Every business scales through four distinct stages.

Chris Cooper talks a lot about the four phases of entrepreneurship: Founder, Farmer, Tinker and Thief. To move from one phase to the next, you need to do the following: systemize, optimize, grow and scale.

If you do these things out of order, you can break your business or go bankrupt yourself. The best way to proceed is to seek guidance from someone who has done it before: a mentor.

Links

"Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief"

0:55 - Stage 1: Systemize

1:35 - Playbooks and SOPs

2:47 - Checklists and contracts

3:00 - Stage 2: Optimize

3:29 - Marketing funnels and organic growth

7:00 - Stage 3: Grow

7:30 - Stage 4: Scale

10:00 - Dangers of skipping stages

11:15 - Why rapid growth can be the death knell for your business

14:10 - Bullets before cannonballs, testing strategies

15:24 - Mapping the client journey