ATTENTION:
CEOs with 1 – 10 Employees!
The Definitive Business Book to Survive and Thrive!
The honeymoon is over. You have your startup capital, you’ve ramped up to four to six employees quickly and now the fun begins! Getting out of the gate with a new company isn’t easy, but it’s a cakewalk compared to creating a consistently profitable business that you can run without it running you. As companies grow, the complexity level of the organization increases. That complexity level doesn’t increase because of revenues, profits or equity growth. Complexity increases because of the one factor in a company that is the hardest to control: people! James Fischer, author of the 7 Stages of Growth and the book, Navigating the Growth Curve, discovered that as companies add more people to the equation, the dynamics change.
A Stage 1 company, or startup, has 1 – 10 employees. At this stage of growth, it’s all about survival. A Stage 1 company is CEO-centric, meaning the CEO is the specialist who has created a product or service and is now getting his idea to take shape. A Stage 1 company innovates quickly; it does not get locked into any one specific focus at the beginning. It should quickly discover, explore, experiment and find the right product or service that the company intends to bring out into the world.
As a Stage 1 leader, don’t worry about hitting the bulls-eye; just hit the target! You need to figure out how to generate income: cash flow is your number one challenge. At this stage of growth, trial and error is the name of the game. Your risk is high because there are still so many unknowns.
In Stage 1, team selection is about how a staff member “fi ts” the culture and his ability to do whatever it takes to get the job done (specialized skills and experience are secondary). The CEO’s staff needs to help facilitate how work gets done and how quickly. The staff also needs to be flexible and willing to embrace change because there are so many unknowns and things can change quickly as the leader frequently makes adjustments to find what works best.
If you are a company with less than 10 employees then you NEED Laurie’s Stage 1 Book today.
“Laurie Taylor’s Stage 1 Book: Survive and Thrive: How to Unlock Profits in a Startup with 1 – 10 Employees, provided so many ideas for my startup business, I was swept up and busy applying every detail. A budget doc here. A worksheet there. A website to look at over here. AN ENTIRE LIST OF RESOURCES AT THE END! These are the very challenges that has had me stuck in my own business.”
Poor cash flow and limited capital can force leaders to prematurely stray from the original core business by chasing projects that might bring in money. A STAGE 1 COMPANY NEEDS TO STAY FOCUSED ON ITS PRINCIPLE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES.
“This statement single handedly changed the direction of my business. I immediately took action and removed myself from those initial clients and projects that did not serve my end goal. As a result, within the SAME week I signed agreements with 3 new clients more in line with my business model and pay structure. As an added bonus, I will make more in one week, than what I made in an entire month with the previous direction.”
Listen to Laurie's interview on the #1 Rated Online Radio Show for authors, The Authors Show.
Stage 1 and NOT a Start Up: 1 – 10 employees
There are companies that choose to stay in Stage 1. Their business plan operates well with under 10 employees, generating enough income to provide a good living for the CEO as well as the employees. With the advent of the Internet, Internet companies are small, agile entities that can drive a lot of revenue with very few people. There are also many ‘brick and mortar’ companies that continue to thrive and not move out of Stage 1.
With that said, one of the key messages driven from the research of the stages of growth, is ‘If you aren’t growing, you’re dying.’ So even a 20-year old retail shop will start seeing an erosion of profits, clients moving away, market share dwindling if they don’t do something to continue to refresh their business goals and objectives. A company who has been in Stage 1 for a good length of time may need to reach out to a new market, open a new location, expand its product or service offerings. Something will have to ignite their growth and keep their revenue and profit alive.
And remember. Your skills as a leader must stay fresh and evolve with the company. Your ability to adapt to the needs of your company is a critical component of building a successful business.
Learn how to Survive and Thrive as your business grows.
Don’t wait! Order your copy of Survive and Thrive with 1 – 10 Employees Today and start proactively managing your growth!
“History is being read but it is also being written by people with imagination.”
Les Brown.
I’m Laurie Taylor, author, speaker and trainer. I love helping business owners manage the chaos of growing their business. My book series on the 7 Stages of Growth are based on my own experiences and the critical concepts that are unique to the 7 Stages of Growth.
Read what other CEOs are saying about the value of understanding the impact of the 7 Stages of Growth.
“Nowhere have I ever found an incisive, insightful analytical tool like that offered by the 7 Stages of Growth. It makes charting a company’s growth as easy as painting by numbers.”
“As a fast-growing company, we struggled to keep our focus on areas that were critical for growing successfully. By working with the Stages of Growth, we discovered what our current operational environment really is, identified critical path objectives and developed a strategic set of initiatives that will become our roadmap for our future.”
“One of the biggest issues I struggle with as the CEO of a growing company is the unknown and having to make timely decisions with only 80-90% of the data available. One of the biggest attractions to the Stages of Growth X-Ray program is it helped my leadership team move from ‘wondering’ what to do next to ‘taking action’ through a detailed initiative plan built with confidence and organizational buy-in. This program allows a CEO to stop guessing at what he/she should be focused on and helps them identify exactly what to focus on. That’s a huge advantage to any organization.”
Stage 1 has 1 – 10 employees. Your role is to understand how to create a foundation of growth by understanding the critical challenges facing you today and recognize your ability to predict what’s coming by embracing all aspects of the 7 Stages of Growth.
Check Out The Other Success Secrets Books In The Series
by Laurie Taylor
