Infancy and Adolescence

This week I was able to really see portions of the book E-Myth come to life. Last week I read about the different stages of a business. Two of these stages were infancy, and adolescence. In infancy you are your business and your business is you. You take on all the roles the business needs in order to function and you are not yet big enough (or you do not yet want to be big enough) to hire any other employees. Then you have adolescence. In this stage you hire more people to fill important roles you don't like to do or are not as good at. When this happens many times the business owner can lose control and will end up losing what he has built. Many business die during the adolescent stage.

I thought it was interesting to see business I am familiar with in these stages. I think one of the businesses I know is in between both infancy and adolescence. There are employees hired to do the more technical work, but the owner still seems to do everything else and many times pitches in to do the technical side as well. I have been able to see and understand why these stages are so important to understand and how they can be so difficult to actually go through. I hope that I will be aware of these things I have learned as I go through these stages in my own life.

I am now starting to gather material and ideas for my $100 challenge. I went to my storage unit and pulled out our mixer and checked the pantry for the ingredients needed for my cinnamon roll business. I have also thought of some great places to take some batches of samples to give to people. I am excited to make my first batch next week. I hope that I am able to sell as many as possible and that I will have fun while at the same time see success. I will keep you posted on whats happens next week with my samples and sales.