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

Many experienced former employees spend a lot of time beating themselves up for having to learn so many of the entrepreneurial lessons that they thought they would know already.

What small things could you bring to people’s worlds that would solve their pervasive frustration in small ways?

that's what your job is to do now – test, fail, and iterate, while keeping your offers down to as few variables as possible.

The entry stage is one of the most awkward stages because you do a lot of small things in the hope they have bigger effects.

Each new solution that your business develops should be at least as profitable as the last solution you developed. The exception is if this new solution is primarily meant to acquire new customers that you can sell a more profitable solution to down the road. Just be sure you make that link so the

A fundamental but often unspoken truth about starting your own business is that there are often long grind periods, sometimes without producing any of the results you want. You’ll need something to drive you through the uncertainty of making your new business happen. If you focus on those things that make you come alive, it makes the entire process

Stage 3 Summary

What we often forget is that even though the grass may be greener on the other side, it still needs mowing.

A healthy mix of supporting and complementary offers will allow you to best serve your market at the same time that it positively affects the average lifetime value of your customers.

There’s another huge upshot of developing simple, doable solutions: your customers get quick and early wins. If they get quick wins, they’re more likely to stick with your business as it grows because they’ve had a positive experience.