4 | The Phases of Business Growth for Teacherpreneurs
As your business grows, you’ll go through different phases that require new focus and will challenge you in ways you never expected. This episode covers four common phases that digital businesses go through as they grow.
The four phases of business growth are…
Launch
Startup
Expand
Accelerate
Take a listen to learn more about the main focus and challenges you’ll face at each phase. We also discuss how you might choose to market your business in each phase to help you continue to grow your audience and your brand over time.
No matter which stage of growth you’re currently in, I hope you can take something from this episode to help you Market, Scale and Grow your teacher business!
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Episode Transcript:
Hey I'm Jenzaia. And this is Market, Scale, Grow. A podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers. Just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Okay. Before we get started, I'm really excited because I created a free quiz just for you. You can head to marketscalegrow.com/quiz to find out if Facebook ads are right for you and your business. This two-minute quiz has a couple of questions that you can answer to find out if Facebook ads or something else is the next marketing strategy that you should be implementing in your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/quiz to find out today.
Welcome, Welcome to episode number four. In this week's Saturday strategy session, we're going to be chatting about different phases of business growth. This is our very first level up episode. And every time I say that in my head is that song level up, level up, level up, level up from IG Reels. You know, I think people are like swinging their arms around anyway…in these level up episodes, we'll be talking about a different aspect of your business and how you can start to move from whatever level you are currently at to the next one of growth. But I thought that it'd be a good idea to set the foundation initially so that everyone had an understanding of what levels of business I'm talking about in this. So we're going to go through four different levels of business growth.
The first one is launch. So the goal of this phase of your business is that you have an idea and you're starting to put all of the pieces together. You haven't really started doing anything yet, but you are in the process of getting it started. It's so important when you're in the launch phase, that you're figuring out all of the things… You’re getting your branding down pat, you're thinking about all the legal aspects that you need to have in place and it's when you would start thinking about who your ideal audience is. So, there's a lot of figuring out what's going on in this phase, which is where one of the biggest challenges happens. People will get stuck here, obsessing about which shade of blue they're going to use, or which font to use being afraid of the legal stuff. So they never take that next step forward. And you probably are going to change almost every single piece of your business as you start to find your voice and figure out your audience. So what you need to do when you're in this phase is just get started taking those little baby steps one at a time and saying, this blue's good enough for now. This font is good enough for now. And maybe that blue will stick on you and you'll love it. And it will be part of your branding forever, but maybe it won't. And same with your ideal audience. You might start saying, okay, I'm going to aim to create resources for primary students, but then you realize, you know what, you're way more comfortable with older students and that's okay.
Our brands can shift and change and evolve with us. If you haven't heard about how my business has changed, go back and listen to episode number one and episode number three, that's the two parts of my business story. And you'll see that had I figured it all out at the beginning, then it would have taken me seven years to get started. So just get started. As for marketing efforts in the launch phase. Really, there are none. You're just starting to get your ideas together and get everything you need together. So focusing on brand awareness at this point is not the best use of your time. Get those baby steps forward so that you can actually get started.
That brings us to phase number two, the Startup Phase, and your goal here is to start creating your products and start selling your products or start offering your services. If that's the route you're going to take, it's when you're going to be validating your ideas. If you have a course or a membership, you will probably be doing a beta launch here. You really want to be interacting with your audience and finding out exactly what they want, what are they looking for because the last thing you want to do is create something and then try and force it on people it's so much better. It’s going to be so much more effective if you figure out what people want.
Getting visible is really important and interacting with people, networking and starting your long-form content is another piece that is really important as you're starting up your business. I would say that your long-form content is probably your only form of marketing. You might start dabbling in one platform, so maybe it's Pinterest or Instagram, but I wouldn't get too caught up in figuring that out immediately. It's so important that you are making sure that your message is resonating with your ideal audience at this point. That's where your biggest challenge in the startup phase comes from is figuring out exactly who your people are, where they're hanging out and the messaging. So taking those steps to survey the people and talk with them is just so, so important.
Phase three is the Expand Phase. At this point, you've seen success in selling your products or your services, and you're starting to expand your reach beyond who you initially found. So you have a really, really good idea of who your ideal audience is. And you're able to start stepping a little bit further out. You also should be systematizing your business at this point. So that it's starting to run more automatically and a bit more seamlessly at this point. As you're expanding, you've started to refine your products or your programs. So you really have a signature offer for people, and you definitely want to be known as an expert for whatever your niche is.
Once you get to this expand point, and that comes from the long-form content that you started back in the startup phase. The biggest marketing effort that you're going to making here is an organic marketing push and starting to really, really focus on building your email list. It's a huge, important asset that once you're in the expand phase, you really want to pay attention to getting your opt-in out there and bringing as many eyes as possible onto that long-form content, because you're really focused on building relationships and getting people to know like, and trust you at the expand phase. You may or may not have started to hire some things, but you'll probably notice that one of the biggest challenges that you're facing is that your work, work, work, work, work, work, working so hard. And I would highly suggest that you start to tiptoe into hiring. At that point, there can also be a lack of consistency in your income. If you're in that like launch and famine, launch and famine phase is possible in the expand phase, as you're kind of figuring out the ebb and flow of your niche and your products. So that's another thing to keep in mind.
And then the last phase that we're going to talk about is the Accelerate Phase. You have systems in place and you're accelerating the growth of your business, both horizontally and vertically. And by that, I mean, vertically means you're reaching more people in your current audience and then horizontally means that you're finding new pockets of audiences that you can also serve. So when you're starting to accelerate, you want to make sure that you're expanding in both directions.
You, at this point, should have funnels that are built out with email nurturing sequences that are part of it and great messaging, like amazing messaging, because in a startup and expand phase talking to your ideal audience and getting to know them was so important that by the time you're in the accelerate phase, you have this nailed down. You're really going to be focused on nurture marketing. So that's building relationships with others, and you may be interested in starting to experiment with paid advertising on a bigger level to set up some of your programs or offerings on an evergreen model.
You definitely don't have to wait until you're in the accelerate phase to start paying for Facebook or Pinterest promotions and ads, but you probably won't be putting anything on evergreen until you're maybe straddling that line between expand and accelerate. And then I think that the biggest challenge in the accelerate phase is managing that team, building your team and starting to take yourself out of the picture. That can be really challenging because we look at our businesses like our babies and having other people come in, there's that fear that they won't do it as well as us. But once you're in the accelerate phase, it's so important that you stay in your zone of genius and you find a tribe of people to surround you and to work in their zones of genius.
So just as a quick recap, the four phases of business that we talked about today are the launch, startup, expand, and accelerate phases.
Thinking about which level or which phase of business you're currently in, I know that some people like to attach an amount of time to the phases or a dollar value to the phases. And that can be helpful to try and classify yourself into one of these phases. But I really want you to think about the things you're doing, the challenges you're facing and which goals you have to help fit yourself into one of these phases. Because I think that it's bigger than the dollar amount. It's bigger than the amount of time you've had your business. And somebody could go launch, startup, expand in a matter of weeks or months, whereas someone else it may take years. So I don't want to feel, make you feel trapped by those numbers.
That is everything I have for you today. I would love to know what phase of business you are in. So screenshot this episode, share it in your stories and let me know which phase you're in. And of course, do not forget to tag me, I'm @heyitsjenzaia and I will share your share back at you.
Thank you for listening to today's episode today was brought to you by Dubsado my absolute favourite customer management tool. If you're looking to streamline and systematize your service-based business, I highly recommend Dubsado for 20% off of your first month. Head to marketscalegrow.com/dubsado, D U B S A D O, and use the code Jenzaia at checkout. And don't forget to head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community where you'll find inspiring ambitious teacherpreneurs who are looking to grow and scale their businesses. Just like you see you soon.