Woman Entrepreneur Reveals How She Scaled Her Business Revenue To Rs 480 Crore

A businesswoman whose company's revenue nearly touched $5 million (Rs 479 crore) last year has revealed what helped her push the growth into the next gear. In a conversation with Business Insider, Luba Patlakh Kaplun highlighted that she initially struggled to find a career, dreaming of being a broadcast journalist. Her Russian-Jewish immigrant parents from Ukraine, however, wanted her to do something serious.

Kaplun floundered for a while, studying journalism and then opening a marketing agency, all while her parents kept asking her to 'establish' herself in the way they deemed worthy. With much of her family working in medicine, Kaplun searched for a field that fit her parents' expectations without requiring "blood and needles."

Eventually, the search led her to speech-language pathology. After earning her master's degree, she began working at a bilingual English-Spanish clinic.

"I speak Russian, and when the owner realised that, they started to grow their clientele," Kaplun said, adding that she realised that her community was almost completely untouched and decided to build her own practice rather than someone else's.

"I started going to all the Jewish clubs and churches to see students. I was juggling seeing patients with building a practice, billing insurance, and raising awareness about speech-language pathology within my Russian-speaking community.

As the business grew, Kaplun hesitated to hire others as she was worried that they wouldn't treat the business as well as she did.

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Running the business alone eventually caught up with her as she was missing payments because she did not have the systems in place to track them and follow up with clients.

The turning point came through an unlikely source. "It was a targeted ad, but it was just what I needed," Kaplun said of a survey that connected her to a business course and financial management resources. "I realised I didn't have standard operating procedures or a management structure. Once I established those, my company flourished."

Kaplun said the growth has visibly changed her children's lives. "He used to play in a little inflatable pool; now, we have a large house with an in-ground pool," she said of her older son.

"My business is 11, and my children are 10, 8, and 4. They've been raised alongside the business. When I do community presentations, my little one loves to tell people to come talk to his mom."