If you’re serious about building a six figure or even a million dollar business, it’s important to understand how the 4 Cycles of Business impact your business growth.
Every successful business goes through the 4 cycle’s of business growth? Businesses that fail tend to stay in one cycle and never grow. Knowing this can help you navigate the different cycles and help take you the the next level.
Today, I’m going to share the different cycles of a business and how to get the most out of each, while also extending the life of your business.
The four different cycles of a business life are:
- Infancy
- Adolescence
- Growing Pains
- Maturity
Just what do each of these mean and how can understanding them and knowing what to do in each of them can help you increase the life of your business?
Infancy
This is generally considered the technician’s phase, which is all about the owner getting the business up and going. Much of the work is being done by the owner and their business is similar to a baby that needs constant care and attention. You can’t leave it’s side and you are consistently nurturing and figuring out it’s needs.
The common mistake many business owners make, is they never get out of this cycle of life in their business. You cannot and should not want to stay in this cycle forever. In order to grow, you must understand that just like a baby, your business must grow and flourish. This means that you need to push past your comfort zone, outsource or hire staff and invest some money in smart ways. Unless you look at your business in this way, you will most likely be working a job (many times low paying) for yourself. This gives you no business security and is not a long term sustainable business model.
Adolescence
This is the cycle where you will need to start bringing in staff, delegating and allowing the growth to happen in your business. This is where you will bring in a technical person or manager to help you. This is where you start to step out of the everyday operations and start working on the plans to build the business for it’s future.
Growing Pains
The next cycle is an exciting cycle, but can also become a stage of overwhelm, somewhat scary and can sometimes be painful. This is the cycle where your business explodes and really starts to see major growth. More decisions and choices must be made to decide the best course for continued success. Decisions such as;
- Avoid growth and stay small
- Go broke
- Push forward into the next cycle
Maturity
The last cycle is maturity, though this doesn’t mean the end of your business. This is where you have to have a true desire and passion to grow in order for your business to succeed. This often is where many in business settle and never go beyond. They are making a good income, comforatble living etc. and many times they become complacent in the business. It runs on autopilot and they are satisfied with it going no further. However, this is the level at which you will have the greatest opportunities to reach exponential success and growth. In this cycle, you need to keep an entrepreneurial perspective in order to push your business forward. You must strive to achieve all that is possible.
Are you able to see how all of these cycles are connected and how each cycle builds a strong foundation for the next in order to continue to be successful. All of your key roles and efforts must also work together to work through these cycles.
If you’re having trouble putting together your business life cycles and figuring out which of the key roles you fit into, contact me to see how we might work together to increase the life of your business.