The Four Stages
In a simplified world of creating a business for an eventual sale, there are four distinct stages of evolution requiring their own unique approaches. We break down these stages into easily understood concepts to help business owners navigate through them, from stage to stage, creating an atmosphere for decision making. Each stage has unique challenges, requires stage-specific skill sets of its executives, demands varying concentrations of resources, and prefers a language that addresses its internal and external needs. We thoroughly enjoy each stage, with all the related anxiety, struggle, and awe inspiring effort of the people involved.
What are the four stages?
Simplicity of form and action creates an atmosphere for the largest group of stakeholders to understand each other. Why was this business created, what is being done with it now, and what is planned for the future? These questions require different responses throughout the life of a business.
We break down the events into the following stages:
- IDEATION
- INCUBATION
- ACCELERATION
- EXIT
Each business is unique in its approach, and each also has these stages.
Our engagement goal at each stage is to hear, “Yeah, this makes sense.”
How does a company move from one stage to another?
There are different benchmarks for transitioning and evolving. Transitioning is a conscious decision, requiring planning, acceptance, and deliberate action. Evolution, on the other hand, is organic and happens naturally. The variables are also diverse, where units shipped, quantity of outlets, revenue benchmarks, ability to service multiple types of customers and a myriad of other factors may be considered.
Transitioning requires acceptance that the creators may not necessarily be the best business operators in the next stage of their business life. When a business evolves, the move from one stage to another is only recognized after the fact, mostly because the progress was either slow or not understood at the time. When a realization that creators need to be replaced forces an action, it starts the transitioning process involving recruitment of better managers, a change in the hiring process itself, review of existing employees, a change in financial activities and reporting, and even a change in processes of delivering a product or a service to the consumer.
In the end, companies move between stages either because it just happens or because they mean it to happen. And, yes, some companies may not move out of whatever stage they are in for a variety of reasons, where some reasons are also conscious and some are not.
Who should use our services?
Business owners who are actively pursuing a transition from Ideation or from Incubation have specific operational goals in mind. Our firm is designed to assist such businesses with operational support, managing various accounting, payroll, banking and compliance issues. We add a level of expertise that may be needed to organize, systematize, outsource, and present the company in a new way to new stakeholders because the goals of the company have shifted.
A conscious transition starts with a realization that this is the next path for the company. We are but a symptom of that realization. In most cases, it is simpler, faster and cheaper to bring in an organization that is already in place, so the business can concentrate on doing what it needs to do – growing revenue, develop internal production of services or products, adding additional partners or investors, etc.
Our expertise lies in our experiences, and this is exactly what our customers and partners want.
