4 Levels of Scaled Growth

📈 The 4 Levels of Scaled Growth 🎚️

September 04, 2024

4 Levels of Scaled Growth

Where are you right now in your entrepreneurial or leadership journey?

Are you just getting going or are you really trying to jump from a 10 to 100 or 1000? If you don’t know what stage you’re in, you will probably just be spinning your wheels. And in the growth game, that’s a surefire way to waste time, burn out, and miss the mark on building something that truly matters to you and others.

It can be tough to decipher where you are in your journey.

After working with hundreds of executives, entrepreneurs, and business owners, I have observed challenges of stepping back and acknowledging where you’re at.

I believe every entrepreneur or business leader is on a journey through 4 potential levels of scale.  

Each level demands something different from you, and if you haven't cleared through the previous stage of growth and what it demands of you, you will struggle to get to the next stage.

So as you read below, ask yourself: Which stage am I in today? What do I need to accomplish and reduce to practice in order for me to be ready for the next stage?

Important Note: Not every entrepreneur or business leader wants or needs to move  to the next level. A profitable and sustainable business is rare – only 10% of US businesses do over $1MM in annual revenue and only 1% do over $10MM.  A life can be well and fully lived at any of these levels.  

However, there are those that are looking for a different impact – probably even those reading this email that are looking to scale and get a glimpse of what is ahead.  

Let’s break it down.

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Four Levels of Scaled Growth

Level 1: Build a Living ($0-1 Million Annual Revenue)*

Getting to your first $1MM: Requires mastery of self.

This stage is about survival and building the skills you need to build a sustainable business.

Think about Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. Before Patagonia became the iconic brand it is today, Chouinard was a climber making his own gear to sell to fellow adventurers. He started small, crafting climbing equipment in his backyard and selling it out of his car. For Chouinard, it was all about doing what he loved while scraping by to fund his next climb. He even calls himself a reluctant businessman.

In this stage, you secure financial stability and master the basics of your craft. You learn about yourself, and you’re laying the foundation that everything else will stand on. It’s all about the grind, building the skills and knowledge you’ll rely on later. Don’t overlook the importance of nailing down the fundamentals — they’ll be your safety net at every step.

Level 2: Build a Life ($1-10 Million Annual Revenue)

Getting to $10MM: Requires a new mastery of self and additionally a mastery of leading others at scale.

At this stage, you’re moving your business beyond making a living and paying the bills. You’re creating something bigger, and you are mastering the art of managing people and systems to get your business to scale from $1MM to $10MM in revenue.

Consider Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx. After starting with just $5,000, she turned her idea into a billion-dollar company. But that didn’t happen overnight. As Spanx started to grow, Blakely had to move beyond just selling a worthwhile product and scale the company with new people, systems, and manufacturing processes.

This is the point where you realize you can’t do everything anymore and that you need a great team around you. This is where you iron out new processes and standards.  This is where you feel like you have to risk even more to scale operations, while maintaining the original vision.

This is also where you transition to become a beacon for the vision of the future of the business, while remembering that the fundamentals from Level 1 that keep you grounded as you scale. Balance between growth and relationships is needed and there will be some things that served you in the past that are no longer valuable to the path ahead.

Level 3: Build a Legacy ($10-100 Million ARR)

Getting from $10MM to $100MM: Requires a new mastery of self, a new mastery of leading others, and now mastery of the world.

In this stage, it’s no longer just about immediate success; it’s about creating something that will endure long beyond you.

For example, Howard Schultz transformed Starbucks from a small coffee bean retailer into a global brand by instilling a culture of discipline focused on quality and customer experience. Schultz was relentless in maintaining Starbucks' core values, such as delivering a consistent product and fostering a welcoming atmosphere in every store, no matter the location. Even during rapid expansion, Schultz ensured that every employee, from baristas to executives, understood the importance of these values and acted in line with them.

Going outside the scale of your business operations and leadership into other realms requires learning how to change the world, grow and support others to meet the needs of the world, all the while giving up on prior actions and activities and learning new ones. So, you are changing the world and still changing those around you while still changing yourself, which of course is difficult.

This requires a new mastery of self, new mastery of leading others, and mastery of the world. And of course, you must stay disciplined, focused, and rooted in the fundamentals that got you there.

Level 4: Build a Legend ($100 Million and beyond)

Getting beyond $100MM to Leaving a Legacy: Requires new mastery of all the above and added mastery of human and generational change.

For the final level of growth, let’s take a look at Steve Jobs.

Jobs didn’t just revolutionize one industry — he transformed several, from personal computing and animated films to music, phones, and digital publishing. Jobs wasn’t merely building successful products; he was reshaping entire markets and, in doing so, altering the way we interact with technology and culture. His vision for Apple was about more than just creating great products; it was about “putting a dent in the universe.”

At this stage, you’re going beyond building a legacy—you’re aiming for global and historical impact.

You work to leave a legacy that will last long beyond you and in line with what you’ve built. In this stage you have to think about the durability of what you are handing to another generation. This phase requires new mastery of human and generational change.  Plus a renewed focus on all the prior stages of growth to scale yourself and what you built to a whole new level.  

The Bottom Line:

Each stage requires a different version of you, but the rewards are worth every step.

Whether you’re on the level of building a living, a life, a legacy, or a legend, remember the only limits are the ones you place on yourself. So, break them.

And as always, I’m here to help guide you along the journey.

If any of this resonated with you, you would love my latest book Unleashing Unprecedented Potential, where I go into these stages and so much more. Learn more in my book available in print, ebook, or on Kindle.

* I discuss revenue here because it is easier to understand what that level means. However, you could substitute other metrics or measures of scale such as people impacted, lives saved, audiences reached, music downloads, etc. It all depends what you’re optimizing for in your life as a leader.

Quotes I’m Pondering on Self Imposed Limits

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

- T.S. Elliot

“I am looking for a lot of people who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”

-Henry Ford

Content Diet

Thank you for reading! If you found this helpful, forward along to a friend.

One request for you: Reply to this email with the Stage you’re currently in and where you want to go. I’d love to hear from you!

See you next month.

-Eric

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