As we approach Valentine’s Day our thoughts turn to love. Why is it that many who dream of running their own business often find over time, it becomes hard work and anything but a love affair?

Frequently a business start-up is created amid the excitement of great new ideas and dreams of how it will grow and develop. The driving force for this new enterprise is almost always the product it will provide, with the business organisation and management becoming a side issue akin to ‘doing the paperwork’ where necessary

Over the first few years, a start-up’s ideas are tried and tested, some work and others don’t, so you pursue what the customer wants, which brings in sales and starts the process of paying off the startup investment.

This is the natural progression as a business needs to make money if it is to survive, but it can be the first crack in the relationship. Producing your product becomes the routine that makes the money and your interest area can become a sideline.

Just to add an irritation, competitors notice what you are doing successfully and start copying you. This means you now have to manage your costs to keep an edge in the marketplace.

This creeps up on you, as you realise the start-up strategy of you managing all areas of the business isn’t working. You don’t have the detailed knowledge and experience, let alone the time, to manage, and do sales, marketing, HR, finance and customer service. An area that’s often overlooked, but that ties all this together, is business management.

The requirement at this time is to add the appropriate skills to the business, either by employing or by contracting out. The important thing is to get the best people and this starts with taking the best advice.

You need to be talking to people with experience of working with companies larger than yourselves, as this is where you are growing to in the future. Talking to friends and family will get you heartfelt advice, but often not based on experience, so is a high risk strategy.

Realise that you can become the limiting factor in the business’s growth at this stage, and until you add the appropriate expert team at the top the business, you could reach a bottleneck.

The key indicator to success here is your time. Once a business is making money your time available to work on the business development is key to future success and if you are head down producing your product, you won’t see the areas of the business that need attention.