The 7 Ages Of A Business

I had a business for 10 years. I started it from the scratch, financing it by using the 3 F’s (family, friends and fools) and managed it until I decided it’s time to sell, buying my own freedom. It was one of the most interesting periods in my life and one of the most fulfilling either. In today’s post I’ll share something I learned during this 10 years: the 7 ages of your business.

Because, like every other thing which is born, raised and fulfilled, every business has its own life and its own stages. The following is more or less an entrepreneur perspective, it’s a view from somebody who decides to start his own business, but it can be also applied to any other perspective (investors, managers, employees).

1. Enthusiasm

This is the first stage of your business. It’s the first weeks or months, a period in which the deep, almost irrational exhilaration is simply unbalanced by any other feeling you have. The joy of being your own boss, the fascination of seeing your ideas coming to fruition, the faith that everything is possible are simply overwhelming. During the first weeks of my business I used to compare this stage with sex, in terms of thrill. Entrepreneurship being better than sex, of course.

In this stage you don’t know almost anything about the processes in your business, nor about your clients. You don’t have a clear understanding of the cash-flow notion, hence the cash-flow will be almost invisible. You may start it with an initial funding or you can start it out of nothing, as I did, but it’s certain that in the first weeks or months, you won’t really have a cash-flow. And you also won’t give a dime on it.

Also, in this age, you act out of gut, rather than calculus. It’s the most intuitive part of a business, and most of the time you are right. The most important and effective employees I had were hired during the first, enthusiast phase of my business. I didn’t know how to run a hiring interview and all I knew was: “Do you know to do that? Let’s work together!”. And it worked.

During this stage you don’t have visible results either. All you have is a deep desire to change the world and prove your value.

Read more about the enthusiasm age in this guest post I did at AttractionMindMap.com. (more…)