Did you know there are four stages to a business life cycle? The key to success is learning how to get the most out of each stage, along with learning to extend the overall life of your business. It’s important to not rush any stage just to get to the end. How long your business lasts once it reaches the final stage all depends on what you do along the way.
Stages Of A Business Life Cycle
You might think the stages are as simple as: start a business and keep a business running. However, the journey of owning your own business is made of four main stages:
- Infancy – The beginning of your business
- Adolescence – Start building relationships
- Growing Pains – Dealing with the chaos
- Maturity – Reaching maturity to continue growing
Every business has to go through these stages to be successful. Next, we’ll dive into how to make the most of each stage to extend the life of your business.
Infancy
Infancy is the first stage of the business life cycle and arguably one of the most important as it sets the tone for the next three stages. This is often considered the technician’s phase, which is the owner of the business. During this stage, you should think of the relationship between the business and owner the same as that of a parent and new baby. You’ll forge an impenetrable bond that’ll help you determine the path your business will follow.
It’s tempting to stay in this stage forever. After all, if you don’t push forward, you can’t fail. But, in order to succeed, your business must grow, so once you’ve established a bond with your business, it’s time to move to stage two.
Adolescence
In the second stage, it’s time to start bringing together your support staff to delegate tasks. Having support is how business growth happens. While this part of the business life cycle really belongs to your manager, the technician, or entrepreneur, needs to be heavily involved.
This is the point where the manager, entrepreneur and staff build relationships. It’s also where the manager and entrepreneur come together to plan the future of the business. Take your time with this stage as pushing forward before everyone’s ready could lead to early growing pains that you’re not quite ready to handle.
Growing Pains
The growing pains stage in the business life cycle is inevitable, but it’s also a crossroads that pushes you to make some major decisions about your business. If all’s gone well through the infancy and adolescence stages, congratulate yourself. Your business is exploding and starting to become chaotic.
These growing pains are a great problem to have. Now, you just have to make some choices, such as:
- Deciding whether to avoid growth and stay small
- Managing finances to avoid going broke as your business adapts
- Pushing forward into the next cycle when you’re ready
Maturity
While maturity might sound like the end of your business, it’s far from it. Reaching this stage just means you’ve reached a point where your business is strong enough to keep growing, if you let it. You’ll still need your passion for growth to achieve success.
As you can see, all four stages are connected and create a strong foundation for growth. If you’re struggling with your business life cycle, contact us today to speak with one of our amazing coaches.