‘Managing and Growing Your Business’ was the topic of USPAACC’s third webinar of the Business Leadership Series (BLS). The two speakers–Ammu Warrier (President of DCRWorkforce) and Lisa Delpy Neirotti (Investor/Partner at Minx Nails) –joined the session to share their personal experiences in managing and growing their small businesses.
In 2008, Minx nails revolutionized the nail industry when Beyonce wore the product to the Globen Globe Awards. Lisa and the Minx team experienced rapid growth when they introduced the product to the market through high end sales. Partners’ lived the celebrity lifestyle, travelled around theworld, and made deals with distributors. They were working hard with a goal of building a strong brand that could be sold to a company like Revlon. As it turned out, the company experienced some growing pains with infringement concerns, uncontrolled expenses and greater competition. Today, the company is working on a more user friendly website, drastically cut expenses and launched a new product line. As Lisa explained during the live session, ‘we restructured, so now we only have one Chief, instead of all Chiefs and no Indians.’
Ammu Warrier talked in detail about transitioning from start-up to the growth stage, stages of finance, dealing with the growth plateau, things to avoid, surviving the transition and managing the growth stage. “When you keep goingup, is it necessary to have a slump going down?”
Ammu explained that as your company grows, your work changes instead of dropping off as you move ahead to take the next step. Over time, your competitors change, there are more complexities to manage, and it can be very hard. Typically, what happens in most companies is that they hit the growth plateau. In the case of DCR Workforce, this is when they developed a new product line –SmartTrak, a SaaS-based Vendor Management System (VMS). Don’t keep rolling the dice and relying on risk.
Especially in today’s technology driven world, there is a constant struggle, and it’s critical to have both leaders as well as innovators in your team. You never know where you will be in five years.
