In this fourth episode of five, in a series focusing on understanding the phases of a business, we are going to talk about business phase 3–mature. We have already talked about the startup and growth phases over the past few days. If neither one of those phases sounded like your business, maybe your business is in the mature phase. Want to find out for sure? Go to legendleaders.com/quiz and get your answers today.
The mature phase is a solid place to be. You are starting to say to yourself “Yes, I made it!” And when you say that in the mature phase, you would be right. At this point, you have actually made it.
From a revenue perspective, you are bringing in steady revenue and you have profit that can actually start to accumulate in the bank. Yes, instead of having to reinvest all of your profit as you did in the growth phase, now you can actually let some of that money sit in the bank for a bit while you decide what to do next.
From a people perspective, you have expanded your workforce at this point. You probably have 100 people on your team maybe more. You have a management team to lead all of those employees and provide some hierarchy of direction and leadership within your organization.
Internally, you are facing another uncomfortable situation. And why wouldn’t you? Your company has just gone through a shift and as such you have to shift as well. In the mature phase, you have an offer that has been validated in the startup phase. You have a product or service that you have massed out into the marketplace as quickly and efficiently as you could in the growth phase. Now is the time to build a strong infrastructure around your business in order to be stable. The mature phase is about creating stability.
So how do you do that? You put people and process foundations into place. Yes, you actually anchor yourself in. No more pivoting every five seconds like in the startup phase. No more running quickly “we will figure that out later” like in the growth phase. Later is now. So you must solidify your processes and procedures around people (hiring, firing, recruiting, discipline policies, attendance, etc.) and processes (SOPs, training programs, etc.).
This is a hard phase for entrepreneurs because we like the freedom, flexibility, and fast pace of the startup and growth phases. To now have to focus on anchoring ourselves in, to have to focus on the details of creating foundational processes, that isn’t a strong suit of most entrepreneurs. So it’s without question that this phase feels counterintuitive.
The point here though is that you must lead through it. You must create procedures and processes in order to stabilize the scaled business. Without rules and without consistent processes, you will start to decline. You don’t need or want that. Stability here is necessary, and it is a requirement to successfully navigate phase 3.
Does this sound like your business? Go take the quiz to find out for sure! legendleaders.com/quiz
Be Legendary!