Stages of Entrepreneurship
It has been my experience as an entrepreneur in the trenches that the entrepreneurial world is populated with people of incredible courage; people who come from families of entrepreneurs, and others who move away from careers in established businesses. They apply not only their talents but their whole person, in their ventures. Their tenacity and grit are tangible.
Yet, tenacity and grit alone can prove exhausting. While disarray is a natural condition entrepreneurs live with, the best companies have widest bands of order. You might need to start with the threads of order that exist in your business and weave them together.
Despite the fact that time and energy are in high demand in venture building, taking time and applying some energy to increase your knowledge is a proven way to reduce chaos. Finding a clear direction, making time and dynamics work for you, you will no longer be driven through your day.
Rather, you can be refreshed enough to navigate your days and feel the rewards of your work and progress.
Order Creates Freedom
Coming from a family of entrepreneurs myself, my observation is that the business playing field has been both enriched and complicated. Around thirty years ago, entrepreneurship began to be rigorously researched.
In studying entrepreneurs, principles and concepts were discovered that, when sequenced, create frameworks of tools that reduce risk, increase value, and bring new business owners into the economic landscape better equipped to create value.
How is this research working for you?
How Knowing the Stages of Entrepreneurship Helps
Knowing the stages of entrepreneurship creates a path that helps you see what next best step to take.
Entrepreneurial frameworks help you assess and then strengthen your strategy. Utilizing financial statements, leadership strengths, integrity of systems, and the health of your organizational structure, you can understand where you are and see where you want to go.
Your personal enjoyment and professional contributions increase.
Stages
Pre-launch is about the processes of time and learning, creating, and preparing. This is a stage where research and transformation are critical. As a leader, you begin to conceive what it will take to execute your plan as you sketch your concept, discover necessary factors and elements of your industry and idea, develop a business plan, and begin to develop as a differentiated leader to fit the role you are creating.
Launch is when execution and evaluation occur. The cycle of apply and do, experience in real-time and evaluate, is critical to this stage. It requires discipline and commitment to maintain control of the things you can control and to comprehend the feedback loop: financial statements, customers, employee input and your experience. It is often a season of high-performance and learning what your preferred performance levels are and adjusting accordingly.
Flow - After the initial stage of learning, a state of flow begins to emerge. Execution moves beyond experimentation into a perpetual, profit-building mechanism. Familiarity through habit formation and system refinement can bring a sense of relief, and a foundation of experience brings a new level of confidence. Here, entrepreneurs can take a breath, find homeostasis where they see rewards and feel motivation energy. Done right, the burnout that historically hits in this season can be avoided.
Next-Level growth becomes visible while acclimating to flow. In a sense, flow creates the classroom for growth as success is realized and new horizons become visible. Through networking, supplementing products, and pivoting, a pre-launch cycle is experienced again. When next-level growth is approached with as much focus on creating a successful venture, launching next-level products, services, and partnerships can be as exciting as starting the new venture was. Self-restraint, research and learning, and critical communication skills prime a leader to achieve their new height.
What is your business telling you?
Can you hear your business? Your employees? Your perceptions? What will you learn as you schedule time to assess where your business is, what you need to know, and what direction you wan to take? What order can benefit your business and what personal rewards can you achieve? What will you learn when you take a few minutes regularly to gain an understanding of your business and your vision?
