Creating a Business

Structure for Your

Business
The Essential Functions of a Small Business
Growing a small business requires essential functions that cannot be ignored. Yes, I’m even
talking to all of the solopreneurs out there who assume organisational charts and structures
aren’t for them!

No matter what industry you’re in or what type of business you own, you must understand
the essential functions your business needs to scale. If you want to be the kickass CEO of
your business that I know you can be (and avoid burning out) you’ve got to work on your
business instead of in it.

So, what are these essential functions in your business?

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Finance Function
You’re in business to make money. It doesn’t matter if you’re a start-up or a multi-million-
dollar company, every business needs to have a finance function. No, I’m not suggesting
that you set-up a little bank complete with ominous vaults in your office. But you should
probably think about outsourcing the financial aspects of the business to an accountant or
bookkeeper.

As your business grows and the financial activities become more pressing, you may need to
hire people and expand the finance department. If you’re in the early stages of business or
you own a small business, there’s no need to overcomplicate these things. Essentially, the
finance function is about maintaining and understanding cash flow into the business and
budgeting.

Sales and Marketing

Although sales and marketing are two separate functions within your business, I’ve decided
to group them here because this often happens in businesses and who am I to question
tradition?

The marketing function is about marketing the business. It involves building brand
awareness and increasing interest in the product or service that the business is selling.

If the marketing function is successful at generating interest, the sales function is responsible
for ‘closing the deal.’ Sales convert marketing messages and leads into revenue for the
business.

Depending on how you plan to market and sell your products and/or services, you can
choose to group them together or have them as separate functions in your business.

Customer Support and Customer Service

Small businesses usually don’t put a lot of focus on customer service or support as a
separate function. However, as sales rise and your customer base increases, your need for
customer support to answer questions and deal with enquires will rapidly grow beyond your
personal capacity.

The chances are that the minute you sell your first few products or service, you will have to
engage and deal with customers. This may be you initially, so if this is the case, don’t ignore
it and make sure it is listed out as a function within your business. You should be looking to
delegate this function to others as soon as is feasible to prevent overwhelm.

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Operations Function
The operations function is very important because it is responsible for most (if not all) the
processes that happen outside and within the business. Not only that, but they are also
responsible for maintaining quality, efficiency, and capacity.

Your business needs systems and processes to succeed. There are no shortcuts here, which
is why the operations function is so important. They will be the reason why certain processes
can be repeated and replicated by more than one person.

The truth is that you are either a visionary or an integrator. Visionaries have amazing ideas,
but they need help from integrators to turn those dreams into a reality. Unfortunately, it’s
extremely rare that you are both a visionary and an integrator.

As it so happens, most start-up entrepreneurs and business owners are visionaries and
they have a serious case of the shiny object syndrome. If you’re a visionary, you NEED an
integrator. Integrators rule the operations function and if you need more convincing on the
importance of having an integrator, I suggest you read ‘Rocket Fuel’ by Gino Wickman!

Admin and Management

Admin is quite possibly the most exciting part of owning and running a business, don’t you
agree? No? Me neither. Admin is the non strategic activities involved in organising and
running the day to day activities of the business.

I, however love the strategic planning, leadership, and decision-making responsibilities of

growing a business but when it comes to pure admin, I’d rather go and hide in a closet.

However, just because you and I don’t like admin doesn’t mean that someone else won’t.
Some people LOVE admin. They are passionate about admin work and they find it exciting.
Those are the people you need on your team because there’s always going to be someone
who loves doing the things you hate, which is one of the reasons why you hire them in the
first place!

IT Function
It is very difficult to scale a business in this day and age without having an online presence.
The type of IT function your business needs depends on your individual business. A tech-
based company will definitely need a prominent IT function to keep everything up and
running. On the other hand, a small local business might not require such a large IT team.
Either way, if you intend on scaling your business, you’ll likely need to create an appropriate
IT function to help you achieve your goals.

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Legal Function
You might not need an entire legal team in your corner, but most businesses will need
some form of a legal function, which can be completely outsourced if you prefer. Never
underestimate the importance of legal advice as a small business owner or entrepreneur. As
a business owner, you need to understand what legal aspects you need to be on top of, and
having a legal function will help you with things like drafting contracts, handling legal aspects
of deals and acquisitions, and so on.

Other Common Functions In A Small Business

There are many more functions that your business may have or need. Some of these may
not be relevant to your business, but here are some if you’re curious:

Research and Development

Production
Distribution
Purchasing
HR

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 Putting it all together

Essentially, there are four main pillars within a business. The CEO Pillar, which represents the
Why you exist, where is your end destination and what is the overall strategy the business
will execute to get it to that destination. This pillar also figures out what are the main
resources that will be needed to realise the strategy (people, functions, sufficient cash, etc)
as well as what the company culture will look like.

The Product Pillar is responsible for the products and / or services for the business. The
Customer Pillar is responsible for the entire customer journey (marketing, sales, and after
sales). Last, but not least, the business pillar is responsible for making the business operate
effectively, efficiently, and lawfully.

The CEO
(The Why & Where)

The Business The Customer The Product

Have enough
Create
d7d7d7

Organise and cash to operate

awareness and To develop new
systems and run the day to and complete all
interest in your products and
processes to day activities of required
operate the business
products and/or services.
reporting services.

Find and work

Build the best Produce your
with good
team and Convert interest
Operate in a suppliers to products and
working and awareness
lawful way
environment
obtain all the services
resources the
into sales.
that you can materials.
company needs.

Understand Get your

Harness IT to
business and Make sure your
make your products and
customers to customers are
company work
make informed
services to your
better
very happy.
decisions clients.

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Mapping Out Your Company Structure
Now that you have a better idea of what functions your small business needs, you can begin
mapping out your organisational structure based on all of the functions that are operating
within your business.

Remember, you can’t do everything on your own. Yes, you may have to wear more than one
hat for a while until you can bring on more people. But if you continue to wear all of the hats
in your business, you will burn out.

So let’s begin assuming you’re just starting out and it’s only you. Decide on what these
essential functions in your business are and list them down. A good way of looking at this is
fast forward three years and look at what functions your business will have.

You can start by drawing out a sketch – something like this:

The Customer

EA
You

The Business The Product

So yes, first of all you may wear all of these hats, but the important thing here to understand
is that these are other peoples’ hats that you are wearing. They are not yours. Your role
is the CEO of the company. Watch this video, if you haven’t already seen it to understand
what your role should be. So the sooner you can start finding other people to do these other
roles, the better (when it makes business sense, but as soon as feasibly possible).

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Sketch Out Your Most Basic Org Chart Below:

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Next Steps as Your Company Grows

As your business grows, you will need to bring in more people. In some cases, they could
be outsourced people or your own employees. They will typically report directly to you first.

The Customer
Marketing
Sales

EA You Production

The Business

The Product

The next step you should do is map is to start placing people in different roles. It could look
something like this:

Remember, each type of business will have a different set of functions. You can also decide
to have a hierarchical structure where you have different people responsible for different
functions and they have a team respectively. Or it could be flat where everyone reports to
you directly. They could also be structured by location. But for now, let’s keep it simple.

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Here’s another example:

If you are a visionary as mentioned in the Rocket Fuel Book, you may also be looking to hire
an integrator, who will make sure everything inside the business is running like clockwork.
Here is an example of a slightly larger company to give you an idea:

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Draw Below Your Org Chart With Roles And People...

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Now, depending on how large you would like to grow your business, obviously the structure
and the number of people you intend to have will be vastly different. If you would like to
keep this as a solopreneur style business, where most, if not all of your team is outsourced,
then this is fine. But you could also be looking at growing it and having full time employees
and bringing in leads or managers for each of the pillars.

The Customer
Sales

Customer
Marketing
Lead
After Sales

Intelligence

Admin
Production

HR
EA You Product
Lead
Distribution
Finance Purchasing
IT

The Business The Product

As you grow further, you may start to build ‘leadership teams’ for each of the pillars or
functions as one person leading a large team may not be sufficient.

The Customer
Sales

Marketing
After Sales

Customer
Leadership

Intelligence
EA
Admin R&D

HR You Production
Business Product
Leadership Leadership
Finance Operations Distribution
IT
Purchasing
Legal

The Business The Product

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Here are some more examples for you to look at to get some ideas, but remember, there is
no one size that fits all. Every business is different and there are multiple factors that can
affect how you structure your business :)

Or...

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You obviously won’t know the name of each employee or freelancer at this stage and in this
case, just put down the function and role you will need to have in your business. When it
becomes necessary to have this function/role in your business, either you or someone else
in your team can play that role until it is filled.

Once you have all of these roles set out, it is important to write a basic job description for
what you want each role to do, what they will be held accountable for, and how will you
measure their success. This is important even at the earliest stages so that you know what is
your responsibility and what is someone else’s responsibility in the future.

If you haven’t already subscribed to my YouTube channel, please do so here. Lot’s more
value on the way!

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