The four key stages of the entrepreneur's journey

The journey of the entrepreneur is notoriously like a roller coaster. There are no two identical paths. Every entrepreneur starts in a different place and time with a unique set of skills, advantages, and worldviews. Although the courses are different, the phases share characteristics.

Knowing where you are on your journey can speed up your progress. It clearly tells you where to focus and what to aim for in the short term.

All entrepreneurs can be placed in one of four stages: Execute, Systematize, Review, Exit. These stages constitute the framework of the ten-year career. Although the time frame to complete this journey is not necessarily ten years, it is a useful time to think long term without wasting time.

Each stage requires specific focus and actions in order to proceed to the next.

All entrepreneurs start with the execution phase. This is the phase where they settle in, get involved in all aspects of their business, and strive to prove that their concept is viable. It's exciting, but it's hard work.

The reality is that most entrepreneurs never get past the execution phase. Even within a larger team, they remain essential to carrying out certain aspects of their business and crucial to internal processes.

An entrepreneur is in the execution phase if he is responsible for carrying out a main function of his business. This may be in the provision of services directly to clients as a freelancer or individual contractor, or in providing a fundamental internal process within a larger team. Their business is highly dependent on them and would not survive an absence of several weeks without a replacement. Their team may consist of hundreds of people, but if they are crucial to a fundamental process or the main bottleneck, they are probably in the execution phase.

The goal of the execution phase is to establish the foundations of a successful business. Develop a product or refine a service and find a product suitable for the market. The company must also discover the characteristics of the main target audience as well as the adjacent audiences. At first, there may not be enough resources to hire a team to do all the work for the business. At this point, the owner benefits greatly from being in the field themselves, engaging with customers, and learning business processes first-hand.

An entrepreneur can enjoy the execution phase or feel overwhelmed. Doing everything in their business, they may feel slightly stretched, like spinning plates and hoping that one does not fall. Although this first step is the most exciting step, it probably won't feel like it at the time, it will be very hard work. Execution is where most business owners find themselves, mainly because systemizing is hard work, and in the short term, the easiest option is to stay on execution.

Despite its busy nature, the execution step doesn't need to be complicated. The entrepreneur simply proves his product to his target audience and makes sales. This has three elements: finding the right product or service, finding the right audience for that product or service, and finding the right channel through which to reach that audience with that product or service.

Once they've completed this phase, it's time to systemize.

The systemization phase is next after execution and incorporates the entire transition from entrepreneur working in the business to working on the company. This is possible through documentation of systems and processes that are automated or monitored by trained and trusted individuals. Essentially all executions are handled by other people or software.

At the end of the systemization phase, the company has processes that run by default and break occasionally, and not the other way around. There is a standard way of doing things. Although the entrepreneur may still play a role in the business, he is not essential to the operation of the business and the delivery of products and services. They are not responsible for approving work or answering questions from team members. At this point, the entrepreneur may feel like their business is a well-oiled machine and when they make changes, they tinker and tweak. Very few business leaders take this step.

The transition between the first two stages, executing and systematizing, can be intense and laborious, because the entrepreneur can still do everything in his business and a central element of the i...