“You have probably heard if your company isn’t growing, it’s dying”

The SBA has statistics of small companies that start and go out of business within one, five and ten years. If you are a business owner, CEO or other executive responsible for growing your company, you have probably already experienced many challenges.

About five years ago I found out about the 7 Stages of Growth model and I’ve been a follower ever since. The model was originally developed by James Fischer. After interviewing and taking a deep dive into 700+ businesses, he discovered that there are specific challenges that plaque a company at each stage. If you move forward before you fix the issues for your specific stage of growth, they will continue to be a drain on the organization. I’ve listed all seven stages and their name. To find out about the five top challenges for each stage take a look at this 7 Stages of Growth infographic.

The 7 Stages of Growth is the only business model based on the number of employees in your company (the model also works for teams of the same sizes) 

Stage 1 Start-up 
 1-10 Employees

Stage 2 Ramp-up
11-19 Employees

Stage 3 Delegation 
20-34 Employees

Stage 4 Professional
35-57

Stage 5  Integration
58-95 Employees

Stage 6  Strategic
96-160

Stage 7  Visionary
161-500 Employees 

Its not a case of IF the challenges will plague you, but WHEN. You are already experiencing many of the 27 challenges as you read this post. Some of them are lurking in plain sight. If you are ready to find out what they are and what you can do to fix them, contact us.