A couple of weeks ago, I was attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It was there where I met John Jantsch who writes some interesting and thought-provoking information on his blog, Duct Tape Marketing. In perusing the site, I came across this one post that he wrote in 2009 that basically explains how a small business evolution is essentially like a newborn baby. Jantsch calls this the “three natural phases of successful small business growth” and if you picture it like you just had a baby, it’s a pretty good analogy.
But while small business owners are excited about having a child, Jantsch points out a complication: “many simply dive in and try to do things they are not ready to do, lacking the proper foundation of an ideal market, core message and systems and processes necessary to deliver a thrilling customer experience.” Regardless, for the most part, business will progressively go through the following three steps…
Foundation – the beginning steps of any small business. Just like a newborn baby learns of his/her surroundings and begins its life, so too does the business. Jantsch believes that this is the stage where you search for your ideal customers, where you seriously look at where your business is going to go, what purpose will it serve, and more than simply having a crafty website and a slick slogan. This would be where your business plan would be created – it’s the point where you have the building blocks necessary for supporting the life of your baby.
Growth – once you have a baby, it’s going to grow up and you’re going to need to nurture it and educate it. Jantsch says that this is point where you add layers on the foundation. Work on building up a more consistent brand. Essentially, your “total understanding of your customer, a consistent message, and systems and processes will allow you to deliver a stunning customer experience.” Not only will you have that one market and target audience to reach out to, but it’s believed that in this phase, you’re going to expand upon your existing plan and learn to scale. Jantsch does note an interesting fact:
In this phase many businesses feel the pull to expand and capture new markets or add new directions, but the wise move in many cases is to actually refine and narrow your focus even more. By this time you’ve likely developed a great feel for your ideal customer or ideal kind of engagement and now is possibly the time to look at becoming a leader in your market or dominating a narrowly defined niche.
But did you know that with this growth phase, this is probably where your business will spend the most time learning, growing and evolving? Why? It’s because you’re going to go through the maturity segment of the program. Hiring staff, balancing budgets, working on a variety of programs to get more awareness about your company, etc are all happening during the growth phase. Don’t be afraid to delegate some of the responsibility to trusted people on your management team.
Momentum – the last phase of a small business, this is the area that is almost similar to a child being all grown up and mature. Your “child” has gone through the education process and is now on its way to living its own life. This is the part where you just left the business run its course. Jantsch believes “like many things in life, this is simply the payoff for all the hard work put in to date, but it’s more than that. It’s a maturity that comes with an unconsciously competent awareness of opportunities to better serve your existing ideal customer base.”
While you might believe that the momentum phase is probably the last step before the big payout & acquisition of your company, you’re probably wrong. The momentum phase is the part where you’re more comfortable with the business and that everyone has some solid experience in their roles. It’s the next 50-100 years of the company that will be implementing the strategic plan you developed in the foundation and nurtured in the growth phases. Jantsch notes that maintaining growth and momentum in this area only comes from continuously monitoring, measuring, and adapting to the wants and needs of your ideal customer. Make sure that you adapt and evolve your strategies throughout the entire process to make your end users happy.
While nothing really scientific, I believe the point that Jantsch might be making in his post is that you should treat your business as a child. You will need to help nurture it and help it grow before pushing it out there into the world and helping it on occasion to succeed. Sure it’s mature, but don’t forget that there’s always room to adapt and change the way things are done to make it better. The cycle is never over.
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