The Small Business Life Cycle: The No-Fluff Guide to Navigating the Five Stages of Small Business Growth

Growth requires disciplined focus and prioritization. The entrepreneur must strategically focus the business on a compelling differentiating customer value proposition and achieving daily operational excellence and consistency.

have a big Why that’s fueling your business growth and actions? • [Fire] How’s your cash flow? Are you throwing money at things to fix problems? Do you even know where your money is going, or are you burning through it unintentionally? • [Air] Are you creating intellectual property? • [Air] Are you regularly and consistently communicating with your

And as the business grows beyond the owner’s Comfort Zone—as the tailspin accelerates—there are only three courses of action to be taken, only three ways the business can turn. It can return to Infancy. It can go for broke. Or it can hang on for dear life.

Because business is wasteful, and because complexity and waste feed on each other, a simple business will always be better than a complex business. Because scale is normally valuable, for any given level of complexity, it is better to have a larger business. The large and simple business is the best. The way to create something great is to create s