The Initial Success Stage: The Crests and Troughs in Business

Being in the Initial Success stage of small business growth is a point in time replete with promise, but one must not make the mistake of thinking their luck will never run out and that success is forever. Success is like the tide, it ebbs and flows. It is like taking a hike up to the summit of a mountain, it’s neither all uphill nor downhill. You go through the crests and troughs.

The Initial Success Stage of Small Business Growth is comparable to that one drop of rainfall that makes a dam overflow and spill all over the barren fields in low-lying farm towns. It is the one last strike at a wall in a mine that reveals a dazzling, beautiful, rock-solid diamond. Of course you understand that the water spilling and the diamond are really just metaphors for the initial success most small business owners get to achieve at some point in their business.

Then again when you hit that rock after a long time of what seemed like ceaseless hard work, and it finally reveals the precious treasure you have long hoped to unearth, you don’t want to stop working hard, you want more of it. That’s the same with initial successes in business.

Since the Initial Success Stage of small business growth is such a crucial point in time, it would be best if you know what to do in the Initial Success Stage of small business growth.

In this article, we will discuss how to manage early success in business. We will define what sustainable growth is and why it’s important to aim for sustainable growth in the Initial Success Stage of small business growth.

Initial Success Stage: What to do When Success Is Not Linear

Success was never a straight line. Whoever assumed that it is will be greatly disappointed in life. When it comes to small business growth, the Initial Success Stage is that phase when your business begins to make more money, to do more than just break even, and is fast becoming a profitable product/service. But how do you know exactly what to do in the Initial Success Stage of small business growth?

At this phase, your business is really taking off. You’ve struck the rock and have been shown the diamond! It would be expected that you would feel it’s time to do more so you can begin your business expansion.

Since your company has survived the Survival Stage and is really becoming a hit, cash flow is becoming less and less of an issue. With such a good thing going on, business owners begin to feel that restlessness that every so often, tails success.

At the face of initial success, you begin thinking about what to do in the Initial Success Stage of small business growth. Small business owners begin to wonder what to do next. Maintain the status quo, or look for avenues to expand the business?

The Crossroad Every Business Owner Stumbles On

Should the business owner decide to expand, he/she will use the business to continue reinvesting and financing additional growth, usually in the form of branching out, where they must apply the same efforts exerted on the first branch and attempt to copy the same process and achieve the same success.

If they opt to maintain the status quo, they don’t make reinvestments. Instead they keep the company operational and use whatever profits garnered to finance other goals outside of the business.

This is a tough choice, and merits being laid out into the following sub-stages for better perusal:

Substage III-D

The Success-Disengagement Substage. Here, you can truly say that the business has achieved true economic health. The profits range from average to above-average and the business has the capacity and economic health to stay in this stage indefinitely.

However, there are certain variables that can still influence how the business will perform in this stage. Factors like ineffective management and market niche being destroyed, thereby diminishing the capacity of the business to compete with other establishments offering the same product/service.

In the Success-Disengagement Substage, there is a significant growth in the business that the owner might feel the need to bring in more people to perform duties that used to be his/hers. In this stage, managers take over the owner’s operational duties. The company is able to sustain itself, sans other external factors crippling its competitive capabilities.

Substage III-G

The Success-Growth Substage. When the owner chooses to expand, he/she pulls together the assets and resources available and uses them to finance a desired growth. There would be semblance of sustainable growth here as the business aims to stay profitable while at the same time, replicating the same process to another venture similar to the one in existence.

The main difference between Success-Growth and Success-Disengagement being that Success-Disengagement will allow the owner to step back a little whereas Success-Growth will require the owner to replicate the same efforts to areas that have been chosen for expansion.

Sustainable Growth = Success?

While there are arguments about success being relative, when it comes to success in small business, we can argue that real successes are those that involve sustainable growth. Sustainable growth means that through the crests and troughs, the growth achieved continues on. When the business owner can afford to finance the utilities and still continue to operate in a way that gives quality products/service, and at the end of the day there is profit that can make all the time, resources, and effort put in worth it, then we have sustainable growth.

It is what will carry the business through the ebb and the flow, through the crests and troughs.