Inspired by the Harvard Business Review.

It's important to understand your stages of growth and when you are transitioning to a new stage. If you don't take specific actions while in each stage, you will get stuck (or worse regress).

Stage 1: Existence

This stage is all about the big question..

During this stage of your business, you are heavily involved in every aspect. You may even be the entire business yourself.

The main goal of this stage is making sure the business can exist and making it to stage 2!

Stage 2: Survival

This stage is all about financial survival. You know you CAN be a business. You know you CAN get customers. You know you CAN deliver the product.

But... can you do it profitably?

During this stage, you may actually significantly grow in size. You may have employees and achieve some record breaking sales for yourself.

Many of you will stay here - some on purpose. This is the business that provides a "salary" or pays for the owner's lifestyle, but never goes beyond that.

This may be satisfying personally, but it's very vulnerable.

However, you must grow in profitability to get to stage 3.

Stage 3: Traditional "Success"

Getting to this stage means you have some economic health. You are profitable (meaning the business is putting money in the bank after paying you.) This is a place you can stay in indefinitely.

Your business is making money. The owners are getting paid. You are stable enough to handle changes in the market, emergencies and financial setbacks. This differs from stage 2 where you are 'just making it.' Now you have a solid business with a growing bank account.

This is the stage where you have some professional staff coming on board (or outsourcing.) You will most likely have employees dedicated to certain tasks (accounting, sales, production, etc.)

During this stage you can go one of 2 ways:

1. Disengagement - You have the opportunity to walk away from certain aspects and know the job will get done. You can choose to only work in the aspects you desire. Maybe you just want to sell or manage staff, or run equipment. This is the 'dream' stage. You can do exactly what you want with the business, and leave all the things you hate to employees.

2. Growth - Now that you are profitable and have a business that can leverage that power. Do you risk it and shoot higher? You can take your profits and dive into a new endeavor. You can use your business's credibility to borrow money and get into bigger business.

This is the stage where you would completely step away from day-to-day operations and focus on making the business grow even more. You have staff that controls every aspect of the business so you can take things to the next level.

Growth has risk though, you could take yourself back a stage if the risks you take don't work out. Now you are just back to 'surviving'.

On another hand, if you don't look for some level of growth you could be at risk of falling behind the competition.

This growth can take you to stage 4.

Stage 4: Take-Off

If you have chosen 'growth' then the stage you want to hit is right here. The focus of this stage is to have financial growth including income and profitability. You are no longer focused on what's happening in your supply chain, but what's happening with financials.

In order to get to this stage and succeed you must master delegation. You will have to continue to add levels of management to watch over each part of the business (as needed.) You and your team will have to manage cash and staff with precision. The business can really make it to the big leagues here, but without managing people and money, it can crash too.

You can grow HUGE or you can fail miserably. If you make it you enter stage 5.

Stage 5: Resource Maturity

Your business has the ability to get into detailed operational and strategic planning. Your management is mature and very experienced. You have systems in place from sales to production that are well developed.

Here are some factors that determine success or failure and moving through the stages:

Business factors:

Owner factors:

You have to understand these stages and where you want to go. Recognizing where you shift focus and motivation. Your business can be whatever you want!

Resource: https://hbr.org/1983/05/the-five-stages-of-small-business-growth