Let’s face it: we all tend to think we’re more advanced than we really are, so today might be a humbling moment for you (while also empowering you to know what to do) in this next phase of your business journey.
Why is it so important for you to understand the phase of business you are in?
Because that should be your foundation that will impact any decision you make to help from your current phase to the next.
Startup to Growth Phase
There will be several phases when growing and scaling your business, and they all have their pros and cons.
You probably still remember the Startup phase where the team was small, everything was brand new and exciting, and making decisions was easy with a very small chain of command.
When you moved from the Startup phase to Growth Phase you added more employees, more salespeople, more marketing, and found things getting a bit out of hand. This is the pivotal moment for most businesses that might, or might not, cross the chasm and reach the expansion and scaling phase before maturity.
What is crossing the chasm, btw?
Diffusion of Innovation
The Diffusion of Innovation book, 1962, has proven its concepts time and time again. It was then popularized again in the book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.
The main takeaway is that when you launch a new offer and build some momentum, you’re appealing to the innovators and early adopters. These clients are extraordinary as they value being the first ones and taking risks, and they’re willing to accept imperfection because they want to try it before anyone else.
These will be the ones buying your offer when you’re trying to validate your idea, and they’re usually great clients to work with. This is the growth phase of your business, and it’s one of the most important and beautiful parts of building a business.
When you launch a new offer, it gets some traction, and you feel great about it. It’s easy to become over-comfortable and complacent about it. That might have happened before you decided to pick this book up and go through it.
But today, you feel things are not going as great as they were before. Maybe a new competitor is getting traction, they’re selling cheaper, or people are not getting all they want from you. You feel people are becoming less interested in what you have to offer.
This couldn’t have been addressed before; you don’t know what you don’t know. But now that you’re aware, we can start digging and finding solutions to those challenges.
You want to keep your business in an S-curve. You want it to be profitable and keep serving clients well while expanding to broader markets. At this point, there are only three options after the inflection point:
- You adapt and innovate, and continue to grow
- You keep stagnating, chase new tactics, and things don’t get much better
- You refuse to change and you become obsolete
Assessing your stage
A simple way to self-diagnose where you are in business is by asking yourself these questions:
- Do I have a reliable and consistent client acquisition funnel? Is my business profitable?
- If yes, you crossed the Startup phase
- Did I increase the number of inputs, to increase my number of outputs? In order for me to go beyond Startup, did I increase efforts, money, energy, or team members, to produce more results? Is my business less profitable than it was in the Startup Phase?
- If yes, you are in the Growth phase
- Am I able to increase the outputs of my system (efficiency) by decreasing labor costs to serve a client, cheaper acquisition costs, and a leaner team? Is my business more profitable than in the Growth phase?
- If yes, you’re in the Scaling phase
- Can I sustain this phase for months, or years, without suffering from massive drops in revenue or inconsistent acquisition? Can I sustain this without massively changing my offer? Are my profits, and main KPIs, roughly stable over the past 6 months?
- If yes, you’re in the Maturity phase
Take care,
Jay