Sow wisely for business success - Part 2: Growing a business beyond the start up phase

In the second of three articles examining how to grow a successful business by minimising your tax liabilities, Lesley Stalker, Paul Webb and Simon Patterson, partners at the Robert James Partnership, advise on how to develop beyond the start up phase.

As a start up enterprise, you have probably enjoyed initial success because of your own skills in a particular area. Essentially, your customers are very likely to have bought into you as the business owner. This is invaluable when initially setting up, but looking to the future, it is vitally important that the business is not reliant on just one or two people (usually the founders) if you are thinking of selling as an exit.

As an owner-manager one of the most common traps you can fall into is being too self-reliant. To external eyes this would suggest you have an inadequate management structure and have problems delegating.