Where are you at in your business? Have you started? are you preparing to sell your business? Each stage of the business has different needs and requirements. Understanding those needs will help you make the right decisions at the right time. Take a look at the stages listed here.

• Seed Stage - During this time you are working on the plan for your business. You are testing out your ideas to see if they work. You also are putting together your initial team which may include business partners and advisers. You are also going to determine how you are going to fund the start-up phase of your business. What type of entity will you be and more.
• Start-Up stage - During this stage you are going to update your business plan to pitch to investors should you need to raise capital. You will develop your marketing plan and begin testing different strategies conservatively to see if you get traction where you thought you would. You are working hard at building your infrastructure and building up enough staff to handle the business that you have on a day to day business. Your focus should be to keep expenses in check with your revenues and micro-managing your projections to ensure that you are where you are supposed to be. This is a very critical stage of your business and how you perform may be the difference between being funded and surviving into the growth stage or collapsing because of lack of revenue and capital.
• Growth Stage - During the growth stage you are going to review your management and consider your needs. You will update your business plan to reflect changes in what you thought would happen and what has really happened so far. Marketing should becoming clearer to you and allow you to focus on a strategy that is conducive to the cost of the transaction. Your infrastructure should be as such to allow for growth in both equipment and staffing. Your funding that you raised should be sufficient along with revenues generated from ongoing business to execute your growth phase of business. You should be maintaining steady communication with your shareholders keeping them comfortable with the growth of the business.
• Managed Stage - During this time you Will again review the management. As an entrepreneur, you may not be the optimal person to continue leading operations of the business. It may be time to consider looking for another leader so that you may pursue other entrepreneurial activities. This is not always the case, but consider your happiness factor. Marketing should be consistent and the company should be running at a profit. the business transaction should be understood. You should also update the business plan to reflect the changes discovered during the growth phase of your business. Your finance team should be looking at ways to streamline the operation while not affecting the revenue flow allowing for greater return on revenue.
• Expansion Stage - This is where you are looking for acquisitions, or other market places that are similar to your process. Review the rest of the management team and ensure that you have the right people for where you are at in your business. You may need to make some changes in staff to ensure maximum productivity. Look at financing to include banks, venture capitalist, institutional funds and even consider going public at this stage.
• Declining Stage - Time to get your business plan out again and get focused on what is going on in your business.  Has your market gone away? Do you have the right team in place to take your business forward? This is the real time that you need to do some soul searching and determine if this business is where your heart is at. You have to always have passion for what you are doing. It may be time to consider moving into the exit stage and moving on to a different opportunity.
• Exit Stage - This time can be a very satisfying time for you, or it can be a trying time. Regardless, you are going to want to consider your options for exiting this business. Are you going to sell the business if you can? Do you need to dissolve the corporation or even declare bankruptcy? You have to try and clear your head as much as possible because this tends to be a very emotional time no matter what your situation. We will review these tough decisions and hopefully ease some of the pressure so you can make the right decisions for everyone. This is also a time to consider what you are going to do going forward. You may not be comfortable once your business is wound down and need to think about having something else to focus on even when you end up with a giant windfall.

Having a strong understanding of where you are headed always helps you to make better decisions in your business and in your own personal life. Being a member of SBENCO will help you think through the obstacles that may come your way and help you find strategies that will help accelerate your business development and personal development. We welcome you to join with other entrepreneurs in their pursuit of happiness.