How to maintain your small business magic as you grow

Success for small businesses is often rooted in growth. This might mean opening a second location, hiring staff to take on more clients, or increasing your service radius or product line. However, it’s important to maintain the magic of your original operation as you expand.

No one knows this lesson better than magician Spencer Horsman and his partner Nicole Bailey, the duo behindIllusions Bar & Theaterin Baltimore, Maryland. Spencer and Nicole’s intimate, interactive magic show is known for putting audiences at ease. The entertainers’ welcoming energy and atmosphere is a common theme in their 390+ Yelp reviews—landing them the #2 spot in Arts & Entertainment on Yelp and Entrepreneur’s first-everAmerica’s Favorite 150 Mom & Pop Shops list.

But as Spencer and Nicole’s popularity grew and they expanded to serve an audience double the size, they realized they’d lost some of what made their business so magical: their personal touch.

“There is something to be said about ‘less is more,’” Spencer said. “When there’s 90 people, it’s a little bit harder to spread the love. With a smaller audience, it allows us to convey more appropriately how important each of those people is to us. I want [every guest] to feel seen and cared for.”

Identifying your small business’s strengths can help you preserve what matters most to customers as you expand. Start by asking yourself these three questions to decide what to keep, what to lose, and what to scale up.

1. What do customers love most about my business?

The ability to form deep relationships with their customers is one ofsmall business’s biggest advantagesover larger competitors. This relationship goes two ways: Ask your customers what it is they love about your business, and preserve that strength as you grow.

While reevaluating the future of their show during the COVID-19 pandemic, Spencer and Nicole polled long-term customers and learned they prefer smaller shows over larger ones. “Because of… the intimate nature of our venue and the fact that it is just a two-person operation, it feels much more intimate. It feels more personalized,” Spencer said.

Nicole added: “I watch total strangers become friends and hang out after the show, making new acquaintances, because they feel involved in this thing together. They start out a little awkward and kind of shy, and then by the end of the night, everybody knows everybody. They’re cheering for each other by name, that kind of thing. And it’s all a big group experience versus two people sitting together in the dark in the back of a theater somewhere.”

2. What works well about my business operations?

For Spencer and Nicole, keeping things small also means being nimble. “Within this smaller setting, [we’re] able to shift and change in the moment—to address things and to fix things literally and figuratively,” Spencer said. “If somebody goes, ‘Hey, bathroom’s clogged.’ Guess who’s going back? We are there every moment. We are the cleaning crew.”

Spencer and Nicole have developed a rhythm based on their firsthand knowledge of the show, their space, and guest’s needs. Even as they gain popularity and fill the theater every weekend, they rely on being on-the-ground with guests to improve their experience and gauge their success.

Spencer said: “Since we only seat 40 people in the venue, and everybody gets involved, we keep the lights up the entire time so everybody can see everybody at all times, I can see everybody at all times, and Nicole can see everybody at all times, which allows her to do her job as well as she does because she can immediately see if somebody has an empty drink and she refills it. Nobody’s ever waiting for anything.”

3. Where do I need more help?

The challenge of staying small and doing everything yourself is that you can start to compromise work-life boundaries. In addition to public shows on Fridays and Saturdays, Spencer and Nicole perform at corporate events, birthdays, and weddings during the week, often leaving them to navigate customer service and administrative tasks on personal time.

“我们英航sically pick up our phones 24-7, which we try not to do, but we do because we’re just like—boundaries? We don’t know them,” Spencer said. “People sometimes need to be reminded: ‘Look, we’re doing the best we can. It’s just the two of us, right?’ We don’t have any backers. We don’t have investors. We don’t have some big company email, corporate entity behind us. It’s just us.”

While many entrepreneurs are passionate about their work and comfortable combining business and personal life, it can lead to burnout and exhaustion. Until you’re able to take time off and trust the business to run without you, learnhow to spot small business burnoutand find the right remedy for you.

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These lessons come from an episode ofBehind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear more from Nicole and Spencer, orvisit the episode pageto read more, subscribe to the show, and explore other episodes.