from the private sector. These include the finance sections of business community portals such as inspiresme. Sites like this are often sources of practical advice from entrepreneurs who have been through the mill and can offer contractors insights that could mean the difference between a successful fundraising round and a demoralising failure.
And often, it is not funding that a contractor needs to grow their business but a partner. The contractor might have invented a gadget and needs a partner to prototype and test market the final product, eventually taking it to market. After all, why recreate business infrastructure when you can bootstrap your product using someone else’s?
Contractors with science and technology oriented business ideas can use organisations such as the Technology Strategy Board and the Enterprise Europe Network to find partners in the UK and abroad. You may then find that your chances of securing additional funding, if you need it, are considerably enhanced as a result of your new partner.
Whether it’s a grant or business angel you need, or perhaps a distributor with access to markets you can’t reach, you don’t have to grow your business alone. There is a wealth of advice and support that was not available when I was starting out, so make sure you take full advantage of the resources available. You don’t need to fly solo!
And for those of you who don’t have great growth ambitions? There’s the Contractors’ Handbook, now in its second edition, and designed to provide you with all the strategies and tactics you need to run a successful and profitable contracting business.