A guide to navigating the five stages of small business growth.
Small (and micro) businesses have common growth stages and, to be successful in business, you have to focus on the right things at the right time. The Small Business Life Cycle is like "What to Expect When You're Expecting" for small business owners and entrepreneurs.
More about The Small Business Life Cycle
Small businesses have much different growth patterns than large corporations. Small business owners who look to large corporations for insight and guidance on how to grow their own businesses often feel overwhelmed and demotivated. The Small Business Life Cycle lays out the five stages of small business growth and explains how you can navigate each stage in your business. To be successful, you have to take the right steps at the right time.
Each stage has different challenges, strengths, inconvenient truths, and ways forward. This guide shows you where to focus your resources in each stage so you can grow your business efficiently.
Whether you're thinking about starting a small business or you've been in business for a while, The Small Business Life Cycle will give you a better gauge to evaluate where you are and what you need to do next. If you're growing fast and want to keep growing, this book will show you how to do it strategically. And if you're stuck and don't know what to do, you can determine what stage your business is in now and figure out what you need to do next to get unstuck.
This guide will specifically help you work through:
Questions to ask before you start your own small business
How to get a foothold in the market and why you should be marketing fewer things to fewer audiences
Why some "successful" products and services will cause you to get stuck and lose momentum
What four things must be in place to grow your business
How not to break a successful, scalable small business once you've got it there
This no-fluff guide will lay out the foundation upon which you can grow your small business. While it won't give you a specific business strategy — no business book can do that — it'll show you what needs to be done so you can determine the right strategy for your business.
This guide is succinct and very accessible; you don't need another long, hard-to-understand business book. No prior business education or experience is required to understand it, though prior education and experience will give you a deeper understanding of the insights in this book. You've got a business to grow, and this book is written to get you realigned, focused, and gaining momentum.