Do you feel a bit overwhelmed and not sure how to set your business up for success and growth? Well, today, I want to teach you the phases of business growth so you can identify which phase you’re in right now, what you should be focusing on, and what the success factors are of business growth so that you can run your dream company like a well-oiled machine.  If this sounds like you, watch the video below or read on.

I specialize in helping people just like you go from zero to full-time income in their coaching business in less than four months. If you’re reading this right now, it means that you might feel a little overwhelmed with setting your business up for real growth. Am I right? Well, you’re not alone. About 10 years ago, I launched my coaching business, and I fell in love with coaching, but I didn’t know anything about business growth.  I used what I call a piecemeal approach, where I just pieced my business together and tried my best, and that’s when I began to leverage my business degree. I have a Master’s in business administration, and I remember sitting through my economics and business classes and thinking, “When am I ever going to use this stuff?” Then it all started to make sense for me.

The Five Phases of Business Growth

Today, my business runs like a well-oiled machine. I have the right people, the right systems, and the right processes for stable income and continued business growth, and that’s what I want for you, too.  So, let me present to you the Five Phases of Business Growth, including the success factors in each phase so you know what to do right now. (By the way, I also want to give credit to the Harvard Business Review for presenting us with these phases, which is where I heard about them for the first time.)

Phase 1:  Existence

This is when you bring your business into existence and you birth your business baby, so to speak. In this phase, you, as the owner, are the business. There are no clients, no contractors, no employees, no staff, no team. That means that you’re creating a lot of things. You’re creating your programs and your brand and setting up your systems.  This is a very difficult phase to be in because there’s lots to learn and lots of work to get done.

The success factors in this phase are:

• Being very disciplined with your time, because you have to be focused in order to get everything done with the amount of time that you really have.
• You have to get clear on your big idea, which is how you as a coach differentiate yourself in the market.
• You have to make sure you create your programs for sale.
• You also want to make sure you set up a marketing funnel so that you can go from existence into the next phase and begin to make money and become profitable in your business as quickly as possible.

Phase 2:  Survival

It’s called survival for a reason because you’re literally in survival mode as a business owner. In this phase, you probably have some clients. You either got them by chance or through a marketing campaign that actually worked for you. You have a little bit of income, but you’re still doing everything yourself. You have no team, no contractors, or maybe only one VA or an executive assistant that’s working for you a couple of hours a week or a month, but nothing steady and consistent.

In this phase, your success factors will be based on three things:

• Consistent lead generation. You want to focus on your marketing efforts to make sure that you automate your marketing and you’ve built a sales funnel, which will bring you more consistency, more leads, and ultimately more clients in your business.
• You also want to make sure you achieve customer satisfaction. If you cannot gain customer satisfaction quickly and make sure your clients are happy and getting results, your business will not last a long time because you can only hype it up for so long.
• The third most important part you want to focus on is hiring. In the survival mode, you’re doing everything yourself, but that can only last so long. Hire out all these areas that you don’t want to focus on so that you can work in your zone of genius as much as possible and let other people do all the other important things that need to be taken care of.

Now I have a bonus tip for you, and this could literally save your business. What I see happening with many new coaches is they get stuck in survival mode, and they never make it to the next level, and it’s because they focus way too much on things like brands, logos, colors, creating programs. They’re not hosting webinars, creating videos, or doing live streams. They’re not attending events, which can help them get their message out there so much more quickly. If that’s you, procrastination and fear might be at play right now, and you need to break through that. In order for you to get out of survival into the next phase, you need to focus your time on marketing, creating a sales funnel, and bringing the right clients in your business so that you have the money to reinvest in yourself and hire the right people.

Phase 3:  Success

We call it success for a reason because now you finally get to benefit from your business and all your hard work. In the success phase, you have consistent clients, you have profits in your business, and you actually have a team that’s helping you with the day-to-day activities in your business.

The success factors in the success phase are:

• Continued hiring.
• Managing your team.
• Maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.

During business growth, there’s going to be more and more projects and activities that you will want to take care of, and it’s not about you doing it all yourself. It’s about you learning to delegate and hire the right people and manage them effectively so that you can take on more clients and you can scale and increase your impact in the world, and do all of that without having customer satisfaction and results decline on you.

Phase 4:  Take-Off

That’s where it gets really interesting. Some of the indicators of take-off are when your business hits the million-dollar mark. I would say a business is probably in take-off mode when it crushes the seven-figure mark in annual income. Some other indicators of take-off are when you have a really well-working core management team. You have high customer satisfaction and are making some great money in your business. You have a great bottom line, you’re very profitable, and you may already have a coaching team of other coaches coaching your clients. You may or may not have a sales team, and you, as the owner, are now removed from your business.  You’re more of a CEO and a visionary than someone who is in the day-to-day activities.

The success factors of your take-off phase are:

• Continue to hire team coaches who can add value and get your clients the results they’re looking for and hire a sales team, maybe even hiring a sales team manager.
• You also want to continue to delegate tasks into the right areas of your business so that you can stay free to think about where you want to go, where the business needs to go, and make the right decisions for your company and get it to the next level.

Phase 5:  Maturity

The key indicator of maturity is optimization. You, as the owner, are now pretty separate from your actual coaching organization, which frees you up to do even more of things you really want to do. The sky is the limit, and you, as the owner, can decide what’s right for you and your lifestyle and what you want to do next.

Now I want to hear from you. Which phase are you in right now? If you’re a new coach, chances are you’re either in existence or survival, and I know what it’s like. Hang in there. You’re going to make it to the next step. Maybe you’re already in the success phase or even in take-off. Comment on this article, let me know which phase of business growth you’re in and let’s have a conversation.

If you’re stuck in existence right now, I have something very special for you, two of my most popular guides. One is for helping you build a premium coaching program, and the other one will help you design a high-end brand. Just click the links, and you can download these documents and get started right now.

My mission with this article was to help you understand that there are certain phases in your business growth and development, and it’s normal for you to go from one phase to the next. I also wanted you to have a plan and a vision of where you’re going with your business and what the important success factors are for you to be focusing on right now.  I hope you got more clarity, and that I helped you understand which phase in your business development you’re in right now so you can do what you need to do to get your business to that next level.

 

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