You are Actually NOT Ready to Grow Your Business (Business Growth Stages)

Of course, you WANT to grow your business. But that does not mean you are actually READY.

There are 6 types of readiness that will keep your business growth stagnant, and 3 business growth stages you cannot skip. Feeling ready for success is very different than actually being ready.

#1, Emotional Readiness

The first type of readiness is emotional readiness. A lot of people can feel ready. "I want success" or "I want more success." But true emotional readiness is about not being afraid of success. Not worrying about what other people will think. Not freaking out about it.

You can certainly have conflicting emotional readiness. On one hand, you are excited. On the other, you are freaking out a little. You have worries. You have fears. You have what-ifs. If that is the case, this is something to keep working on as you move forward. Do not stop to fix it first, but keep working on it as you build.

#2, Mental Readiness

Mental readiness is when you can genuinely say, "I have got this. I can figure this out." When you are not only confident in your ability to handle things, to learn, to grow, to develop, but competent in your ability to do so.

Also consider:

• Can I focus, or am I scattered in too many directions?
• How are my decision-making skills?
• Am I able to easily prioritize, knowing what comes first, what comes next, and what is down the road?

All of these (focus, decision-making, prioritization) are actual skills with tactics you can use to develop them.

#3, Physical Readiness

This one is possibly the hardest for me. Can your body, can your health, handle the next level of success? Do you have the energy and stamina?

This does not mean your health has to be perfect. But it is important that your work is not totally wiping you out, and that your physical state is not a constant distraction from what you are trying to do.

Sometimes you get to slow down on the business growth in order to focus on physical health so you can reach and sustain the next level of growth.

#4, Personal Readiness

This is the one many people forget to consider. Can my home, my family, my life, sustain the level of growth I am wanting to create in my business? If I grow my business, will my life fall apart?

Consider:

• Is your family in a place where they can handle the changes to schedules, routines, and priorities?
• Do you have the support systems in place on a personal level?
• How are your time management skills and your organization?

If things are a mess, either in your environment or your schedule, it is going to be really difficult to grow your business because those things become distractions.

#5, Financial Readiness

There are two things involved in financial readiness.

Skills. Do you have the skills to budget, save, use debt wisely, manage your books, handle your taxes? You do not need all of these skills yourself, hopefully you will outsource some, but do you have enough skill to know who to go to and what needs to happen?

Financial means. The flip side is having the money. Upfront capital to get started. A security net, savings, something to take the stress off so you are not worrying about where money is coming from. The peace of mind to be patient with the process.

A lot of people say you have got to have money to make money. Thankfully, in this day and age, that is not actually the case. You can start with very little, grow a little, reinvest, and grow more. But it is trickier. If you are starting with no safety net, it does not mean it is impossible. It just means you get to be more creative and more patient.

#6, Business Readiness

Once you get through all those types of readiness, now we can look at business readiness. Is my business at a stage where it is actually ready to grow to the level of success I want?

There are 5 different stages of business. I love the Harvard Business Review description that talks about these five stages: Existence, Survival, Success, Takeoff, and Resource Maturity. Most people talking about being ready to grow are really in one of the first three. Let me walk you through those.

Stage #1, Existence

The very first stage is merely existence. Getting the right offers and the right business plan in place. You are answering the question, "Is this idea even viable? Do people actually want what I have to sell?"

You are looking for proof of concept. It does not matter how much you love the idea, will people actually pay you for it? Until you get sales or pre-sales, you are still in the existence phase.

In this stage, there is not a lot of growth. There is a lot of testing. A lot of experimenting. And it is all on your shoulders. As Harvard Business Review puts it, "The owner is the business. They perform all of the important tasks. They are the major suppliers of energy and capital."

You may love the idea of having a manager or an integrator, but you are not getting them at this level. It is all on you. This is where you really find out if you are emotionally, mentally, and personally ready, because of the amount of work that goes into this level.

Most people want to get through this in weeks or months. Sometimes it takes longer. Some businesses never get out of this stage. But you cannot grow to the next level without knowing you have a viable offer. If you are stuck here, put all of your time, energy, and direction into figuring out that viable offer.

Stage #2, Survival

Your business has the ability to survive. It is actually making sales and keeping clients happy. Your primary focus now is on increasing revenue and learning how to keep it. Optimizing, fixing, improving both your marketing and sales strategies, and mastering the financial side of your business.

You could be making a couple thousand to tens of thousands a month here, but you are still a small organization. You might start bringing in managerial positions. Your backend systems are probably still pretty messy, and you are focusing on short-term goals and smaller projects because you are still in survival mode.

If you are stuck in Survival, make sure your offers, messaging, and positioning are solid. Then focus on optimizing and increasing your marketing and sales funnels. Once your revenue is predictable, meaning a certain amount of traffic or ad spend produces a known number of sales, you are ready for the next stage.

Stage #3, Success

The Success stage has two sub-stages that most business owners fail to recognize.

Disengaged sub-stage. Your business is making predictable money, predictable profits, and you as the owner can stay right there and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Often you are taking yourself out of the business or replacing yourself with other people who can operate it for you.

Your business can stay here until something else comes along (competition, marketplace changes). There is nothing wrong with deciding not to grow further if you are happy. But too much disengagement leads to atrophy. You do not have to keep growing, but you do need your business to evolve to maintain what you built.

Growth sub-stage. This is the stage everyone wants to get to. You feel ready for it, even if you are not yet. You are making predictable income, but now instead of just enjoying the fruits, you are reinvesting profit back into the business to create more. This is where you invest in better systems, optimization, automation, and team.

Notice: this growth can only happen after you get out of the survival stage. Once you have a predictable way to make money, then you can really invest and create the growth you feel ready for. That is when you can reach the Takeoff stage and beyond.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Emotional, mental, physical, personal, financial, and business readiness to consider. If you are feeling overwhelmed right now, or like you will never make it, guess what? You are not crazy. You are not alone. You are an entrepreneur. Welcome to the game.

But this is also where I want to encourage you to take an honest inventory, pick the one or two readiness types that are weakest for you right now, and focus there. You do not fix all six at once. You fix them in sequence, while you keep moving forward on the business itself.

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