How do you turn your small business into a major corporation? You may have a brick-and-mortar business, or you may have a digital business, or you may have an offline business with an online presence. Regardless of the business structure of your company, it is possible to gradually grow it into a large business.

On the surface, it may not appear self-evident how to grow a small business into a big one? Should you just borrow more money and amplify what you’re doing? Should you create new income streams? Should you try a combination of both strategies?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple to transform a business. Neither scaling things up nor diversifying your business operations will do much for you if you are not following some long-established business principles.

If you don’t know and apply these principles, then you will not be as successful as you imagine.

What are these business principles? Here are 6 essential business principles that can transform your business:

1. Develop an entrepreneurial mindset

Unlike an employee mindset, entrepreneurs are always studying and striving. They work hard to overcome one obstacle after another in the pursuit of their vision. This means that you have to get very good at promoting your business. Red Crane Direct Marketing suggests that your advertising should aspire to “Reach new, highly qualified customers through partners they already trust. Target niche audiences by demographic, psychographic, location, and buying behavior.”

2. Create an online presence

If your small business does not have a website, it’s important that you create an online presence to draw attention to your business. It’s simple and inexpensive to build a website compared to how much you may have already spent to create your office or store. It doesn’t matter if you have no technical skills because it’s easy to outsource all the technical work. Create a website, build a blog, develop a social media network, and learn how to use online advertising like Google’s PPC or Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website.

3. Master fiscal disciplines

You must have a clear understanding of your overheads, revenues, and profit margins. You must go as far as to follow standard accounting measures. For instance, you should know how to keep and read a balance sheet, which is a financial statement that summarizes your business assets, liabilities, and any shareholders’ equity.

4. Build a team

Surround yourself with people who are experts. Work with people who know how to manage others well. Work with people who know how to market and sell. Work with people who know how to provide excellent customer service. Even if you know how to do all these things yourself, you still won’t have enough time to do everything well. You need a team.

In a Forbes article on how to build a team from scratch, Josh Steimle explains the step he took to create a team from scratch when he opened an office in Hong Kong for his online marketing firm:

• 1. Identify the positions you need filled.
• 2. Prioritize how you will fill these positions.
• 3. Decide whether to hire or partner
• 4. Decide between hiring full time or contract workers.
• 5. Identify promising candidates.
• 6. Conduct in-depth interviews.
• 7. Test them for the skills you need.
• 8. Hire those who did well in the interview and performed well on the tests.

5. Understand marketing basics

What distinguishes you from others in the marketplace? It’s your brand. Additionally, the only way you can compete against the big brands online is if you have a specialty. You must be able to offer your customers something that they can’t get elsewhere.

6. Follow small business management practices

It’s easy for chaos to creep in when things are not well organized. You have to learn to manage people and operations well to be successful.

Think like a Business Person

What do all these ideas have in common? They teach you how to think like a business person. Statistically, many small businesses last less than two years even if they started potentially promising business ventures. The reason for this high failure rate can be attributed to many things—however, businesses that did flourish did so because the owners understood fundamental business ideas and how to apply them. Besides building up your business, you should focus on self-improvement, improving your knowledge, skills, and abilities to run the business well.