Hi Champ!

We have been talking about the life cycle and maturity levels of a business and we did this out of order!  This was not a mistake...

The main reason is that survival, growth and expansion are where we see the most confusion with business leaders pertaining to growth, change, and people issues.  The second reason is the inception stage otherwise known as “startup” and Mature stage have some huge similarities as one starts to look for ways to Springboard the business.  We will discuss this today.

As a reminder, the five different stages of a business life cycle are:

1. Inception
2. Survival
3. Growth
4. Expansion
5. Mature

The Inception and Mature Business Stages

Inception is about driving revenue and getting traction to see if the business idea is viable.  In the same manner, a mature business looks for ways grow new revenue streams to stay relevant and not be replaced.  The difference is a mature business has to focus on operational continuous...

Today I'd like to chat about the different types of capabilities and potential staff roles necessary as one grows from inception and survival into growth mode.  At Springboard Consulting we developed a business consulting tool that helps to identify key objectives necessary to springboard your business to the next level.  These levels represent the maturity of the business and here is a brief explanation of the model.

• Inception / Startups; Less than 2 years old
• Survival / More than 2 years or making a profit
• Growth / Business experiencing fast growth, growing staff needs
• Expansion / Planning Franchising, Licensing, or Multiple Locations business models
• Maturity / Brand recognition, People, Process, and Technology needs fulfilled

As a company moves towards the growth level, there are essentially three key roles that need to be filled as a building block for growth.

• The Expert
• The Manager
• The Leader

All of these roles need to be played simultaneously by different people...

Today we’ll talk about shameless self-promotion. That’s right, I said it! Shameless! After all, we are learning from Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, high profile CEO's, and politicians here.

It’s all about self-promotion! Self-promotion comes in many forms and you can use different tactics to get your name out there. Look at politicians! Talk about self-promotion and in some not so discreet ways, at that. But, seriously, consider some of the major superstars we all know. Madonna, Donald Trump, Howard Stern and Bill Clinton, just to name a few.

We all self promote. Did you raise your hand in class to show the teacher you knew the answer? Of course! That’s self-promotion. This is the kind of self-promotion we are talking about. With dignity, class and the knowledge to back it up. If you self-promote only to prove you don’t really know what you’re talking about, you’re going to lose business.

Natural self-promoters are the former and I want to...