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

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

People want to buy small solutions for their problems. Small solutions mean small changes and that’s easier for buyers to get their heads around. Most consumers resist solutions that require a massive disruption to their lives and instead want simple, easy to implement solutions. Granted, there are people who are looking for massive changes in thei

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.

Summary: Stage 2

Bootstrapped businesses have a huge advantage of being customer-focused out of necessity, but at the same time their growth comes from what they pull in—and a growing business is a hungry business. So much of the early stage resources are put into the day-to-day hustle that there’s rarely any left over for strategic investments in the people, proce

The first thing to do to make it through Stage 1 is to focus on what I call your “beachhead” offer.

They “learn” how to do it, they assemble all of the right ingredients, and many months or years later, they’re exhausted but unwilling to give up. Their struggles are often just a result of their not working on the right things at the right time—the avocado that is their business, market, product, or team just isn’t ripe yet.

Stage 0 Summary

Stage 3 Summary