Let’s be honest. Starting, growing, and succeeding with a small business is brutally hard. Most don’t make it past the first five years, and even fewer make it to ten.

The Five Stages of Small Business Growth (free read/article limit) is an accurate look at journey from an operational standpoint – and from my work with hundreds of different small businesses over the years, the patterns Churchill and Lewis reveal are accurate and persistent.

I’ve leaned on this framework more times than I can count – and it’s the closest thing you’ll find to a roadmap for what’s ahead in your small business’s development.

If you want to know what’s ahead for your small business, I can’t recommend strongly enough that you read this article, print it out, and refer to it regularly.