I am sure that when you first got involved in creating your business you did a lot of reading. Whether that was in magazines, you bought books, or you read online sources, you probably found some pretty valuable information. I am sure that you learned quite a bit and tried to look at other successful businessmen to somewhat model your business after.

So, now you feel as though you have successfully beaten the game for the start-up phase of your business. You may want to move on to the next step of growing your business from a small little business to something larger. There are probably a lot of avenues you could take, but here, I just wanted to list 4 different options you have that you might possibly consider.

1. Locations, Locations, Locations. Note, that there is an “s” at the end of location. We are not talking about needing a good location, you already have that if you survived the initial building phase. But, one of the first things that comes to mind when talking about growing is always expansion. Covering more area will hopefully bring in more clients, and more clients means more money in most cases.

2. Franchising your business. It can be a scary thought to have someone else on the inside and making business decisions with the name you’ve built up. However, in a business that takes too much time to run multiple locations yourself, franchising can be a great way to build it up. Some people say that this can be a great option if you have loyal employees who may want to grow with the business. Letting them know that perhaps they can eventually be an owner of one of your franchises will help them stick around and strive harder for the company to be successful.

3. Buy Out Your Competitor. It seems like a risky move, but if you are already being successful at what you do, you can perhaps consider buying out other competitors in the local area. You see the large companies do this all the time. For example, eBay has really pushed for buying Craigslist, which are essentially the two big guys in online classifieds. If you can buy on the competition, those people needing your services will be much more inclined to use you. If done well, you can often sustain what regular customers they had as well.

4. Expand to the Internet. If you are not on the internet already, you should really consider this as one of your nearest moves. It is often a relatively small investment and will help you expand to others outside of your local area. Bill Gates himself once said that there will be two kinds of businesses by the end of 2002; those with an internet presence and those with no business at all. It is relatively true. More and more people, especially as the younger generation gets older are using the internet to find the products or services they are in need of. They can search for the lowest prices, read reviews, find out about complaints and essentially, those that have started their internet presence early on can quickly build up their customer base within their market.