Finally! A Roadmap for the 6 Stages of Small Business (FS100)

It’s finally time to have a plan for your bare-knuckled, bootstrapped, heart and hustle based small business. In this 6 part podcast series we walk you through the small business roadmap.

These aren’t 6 stages your business will go through automatically. These are the 6 stages your business should go through, the stages we want you to go through so that you and your idea are best setup for success as you define it.

We’ve worked with, consulted, coached and heard from a few thousand businesses, and in all the books we’ve read (great books like Lean Startup, 4 Steps to the Epiphany, $100 Startup and more), we haven’t seen a roadmap yet that succinctly prepares indie entrepreneurs for the challenges of business building.

So we put together our own. And we’re working with you to help make it better. (See below for details.)

When you know what the 6 stages are, you can identify not only where you are, but what stage is next.

And that right there, that tiny sense of direction, can be the difference between a successful business and just another failed side project.

In this podcast episode (and the next 5) we lay out the 6 stages as we see them, addressing the common hassles, resources and hangups for each stage.

But we need your help. We plan on adjusting this roadmap based on your feedback, so we’ll ask you a few questions on each episode because we want to hear how what we’ve laid out feels to you.

Listen to this episode (subscribe in itunes, if you haven’t), and the next several as we lay out the roadmap, with goals and resources for each stage, and as you listen, try to find exactly where you are.

It’s our hope that this roadmap will help you identify where you are, where you’re going and how to set yourself and your idea up for a home run, because, as Corbett puts it in this episode:

Clarity Steps

The 2 goals of clarity: 1). for you to understand how a business is built and 2). to help you understand who your business will serve.

A few of these are specific to Fizzle membership since we’re at the beginning of the process and learning how to use Fizzle as a tool throughout the process will be help you later on.

1. Fizzle specific: Understand exactly how Fizzle will help you build a business. The forums, founder stories, courses, email programs, progress logs and more will play an important role in your progress.
2. Fizzle specific: We’ll guide you through “the Fizzle way” of building a business. If you walk away from a Fizzle membership with only one thing, Corbett wants it to be our “Mindset” training because too many times we’ve seen entrepreneurs burn out simply due to unnoticed and uninformed expectations.
3. Explore examples of others’ success. In Fizzle we have in depth conversations with ideal examples (we call these Founder Stories). These “success models” are important because they clarify possible processes of A to B to C in your business when you’re just winging it.
4. Define what topic/niche your business will be in. There’s a course on this inside Fizzle, but Corbett asks a few questions to help you identify a really good topic for your business in this episode.
5. Define who your audience or “target market” will be. (We’ve got a free guide on this: Guide to Defining Your Audience.)

“Without a roadmap…” http://t.co/JuhyNYcxki pic.twitter.com/Zoxv9yKOSw

— Fizzle (@Fizzle) April 6, 2015

The Roadmap Episodes:

1. Clarity (episode 100)
2. Connection (101)
3. Planning (102)
4. Build (103)
5. Money (104)
6. Scale (105)
7. 4 Updates (106)

Which Stage Are You in?

If you’re in this stage, what part of this episode resonated with you? Let us know in the comments!

OR, if you’re in this stage but we didn’t talk about what you’re going through, tell us that as well.

OR, if you’ve been in this stage before, can you tell us a story about what you remember from this stage?

We’re pumped to hear from you so we can adjust this roadmap to fit your story, so let us know!

Show Notes

Steve Blank – Wikipedia

Chris Guillebeau – Wikipedia

Crack the Social Code — “Talk to that girl you like (even if she doesn’t play D&D)”

Romance & Revenue: Big Relationship Tips for Entrepreneurs (FS055)

Steve Blank: Want Your Startup to Succeed? ‘Get Out of the Building’: