Business life cycle -Be successful by recognising and handling each stage???

What is a business life cycle? A business life cycle is a cyclical representation of the stages an average business goes through from seeding to decline and renewal. This evolutionary overview helps entrepreneurs and leaders optimise growth through the key stages, increasing the value of their business.

Seed Stage. The seed stage of your business lifecycle is when your business is just a thought or an idea. Challenge: Most seed-stage companies will have to overcome the challenge of market acceptance and pursue one niche opportunity.. Does this concept, product or idea fill a need in the market? Will it be accepted in the market? How do I establish a business structure? Will this idea yield me any profits?

Start-Up Stage. Your business now exists in legal terms. Products or services are in production, and you have your first customers. Challenge: If your business is in the start-up lifecycle stage, it is likely you have overestimated money needs and the time to market. Managing cash reserves. Managing sales expectations. Accounting management. Establishing a customer base. Establishing a market presence

Growth Stage. Revenues and customers are increasing with many new opportunities and issues. Profits are strong, but the competition is surfacing. Challenge: The biggest challenge growth companies face is dealing with the constant range of issues bidding for more time and money. There's an oft-quoted statistic that?nine out of every 10?startups fail. To make sure your business entity is the one in 10 that succeeds, you'll require investment to grow and mature your business. It's likely you'll seek outside investment capital or build up a debt profile. Either way, entity management must be tight, whether it's to ensure any personal guarantees signed with banks don't negatively impact directors, or whether it's to track and manage the equity given to investors.

Established Stage Your business has now matured into a thriving company with a place in the market and loyal customers. Sales growth is not explosive but manageable. Business owners at this final stage of the business entity lifecycle are focused on: How long the business can maintain and manage the appropriate rate of cash flow, expand the business, find and execute an exit strategy

Expansion Stage. This life cycle stage is characterised by a new period of growth into new markets and distribution channels. This stage is often the choice of the small business owner to gain a larger market share and find new revenue and profit channels. It's here that businesses often see?rapid growth in both revenue and cash flow as they get more comfortable with how they do things, but it's important not to get complacent. Ensure compliance and governance are given the priority it needs in your business entity, and keep a robust corporate record. Investors, auditors and regulators could all ask to view your entity data at any minute.

Maturity and possible exit A mature business doesn't have to be one that's hitting the headlines as the talk of the town. Sometimes, a?mature business chugs along with sustainable profit growth and loyal employees reaching long service leave time. Many mature businesses have a strong cash position, which makes them an attractive target for mergers or acquisitions. The business may also reach a position where it devolves into spin-offs for other products or services and grows into a wider subsidiary group. Whether exit or further expansion is the end goal, entity data again plays a pivotal role. Any exit will involve a robust analysis of the company's position both internally and externally, and the entity managers must be ready to efficiently and effectively get the right information to the right people at the right time.

I'm amazed by the potential of more companies employing integrated philanthropic initiatives at earlier stages in their life cycle. What if this were done on an even more massive scale? Consider what would happen if a top-tier venture-capital firm required the companies in which it invested to place 1% of their equity into a foundation serving the communities in which they do business. —?Marc Benioff

As 'Austrian'?business cycle?theory has pointed out, any bank credit inflation sets up conditions for boom-and-bust; there is no need for prices actually to rise. —?Murray Rothbard

It is, after all, only common sense to realize that, but for the fact that economic life is a process of incessant internal change, the?business cycle, as we know it, would not exist. —?Joseph A. Schumpeter

Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, and capitalism moves forward. —?Thomas Sowell

We have a greedy cycle where Human Rights Commissions fine citizens in order to pay their own salaries so they can employ more Human Rights Commissions. It's a bounty system where the prizes are business owners' heads. And so as restaurants go broke, tourists get stabbed. That's human rights in New York. And perhaps America. —?Greg Gutfeld

No one has the right to not assume that the?business cycle?will turn! Every five years or so, you have got to assume that something bad will happen. —?Jamie Dimon

The linear 'Take - Make - Dispose' system, which depletes natural resources and generates waste, is deeply flawed and can be productively replaced by a restorative model in which waste does not exist as such but is only food for the next cycle —?Ellen MacArthur

Male jealousy is the equivalent of PMS in my opinion. So just go about your business until his cycle passes. —?Shelli Stevens

The president has very little effect on the economy. If you want to put blame or credit, the main person who influences the?business cycle?is the head of the Federal Reserve Bank. —?Robert Fogel

Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business. —?Fred Wilson

Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the?business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself. —?Margaret Thatcher

Cycle after cycle, the team is working hard, but the business is not seeing results. Managers trained in a traditional model draw the logical conclusion: our team is not working hard, not working effectively, or not working efficiently. —?Eric Ries

In a perfect world, we don't want to be overly dependent on any single asset or be so dependent on the cycle or where one asset is the bulk of this company. —?James Packer

Repeal the entire Banking Act of 1933, and Austrian School economists will cheer, especially if the current system were replaced by 100%-reserve competitive banking with no central bank. That banking reform would give us a sound money system, meaning no more?business cycles, bailouts, or inflation. —?Llewellyn Rockwell

This crisis is not simply a more severe version of the usual?business cycle?recession, the typical downturn in which economies ultimately adjust and stabilize. —?Timothy Geithner

All we can thus far say about the duration of the units of the?business cycle and each of [its] two phases is that it will depend on the nature of the particular innovations that carry a cycle, ... and the financial conditions and habits prevailing in the business community in each case. —?Joseph A. Schumpeter

There's something insane about this business - about the cycle of making albums and going on tour to promote them. —?Martin Gore

Not every?business cycle?has a financial crisis. Frequently they do. —?Kenneth Arrow

The periods of unemployment accompanying depression in the?business cycle?... present a challenge to all our claims to progress, humanity, and civilization. —?Samuel Gompers

Bottom line. All companies are in business to make money, but being successful at it is not the reason why things change so drastically. That only points to a symptom. Without understanding the reason it happened in the first place, the pattern will repeat for every other company that makes it big. It is not destiny or some mystical?business cycle?that transforms success —?Simon Sinek

It was to Hofmeister, working as a young man, an amateur and enthusiast, in the early morning hours of summer months, before business, at Leipzig in the years before 1851, that the vision first appeared of a common type of Life-Cycle, running through Mosses and Ferns to Gymnosperms and Flowering Plants, linking the whole series in one scheme of reproduction and life-history. —?Arthur Harry Church

What we want to do is call attention to the fact that when workers and business work together, when you create a stakeholder model of corporate governance, where you understand that you can do well by your workers, you can do well by your shareholders and you can do well by your customers, that's how we create a virtuous cycle. —?Thomas Perez

Reaganomics - a blend of monetarism and fiscal Keynesianism swathed in classical liberal and supply-side rhetoric - is in no way going to solve the problem of inflationary depression or of the?business cycle. —?Murray Rothbard

The recent evidence increasingly suggests that an economic expansion is already well underway, although an array of influences unique to this?business cycle?seems likely to moderate its speed —?Alan Greenspan

Social media is not just a spoke on the wheel of marketing. It's becoming the way entire bicycles are built. —?Ryan Lilly

In general, an asset should be sold when it has greater value to a buyer. This happens when a buyer has a complimentary business or capability that would enable them to do more with that business. Many businesses we have exited were not failures but had simply reached a point in their life cycle where they no longer provided a core capability or served as a platform for growth. —?Charles Koch

Inflation is lower and more stable and the real?business cycle?fluctuations are more modest. —?Martin Feldstein

Most economists would concede that, in theory, the government has the tools to smooth the?business cycle. The problem is that fiscal policy is not made in theory; it's made in Congress. —?Charles Wheelan

In the classic old?business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters. And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production. —?Alan Blinder

There are stories - legends, really - of the "steady job." Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for the?business cycle. The graduates snicker. A steady job! They've never heard of such a thing. —?Max Barry

For policy makers interested in using tax policy to stimulate investments or especially to smooth?business cycle?fluctuations, the results are not promising. —?Austan Goolsbee

I'm born into the cycle of giving that we're all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I'm not a business guy. I'm a creative guy. —?Russell Simmons

The 'boom-bust' cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business. —?Murray Rothbard

The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump, but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom. —?John Maynard Keynes

In New Classical theory, periods of declining employment -?business cycle?downturns - may be caused by an unexpected decline in aggregate demand, which leaves workers mistakenly holding out for nominal wages that exceed the new market-clearing level. —?George Akerlof

There is no evidence that the?business cycle?has been repealed. —?Alan Greenspan

Short cycle businesses are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, and chemical business. —?Jack Welch

The game of business used to be like football: size mattered. Then it changed to basketball: speed and agility. Today, business is more like chess. Customer priorities change continually, and the signals given by these changes are vital clues to the next cycle of growth —?Adrian Slywotzky

Not much in the world ends up being the same as it started out, unless of course it had a very short life cycle. —?Lorii Myers

There will always be a?business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession as they always do in recessions. —?Robert Reich

Had Volcker never pushed through his radical change in policy, the world would be many bond traders and one memoir the poorer. —?Michael Lewis

The ad industry isn't struggling for a new set of principles or abandoning the ones that made it great from the start. It's simply in the midst of a?business cycle. I don't think it's more profound than that. And despite the economic downturn, I'm having more fun today than at any other moment in my 30-year advertising career. The game is more interesting and more relevant than ever. —?Rochelle B Lazarus

Just as human life has a cycle from birth to death, each with its own set of characteristics and needs, a business has a life cycle too.

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About Peter

After being in business for the past 50 years still enjoy learning and sharing my thoughts on business and life. From New Zealand but enjoy now living in Gold Coast Queensland.

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