First Quarter 2014 eNewsletter
   

4 Tips for Scaling the Growth Wall
by John Coffin, EVP, Corporate & Private Banking  

John Coffin, EVP, Corporate & Private Banking
Whenever I talk to the owners of entrepreneurial companies, I am always impressed by their drive to grow their business. As a business owner myself, I understand this drive to succeed - for your family, your employees, and yourself. Starting and growing a business is one of the greatest accomplishments a person can achieve. But it's also one of the hardest. And often, the biggest challenge is continuing to keep up a rate of solid growth.

 

Most companies grow quickly in their first few years in business. They establish themselves, figure out operations, and begin to grow their client base. The owner and his team work hard to execute their vision for the business, and often the company experiences rapid growth. But one day, the entrepreneur looks at his books and realizes that sales are flat. Nothing has officially changed in what he and his team are doing, but growth has simply slowed. The company has grown as much as it can with its current resources and business plan, and it has hit a growth wall.


If you're a business owner and you feel like your company has hit a growth wall, don't be alarmed. This is a natural progression for most new ventures. Now is the time to step back, evaluate your company, and make the changes that will take your business to the next level.

 

Here are four suggestions to help you scale the growth wall:

1. Examine your role as a leader.
After successfully navigating your business through the start-up phase, you must shift from doing to leading. Having your hands in everything works up to a point, but you only have two hands and one head. Pulling back from the day-to-day minutia is hard, but building teams and delegating responsibility, while maintaining a culture of accountability, is critical to sustainable growth. This will allow you to focus on the more important issues, like driving revenue or expanding distribution and geographic reach. 

 

2. Hire the right talent.
Building the right team is crucial to your ability to delegate, and it may be time to broaden your staff and hire more experienced professionals. For example, rather than relying on the bookkeeper who's been with you since the beginning, hire a CFO from the outside who can help you better manage risk and modulate growth. The same holds true for sales. Often a company's sales leads are limited to the founder's network. An experienced sales and marketing hire can bring a new network of opportunity to expand origination and re-start your upward momentum. 

 

3. Invest in your company culture.
Take some time to evaluate your company's culture. The more engaged your employees are, the harder they will work for you. On the other hand, if bureaucracy starts creeping in, people stop caring, and growth will stagnate along with the culture. In order to prevent this, take the time now to share or share again your vision for the company culture you aspire to. Ask for their feedback, and then incorporate the best suggestions into everyday life. A well-defined company culture creates a strong identity and commitment that is the glue that keeps people working together effectively and the company growing. 

 

4. Maintain your Focus.
For any business to grow, you have to adapt and make continual modifications, but change is usually most effective within the context of the initial vision and business model. Tim Cook (Apple's CEO) is famously quoted as saying, "At Apple we say 'no' to great ideas every day in order to do one or two things very well." As you grow your business, take Cook's advice. Know what your company does best, and do it - very well. If you find yourself chasing opportunities outside your primary competency, it may be wise to stop and refocus on your core strengths.

With these four suggestions in mind, consider the specific changes you can make within your own company to spark business growth. Take the time to set explicit goals and think through decisions before you act on them. After a while, you will find that the growth wall was only a speed bump on the road to greater profitability and results.

Client Photo:
Jackson Healthcare

Pictured
:
Doug Kline (center), Chief Financial Officer of Jackson Healthcare, Maryjane Stevens (right), Chief Accounting Officer of Jackson Healthcare, and Pam Simon (left), Senior Vice President of Corporate Banking at Atlantic Capital Bank.

ACB's New Website is
Coming Soon...

Atlantic Capital's website is changing! We are updating our online look while retaining the ease of use and access to information you expect from our current site. Keep an eye out for our new site to be released during the last week of March.  

The Go! Mobile Banking App is Here!

 

Atlantic Capital's new mobile banking app for consumers,
Go! Mobile, has arrived! Using Go! Mobile, you can deposit checks, pay bills, view your balances, find an ATM, and easily transfer money between accounts. The app is available for download in the App Store and Google Play. Versions of the app are available for iPads, iPhones, and Android devices.  

Atlantic Capital Receives SBA Preferred Lender Status

 

We're pleased to announce that Atlantic Capital Bank is now a Preferred SBA Lender. This new status will allow us to approve 7(a) loans on behalf of the SBA, resulting in an expedited approval process for clients. 

If you need assistance with an SBA loan, please contact Juan Lago: 404.995.6095.
 
Economic and Business Update
By Rogier Kamerling, Treasurer      

Will 2014 be the year that the US economy begins to truly move forward?

The focus of last five years has been on dealing with the aftermath of the Great Recession. 2014, however, has been broadly touted as the year in which many of the gaps created during the recession will close. For example, experts hope that this would mean getting back to the pre-recession high watermark in terms of total number of jobs.  

So, what would a successful 2014 look like? The hope is that the economy will enter Phase 2 of the recovery. In this phase, economic growth depends less on fiscal and monetary stimulus and more on accelerating private sector hiring, stronger consumer balance sheets and increasing business investment. This would place the economy on a more durable, self-sustaining growth path. Policy makers would breathe more easily because, at the current level of budget deficits and interest rates, there is very little dry powder to respond to any external shocks to the economy.

Potential threats to the US economy entering Phase 2 include:
1. A spike in interest rate due to the Federal Reserve slowing their asset purchases (commonly referred to as tapering)
2. Softening in the housing sector
3. Continued anemic wage growth
4. Developing market instability          

Interestingly, so far in 2014 it has been Mother Nature that has impacted economic growth and impeded analysts' abilities to assess underlying economic performance. The unusually cold temperatures and a spate of heavy snow storms cut into consumer spending, home sales, construction, and industrial activity, making it hard to track the performance of the economy. The harsh winter weather almost certainly will take a toll on first quarter economic growth. At least the economic uncertainty has helped to place downward pressure on longer term interest rates, counteracting the Federal Reserve's decision to continue to reduce their asset purchases.         

With the arrival of spring, it still seems most likely that the first quarter's sluggish growth will be due mostly to temporary factors, and that the economy will quickly shake off the winter chills. Although our forecast for 2.5 percent real GDP growth in 2014 is slightly less than projected at the beginning of the year, the outlook is still very similar.            

On a final note, with the return of cold war-like headlines, geopolitical risk is a dark cloud which overhangs the outlook. Markets already tend to be more volatile around inflection points.  Add high stakes poker between the West and Russia (and its allies) and we are likely to experience a significant pickup in volatility. Although the Treasury market will be the beneficiary of the flight to quality, any escalation of the situation in Ukraine could have a significant negative effect on world economic growth and stability.  


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