Tales From Leadership: Businesses Evolve: What Does That Mean For Me??

What's up, everybody? Echadre, I'm coming to you from beautiful Keller Regional park here in St. Paul. It's just gorgeous. Just taking a little walk about and so I can talk to you a little about some tales of leadership again. And what I wanted to talk about a little bit was the transition of the business and businesses as you go from, let's call it there, the infancy stages to a more mature business and what that means for you and why it's so important to understand where your business life cycle is in and what's a good question to ask your leaders, right?

To ask your leaders, like where are we in our business lifecycle? So then when you understand that question and they give you an answer, then you know what it means for you, right? So, but let's, let's first say this, doctor e's live just a little bit ago. Unbelievable. When you're talking about leadership and leadership practice, they're either talking behind your back or to your face, one of the two. So, you know, regardless, your message was incredible. Absolutely incredible. Doctor, if you haven't listened to that yet, please go back and watch that.

That was a wonderful message. I think everybody should be able to resonate with and most, most ultimately identify, you know, what it looks like for them. But, so let's, let's take a look at this from, I would like to call it three different stages of a business life cycle and what this means for you. So from zero to three to five years, you're talking about high growth, high speed, embryonic stages of business where there's a lot of unknowns, there's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of issues that you're trying to identify with.

Solve for problem, solve for, you have to sell. If you don't sell, the business doesn't exist. Startup, funding, tech, tech, tech businesses. Well, any business for that matter. But it's so important for that first customer, right? And usually it's a founder led organization and such like that. So what does that mean for you? What does it mean if you're in that early life cycle stage of an enterprise? Number one, are all processes built already? The answer is no. Right. The organization is responsible for them.

The people are responsible for them. The groups that are running them are responsible for them. So if you think you're going to come into an organization, zero through one through one, four, one through maybe four years, all those processes have to get built. And ultimately it falls on the entire team to build those processes and develop those processes to eliminate, you know, chaos or otherwise. Right. As far as communication is concerned, you know, what I've found over the course of my time is, you know, communication kind of struggles a little bit, and, you know, it's on everybody to make it better.

And I think culture is being consistently defined. You know, day in and day out processes, culture, mission, vision, values, like those things should all be aligned, don't get me wrong. But the rest of it, in the day to day practices and I identifying who you're going to solve for what you're going to do, because businesses needed to adapt, just like human beings need to adapt, right? So you get through that first zero to 30 to five lifecycle of your business. Now you're in the next wave. Right now you're in the next wave, which I would call it like the maturation phase of your business, when you're getting into the maturation phase of your company.

Now, those, those initial wins of these massive growth streaks of human beings where they maybe went from roll one to roll two to roll three from a generalist to more of a specialist, you know, back to a generalist, back to a specialist, back and forth to identify where they need to go in this next wave of maturation. You've now kind of found your niche, you know, operating within the business. Let's take a look at the pillars of the department. Sales, operations, finance, marketing. Right now, you've kind of identified yourself into a niche, and you're maybe working into a role, up to a role, goal to a role.

But you can start to see your future kind of go with where the business is. The business have now found probably lots of customers, lots of different sales opportunities in order to be able to maintain the business flow, keep the operations afloat. Is jobs still in jeopardy? Well, for any business, they're always in jeopardy, but you have probably a little bit more consistency. You know what to expect. You know what that's looking like, right? So you take, again, they'll look at the first wave of a business life cycle.

It's that embryonic stage. It's that early stage of a business moving on to the next stage of your business, that maturation phase. And last but not least, let's call it like the sunsetting phase of a business. The business has now went all the way up, maybe even hit that hockey stage. Growth, it's starting to plateau, it's matured, and now it's kind of doing one of these, right? So when it's doing one of these, what does that usually look like? Well, number one, a lot of entrepreneurs, owners, will then try to maybe sell their company or sell their business.

Maybe before it goes all the way down, you might have to identify through maturation phases of your business, like maybe cuts when you start to see, like when cuts come up, right? Because now you used to grow, grow, grow and identify who's growing with it. But now maybe the best person for the role is now over, maybe seeing like one a, one b, b, one c of the endeavor in order for cost efficiencies of scale and all those other things for maturation. So where, what does that, what does that tell me?

Like, are you looking for new roles and opportunities? Because maybe you want to operate back in that zero to five, three to five year business where you love that intensity, that pressure, that stress change, constant change, things that are going on that almost seem a little chaotic and stressful while you're dealing with that, in that early stages of the business. Or maybe you want to go back to a more maturation filled endeavor where you can kind of see your small peaks of growth within the organization.

Or they have idea phases that they're trying to implement for future revenue proceeds, growth, innovation, you know, opportunities, etcetera. Or you're in that long, long term phase of, I would call it like a slow decline of a business. So if you look at, you know, some organizations, which, which organizations could we land in each one of the buckets today? Today, right. So on the far left, let's look at as that, that speed, that speed, you know, zero to 30 to five year, you know, enterprise that you're trying to identify processes, building sales cycles, doing all those things.

Let's look no further than Cadre, right? You know, cadres that in that zero to five year growth, our mission, vision, values is still holding strong. But most importantly, right now, we're in a growth mode. We're in a growth phase. Individuals are taking leaps and bounds, you know, up our directoral change, leadership change, such like that. So it's super exciting time to be a part of. It's energizing. There's so much momentum. It's fun and it's engaging, it's purposeful, it's inspirational work.

And now we're getting into a maturation phase of a business. 510 years, maybe even up to the 2025 year mark. Let's look at a company like Medtronic, you know, Medtronic in our backyard or starkey hearing, right. They found their gold products and services that they know sell, that they know work. They have their infinite amount of customers. They have that couple different dynamic, innovative features of their businesses that they're trying to maybe roll out on either their hearing aids or when it comes to maybe heart defects, etcetera, that they're working with on either starkey or Medtronic.

So you kind of know what that's going to look like for your future, right? You can start seeing roles one, two and three go up. You know what questions to ask your boss. Processes are really defined. Performance, structure, expectations, you'll all lead up to success, or lack thereof. Daily chores, tasks, things that you have to accomplish in order to achieve success. Last but not least, you know, sunsetting businesses, right? Sunsetting businesses. Believe it or not, there's some tech companies right now that are kind of like sunsetting.

You're kind of seeing some of these tech companies sunset. An example would be like a Yahoo, a Netscape back in the day, right? AOL. Some of these companies now have kind of done one of these, you know, over time. And you know, even, even like a T mobile, you know, T Mobile is gonna be pretty stagnant unless it's buying out or buying out any other companies, towers, et cetera, to be able to continue on with their journey of growth. So those companies, you kind of know what's happening and what's going on and what it's gonna look like, right, for your future.

So you've got to kind of know where you want to flow and where you want to fall as an employee. But most importantly, what fits your personality and where you want to be a part of, why you want to be a part of it. And are you looking for the stable able? Are you looking for the consistent with growth opportunities? Or do you want to take opportunities to the moon and be a part of a rocket ship that enjoys unbelievable fast growth or otherwise look no further than Cadre. Let's go. But you know, regardless, all of those opportunities are readily available for you at different organizational life cycle points.

And so what you really want to do before you accept roles with other organizations is really understand where they are. Ask those questions. Where is your business in the growth lifecycle? How long have you been operational? What does your growth look like? Is your ARR, that's average recurring revenue? Is it dropping? Is it increasing? Is it staying stagnant? Have you had minimal growth over the last five years? Have you had massive amounts of growth? Right. Because you're going to kind of see your future with the growth of the business, if that makes sense.

So I hope this helps for you to identify where you are, where you are in your professional and personal development and what you want and ultimately where it falls and where it flows. In regards to a business, life cycles. So you can kind of see if they're aligned and when they're aligned and you have your purpose and your passion and it aligns with the company's mission vision values. Watch out. It is so much fun. And it's so much fun to be a part of the team is energized. It's exciting. And you're not trying to figure out where you fall or where you stand and you're not trying to figure out is this aligned with who I am and what I'm trying to do.

So take a look at those things as you continue to move forward in your business opportunities, in your lifecycle opportunities. And always remember one key word as you move forward. How adaptable are you on the journey? If you're adaptable, you can easily fit into all three buckets. But if you're not adaptable, you better be able to make sure that the business life cycle, the mission vision values certainly align where you are today. Enjoy. You all have a wonderful week. Take care. Bye bye. And what a gorgeous day.

I mean, it's absolutely unbelievable.