Ok, over the past 4 weeks I have laid the foundation for successfully growing your small business and becoming  an entrepreneur.  So what’s next?  Well, you might think understanding  each stage of the growth cycle would make sense.  On the surface this is a good place to start, but I find most small business owners are mired in the survival stage, or what I call “no man’s land,” so I want to start there.

You can get a better idea of what I mean by “stuck in nowhere land” by reading my previous post of the same title.  It does a very good job of sharing why small business owners get stuck at the “survival stage” of the growth cycle.

To get unstuck you need to understand the goal you must achieve to get to the self-sustainability stage.

To create company systems that will consistently and predicatively produce profitability.

If that seems like a big task, it is.  But, the objectives are very clearly defined.  Just follow the directions provide in the Small Business Growth Matrix!  If you’d like a further explanation of where to focus in the survival stage read the post 8 Things You Can Do to Achieve the “Survival” Stage of Small Business Growth.

Notice most of the objectives center on getting yourself untangled from the day-to-day business.  What I often find isn’t that the systems don’t exist.  They’re just not formalized and the owner doesn’t feel comfortable letting go and delegating.

Notice the problem here isn’t a business/company factor.  The business stuff is easy.  Write the process down.  Teach someone else to do it.  And, turn it over to them from this point forward and monitor it through some form of regular reporting.  Easy enough, right?

Sure, until you add the emotional attachment many owners have to their business.  Often the business is a source of their self-identity!  Now making the necessary company changes is not so easy!

It has taken decades to master the skill of being able to assist a business owner through this transition.  I can tell you having assisted in dozens of cases it can take years to get them to this point. Some owners never make it.  Usually this is because they can never get past the business as being their identity.  They never seem to define a strong enough personal goal to motivate them to make the personal change.

Do you have the have the personal goal that will allow you to get to the other side, or you’ll struggle until it becomes a crisis?  Our personal and business goal assessment is a tool I have specifically designed to assist with this process.  If you don’t have a powerful enough motivation yet I would highly recommend that you check out this tool.

So, if you have the motivation to change personally, and you have the roadmap of what objectives you need to achieve to get there, what else do you need to get started?  For those that have made it to the other side of survival, what help you get across the chasm?