In this third episode in a series of five, focusing on helping you figure out which phase of business you are in, we are going to talk about business phase 2–growth. If you are unsure of which phase you are in, go to legendleaders.com/quiz and in less than 5 minutes you will know exactly where you are sitting.
Let’s dive into the growth phase. So, as you know, if you just entered into the growth phase you have found an offer that works. You generated revenue in the startup phase that proved your offer was worth something in the marketplace. Awesome job!
In the growth phase, you transition from focusing solely on cash flow to now focusing on profit. Yes, you need profit, dollars left over after you pay all of your expenses, so you can reinvest that money into your business. Why? Because you want to scale!
You’re ready to scale at this point. Your idea is sound, it is selling, people want it, etc. The last thing you want now is to be held back by your inability to fulfill orders fast enough. To overcome that limitation, you have to take the money and reinvest it in things like additional equipment, more headcount, and more overall business tools to improve speed and production. You could even seek investors at this point and take on some investment capital if you want to scale faster than your profit investment will allow.
The point of the growth phase is rapid scale because you want to take your product, produce it quickly, get it into the hands of every customer who wants and needs it, and generate as much revenue as possible. The revenue stream is just a cycle of money flowing in and then right back out as you grow your business.
In this phase, you are feeling cautiously optimistic. You can breathe for just a second because you are realizing that your idea is actually a good one and it might just work. Instead of constantly pivoting though, you have now found a horse and you need to get on it and ride it. This causes some apprehension because you just left an emotional state of “adjust, pivot, fail, try again.” You’re not failing on a broad scale anymore, you can commit to this one idea and grow it. But you can’t help but continue to look around every corner, waiting on this opportunity to fall through.
The point is that all of this is normal. You feeling like a fish out of water so to speak is normal. Your business has just gone through it’s first of 3 facelifts. When the business changes, you have to change. The faster you can do that, the faster can embrace this success and start to run quickly with your business. That’s the mental state you need to be in.
Also, in addition to everything else, remember that you are starting to hire talent to help your business run faster. If you aren’t sure how to recruit, interview, and hire you will have to learn that skillset now. Seek coaches who can help you with this. It will be critical to your current and future success.
Does this sound like you or your business? Go take the quiz at legendleaders.com/quiz to find out if you are in phase 2 or not.
Be Legendary!