The world of entrepreneurship is evolving rapidly, and as a female business owner, you bring a unique perspective and set of skills to the table. Scaling up your business requires a combination of strategic thinking, innovation, and a commitment to fostering growth.

Yvonne Greeves, Director for Women In Business across the NatWest group, spoke with three everywoman Award winners to identify the key strategies that enabled their businesses to expand that can work for you, too.

1. Invest in your people—they’re your biggest asset

Your team is the heartbeat of your business, and investing in their development and wellbeing is crucial for sustained growth. Foster a positive work environment, provide opportunities for skill enhancement, and encourage open communication. When your team feels valued, supported, and motivated, they become powerful advocates for your business, driving innovation and productivity.

Marine Tanguy, CEO of MTArt, a leading talent agency representing some of the most forward-thinking artists in the world, describes herself as ‘obsessed’ with finding talented people and bringing them together in her team. Describing the results of getting the right combination of brain power together around the table as ‘incredible’, she has also found an innovative way to foster loyalty and dedication to collaborative success: ‘Every single member of my team is a shareholder in my company, and that includes junior people,’ she says. Making that commitment ensures she never compromises on staff quality, and the result is a team that’s just as invested in the success of MTArt Agency’s growth plans as its everywoman Award-winning founder.

2. Recognise opportunities for ‘accidental growth’

In the dynamic world of business, challenges often conceal hidden opportunities. Embrace unforeseen circumstances as chances for ‘accidental growth’. An agile response can position your business for accelerated success, whether it’s a shift in market trends or unexpected industry developments. Stay adaptable, keep an eye on the changing landscape, and pivot strategically when unexpected opportunities arise.

Helen Pattinson is an everywoman Award winner, judge, and co-founder of Montezuma’s, Britain’s leading creative chocolate maker. Her original business plan was retail-orientated, which meant that her growth plan centred around opening more and more stores. ‘Actually, we found that we had accidental growth through customers coming into our stores and asking if they could sell our chocolates in their own stores,’ recalls Helen. Embracing the ‘accidental growth’ opportunity presented a production challenge as buyers became bigger and placed more orders. However, rising to this challenge enabled a growth channel the founders had yet to consider, which remains a key part of the business today.

3. Obsessively commit to finding and maintaining your market position

Scaling up requires more than initial market entry—it demands an unwavering commitment to maintaining and fortifying your position. Stay vigilant about market trends, competitor movements, and customer preferences. Continuously refine your strategies to ensure your business survives and thrives in the competitive landscape.

‘We were the first agency in the art world, bringing a lot of innovation to the sector, and we remain the leading one. But you want to make sure you keep leading. I’m obsessed with making sure that we will retain that pioneering lead,’ says Marine Tanguy. When you have that focus, you constantly interrogate how what you do daily serves your higher goal, which, says Marine, leads you to ask questions like, ‘How do you build teams? How do you make sure that your people retention is great? How do you empower people? These are all key things for making sure your people keep up with your growth plans.’

4. Customer-Centric Growth Strategies

Happy and satisfied customers are your most potent marketing tool. Prioritise customer experience, gather feedback actively, and tailor your products or services to meet their evolving needs. By putting your customers at the forefront of your business decisions, you retain loyalty and create a foundation for organic growth through positive word-of-mouth.

Understanding the customers’ needs and being obsessive about delivering to those needs has been key to the growth of Montezuma’s. ‘Our customers love ‘newness’, so we’ll always push to innovate and bring new products to market. The key to that is looking after our suppliers—bringing them on the journey with us and looking at how they can be incentivised to help us grow. You’ve got to keep them in the loop effectively because there’s nothing worse than winning a massive new contract, and then being unable to supply it, and having to let customers down,’ says Helen Pattinson.

This sentiment is shared by Suzy Dean, CEO and founder of AddIn365, recognised as one of Microsoft’s top 15 partners globally and an everywoman Award winner. ‘The customer experience piece is really important, certainly in our business. In the end, it’s another route to market. You can spend money on marketing, but you can also grow through referrals. If people have a bad experience with your business, they won’t recommend you. Listening to clients carefully makes you aware of how to optimise your offering and generate additional products to promote growth.’

5. Free Up Extra Cash by Making Operational Tweaks

Examine your business operations meticulously to identify areas where you can optimise and reduce costs. By making operational tweaks, such as streamlining processes, negotiating better deals with suppliers, or leveraging technology for efficiency, you can free up extra cash that can be reinvested into strategic growth initiatives.

‘We never went for external investment because we were obsessed with reinvesting profit. This possibly slowed down growth, but it meant that growth was organic and came from ramping up production when we had big leaps in sales. Cash is key, and one thing you can do is ask your customers if they will pay you sooner and ask your suppliers if you can pay them later. Stretching those payment term windows in both directions can inject cash into your business that you can use to buy machinery and ramp up your production,’ says Helen Pattinson.

6. Creative Marketing Strategies on a Budget

Innovation isn’t limited to products or services; it extends to how you market them. Find innovative, cost-effective ways to reach your target audience, such as leveraging social media, content marketing, or forming strategic partnerships. You can achieve effective outreach without straining your budget by adopting creative marketing strategies.

‘When we started the business, we didn’t have any money for marketing or communications purposes so we had to be super creative when pushing our business and artists out there. Our first clients became our ambassadors, I would use social media as a way to build a community that would also become our ambassadors (and later become our way to being featured in the press) and we would ask our public art partners to feature our logo so that we could be seen on the streets of London.’ says Marine Tanguy.

7. Pricing Strategies for Sustainable Growth

Setting the right prices for your products or services is a delicate balance that directly influences your business’s financial health. Conduct thorough market research, factor in costs, and ensure your pricing aligns with the value you provide. Once established, resist the temptation to deviate unless backed by a well-considered strategy, maintaining consistency for long-term success.

‘When you’re a challenger in the market, you can go one of two ways with your pricing: you can either feel a little bit of shame and like you should put your prices lower to win more business hopefully, or you can go the other way and think your business is so fantastic you should put prices up. Neither are great positions because they’re based on emotions rather than something more scientific. It’s just about understanding your market. What is the standard pricing for what you do? What might drive your price points up or down?’ says Suzy Dean.

8. Key Performance Indicators Driving Success

Define clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your team that align with your business objectives. These measurable targets help track individual and collective performance and create a roadmap for success. Setting the right KPIs ensures everyone works toward common goals, fostering a collaborative and goal-oriented culture within your organisation.

‘People love a goal, but they also like to feel that they’ve contributed to setting that goal,’ says Helen Pattinson. ‘Once they’ve been involved in that process, it’s theirs to own. At Montezuma’s, we have KPIs not just for the overall financial number but also for margin goals, profitability goals, people retention and absence goals. Delving into that detail tells you a lot about how happy the business is.’

Suzy Dean agrees: ‘What gets measured gets done. In the early years, I was guilty of leading by gut instinct around what we were and were not ready for, but when we started setting KPIs, the business moved much more quickly towards meeting the ambitions I had for each department – and the business as a whole. These KPIs have been supported with a skills matrix and a set of behaviours we want to instil in our people for every role in AddIn365. The skills and behaviours reflect what is required to meet the KPIs.’

9. Nurturing a Culture of Continuous Improvement

A growth mindset is the foundation for innovation and resilience. Encourage your team to embrace challenges as opportunities for learning and improvement. Foster a culture that values adaptability, curiosity, and a willingness to take calculated risks. A growth mindset propels your business forward and creates an environment where creativity and innovation flourish.

‘In our business, there’s really a culture of learning from mistakes,’ says Helen Pattinson. ‘We have this element of curiosity and backing up learning with a tangible plan. And it’s about knowing that it’s not the end of the world if you make a mistake; you’ve got to move on and find the opportunity. One of our biggest mistakes was losing sight of the bottom line and all the detail around that,’ says Helen Pattinson.

10. Time Management as a Catalyst for Expansion

In the hustle of scaling your business, time is a precious resource. Identify tasks that directly contribute to business growth, such as strategic planning, relationship-building, and innovation, and prioritise them. Anything non-core or time-consuming that doesn’t directly contribute to your business’s upward trajectory should be considered for outsourcing. Delegating routine tasks frees up your time for high-impact activities, ensures efficiency, and allows you to tap into specialised expertise, propelling your business forward with focused momentum. Remember, as a female entrepreneur, your time is valuable—use it wisely for maximum impact.

‘Pay attention to protecting and safeguarding your hours,’ says Suzy Dean. ‘If you have more people around, but you’re still doing the doing and running the payroll, then you really must stop and think how, in an ideal world, you could redeploy your time. When our Financial Director joined the business, she questioned why I was doing some of this basic stuff. She proposed that we pay someone a junior salary to do much of that work, enabling my brain to focus on higher-value activities. As the founder, your time is one of the most precious assets in your business.’

Helen Pattinson agrees: ‘It’s that whole thing about working on the business, not in it. You must have that overview of how the business as a whole is performing.’

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