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okay now let's take a look at the lifecycle of business or the lifecycle of organizations of any kind including by the way countries organizations go through very predictable phases of growth and development they go through a series of phases that we could call the growing phases and then they go through a series of phases that we could call the aging phases and what I want to do is I want to just describe to you this life cycle of organizations as the organization starts and begins to build its strength its vitality its future potential and then how as time goes on it begins to age and it goes down the hill down the curve losing its strength vitality and future potential the first phase of an organization's growth is called courtship and it's called courtship because there is no business all there is is an idea a thought this business if you will is a gleam in some entrepreneurs eye and what happens you think about this they have lots of these people who start organizations have lots of ideas they have a one idea and another idea and another idea but some of those ideas are sticky and they try to put it down and they just can't put it down because gee it's so beautiful and they pick it up and they look at it some more and they try to put it down now it's back and pretty soon they find themselves waking up in the middle of the night and there's that idea kind of rotating in three-dimensional space above their head as they get focused on and captured by this new idea of this new business after a while they've kind of works on some things themselves try to plan it and whatever but pretty soon they can't help themselves they've got to talk to someone else they come up to someone else deserve is above up and they kind of tell them what their ideas that other person gets excited so those others above and now we got this great little conversation pretty soon there's three or four people there's a lot of convincing talk going on among this group of people who are they trying to convince you got it they're trying to convince themselves they're trying to convince themselves this organization will work that this idea has potential and the reason that they're working so hard on this is they know that there is some risk between where we are in this courtship to where we want to go there is some risk and that sometimes the risk is just as simple as I got to tell my mother-in-law or my wife about this thing or my husband about it but often what the risk is is I'm going to have to hawk my house or borrow some money or quit my job or whatever so there's risk between this courtship phase and the infant phase now what's going on during the courting phase is a building of energy and how successful it is well that just depends but you all remember courting don't you remember walking along the beach whispering sweet nothings in each other's ears lying to one another oh I don't mean lying with malice aforethought I just mean that what we're really doing is we're dreaming and when you're dreaming it may not come out just the way you thought it was going to be I remember my first business week a group of us got together in my living room in San Antonio Texas and we talked about this business that we were going to have you know after we sold that business and we sat down and we thought about it almost nothing that we said that day in that living room in San Antonio came true except we were going to start a business we're going to have some fun and we were going to make some money all the details we kind of had a lot of them wrong we thought these people would be our customers well one of them was but after that we couldn't sell that product again you know we had an idea that these people would loan us money nobody longus money you get the idea it was different and in fact what was important was the commitment that we got that day that we were going to do this thing that we were going to move forward and that this idea was going to work what role do you suppose PA Eri is dominant during this courtship phase well it's pretty obvious it's the entrepreneurial role this is a big time oh there's got to be a little P and a little a and a little I why because these are the catalysts these are the things that take that Big E and make it happen if there is no if there's nothing buddy it's just kind of an affair it's just kind of a lot of messing around and no commitment the reality is if you're if you going to make that II work you've got to have a little bit of pee a little bit of a a little bit I you got a there's going to be some work there's got to be some straight thinking about it and there's some plans and there's probably to be some concerns about who the people are now if in fact that idea is truly a courtship and if we get enough energy and if we try it we end up leaping through a paper wall into the next phase which is called infancy now why do I say leaping through a paper wall oh and what's the tricky part about leaping through a paper wall you got it you don't know what's on the other side but that's what you end up having to do with a business you've got to take a chance you leap through the paper wall and I didn't say poke a hole in it and peek through I said leap through it you know feet are off the ground before you find out what's on the other side oh this is a lot more exciting if you've seen other people leap through paper walls and there's long and you've heard long wailing sounds afterward you've seen the splash of blood or heard the sound of wolves you get the idea but anyway you make that leap of faith that's what it always is to get that business going and guess what boom now you're in the infant phase all of that east up we did you know feet up sitting around thinking about what we were going to do and trying to create plans that's all gone now because what is it time to do now it is time to pee pee becomes dominant we don't have time for any more because now the focus of that business is on what did you sell for me lately everybody's out in the field were hard-charging trying to make things go this is an infant business you all remember babies don't you what do you do for a baby you got it you do everything you do absolutely everything it's a 24 hour a day seven day a week job what do you do for an infant business same thing you see the interesting thing about this little baby that you've given birth to is that every three or four hours it cries out for food it goes cash it's kind of neat in the beginning because you may have some so you say sure here have some and it goes cash and you say wait a minute I just fed you and then it goes cash you get the idea gets a little demanding this baby needs to be fed I like to liken this new business as a whole 25 meters across this is a big hole you walk up you look down guess what is down there there is a Chinese guy waving at you if you can see so far there is sky down there that's how deep this hole is and guess what that's where your money is going that's where your time your effort your energy is going because on top of that hole is a fan sixty five thousand horsepower it is blowing down and kid you can step back from it a quarter of a mile away you take a dollar bill out of your pocket it goes right in there you take another one out of your pocket it goes in there you can open your wallet or your purse that those dollars just pour into that thing that little thing is demanding of your time of your people of your relationships and certainly of your money that's an infant business the battle of for infancy is just to survive we've got to pee enough we've got to sell enough that sometime we get to the point where we've actually got month left at the I mean we've got money left at the end of our month rather than the other way around so that's the battle if you don't if you don't just win that battle of course this business is going to suffer infant mortality now if on the other hand you're able to make it through this stage if you're able to work hard enough and make things happen guess what you move on you've developed big P you've gotten out big P small a small a small I in infancy what happens next what happens next is pretty simple that Egon begins to grow again now what I want to do is I want to kind of show you and I have to stand up to demonstrate this to you I want to show you physically what is really happening as this organization moves from this infant phase to what we call the go-go phase a time when the business gets its 'back and it begins to expand it begins to grow it begins to get more and more successful okay now let me demonstrate for you this transition from infant to go-go the infant business is like a person standing with their feet together when I stand this way how vulnerable am I to being knocked over you got it it's pretty easy to knock me over this infant business if I were ready to do this right I would take off some of my certainly be barefoot but there are some things I don't do for demos even in video sorry but what I'm trying to say is infant businesses don't have much and the last thing is I would be standing right on a rock you know what that rock is that rock is my customer Mike Tora my customers right and that rock my little toes are hanging onto that thing like crazy because every customer is so so so important to me anyway so here I am standing with my feet together I've got this little infant business now in the big in the beginning when we first started remember we went from an e in in the courtship phase to P dominating in the infant face and actually this is fairly easy for an entrepreneur to do because you know what the profile the personality profile of the typical entrepreneur is the one that is successful is the true successful business founder they're usually pease big P small a big e small I you know why because if you're not both P and E you don't get through the first few phases of the development of a business so here we have a person who's kind of got two sides of their personality on P side and an e side and during the entrepreneurial phase the the courtship phase that east side is pretty dominant the e if you will my e conscience is saying keep yeah this is great I got another great idea think about this think about this and we're kind of moving favoring that side of my personality on the other side once we get into the infant space the PF side takes over saying wait a minute we got to sell something we got to get out in the field we got to make things happen we don't have time before that chitchat stuff right so that side of my personality if you will is being favored and think about it who actually starts the come coming up with the ideas of a business who is the first person to do the eating it's the founder and who is the first person to go into the field and often make the first sale it's the founder that's that shift that we're talking about but now we're ready for another shift so here we have the founder watching this little business grow now just so you won't get emotionally involved in this story let's assume I'm in the pit ship business what's my little potato chip business like it's pretty simple I have got a rented space I have got a cooker I have got a bagger and I may have a hole in the wall through which I sell potato chips you got the idea very simple little business right that's where I am standing with my feet together what happens is that business gets a little more successful pretty soon that aside which has been always saying hey I've got an idea I've got an idea I've got an idea kind of gets out of the bag so to speak and one evening late at night things are going pretty good I said I think to myself shoot what other idea could we do and it comes to me pretty easily gee why don't we put barbecue sauce on these potato chips now why is that so unique what if I add up to now I've had Jerry's potato chips what are these regular potatoes eventually these will be called classic but right now these are Jerry's regular potato chips right and they're in a medium-sized bag because I don't have time for different sized bags so here is my business but now I think why not put barbecue sauce on some of these potato chips it's pretty easy to do I get some stickers and put barbecue on those same bags and put some little barbecue sauce on the potato chips everything is going to be fine and my feet are now about an inch apart because now I'm in the regular and barbecue potato chips and medium sized bags business now what happens how long do you think it takes me to have another idea once that entrepreneurial Drive is out of the bag you got it that thing is out of the bag now and I'm going to have lots more ideas pretty soon it's sour cream and onion potato chips now my feet are three inches apart and it's going to be Cajun style potato chips or it's going to be different sized bags or maybe we're now going to have dip and how about pretzels you're getting the idea of how this thing spreads well what's happening now is how does that business feel well now look I've got that nice athletic stance that my football coach used to tell me about I'm pretty stable on feeling pretty strong the leader of the organization is feeling very strong in fact what we really should do is picture that person standing like this red s on their chest a cape blowing in the in the background wind in their in their face and believing that they can leap tall buildings in a single bound huge amount of confidence how do the people in the organization feel about their leaders you got it they've got a huge amount of faith in their leaders so here we have this energized exciting Go Go organization now interestingly enough that this organization may have some challenges along the way but let's just talk about the growth part do you suppose it stops here when I'm nice like this no no Here I am and I get another idea because I'm so confident you know I think we got all these trucks we ought to go into trucking and we ought to have popcorn and cheese balls and you know there's on these on these shelves that we put our product on there's these little specialty things like olives and onions and whatever we might as well have those and we got software that we've actually developed to manage our trucks we might as well sell that and shoot you know we should no longer be subbed put doing stuff in little stands we ought to be selling in the big stores so now we move into that and not only that we ought to own our own real estate now and so we move into bigger space and what's happening in this organization during this time are we hiring people carefully no you better believe we're not it's an exciting place everything is a priority everything is urgent all kinds of harum-scarum going on is we try to adapt to the new things that are going on not much a in this organization remember big P big e small a small I right so here we go we keep it it keeps going now we think geez we ought to not only own our own real estate we got a little extra real estate we ought to build a health club on some of that real estate and not only that maybe what we ought to do is we ought to put in a a parking structure while we're at it and maybe we can sell another product we can go into a septic we package drinks and we can do and listen before we go too much further I got to ask you a question and I think we better do this because this floor is getting kind of slippery here's the question how easy is it to knock me over now you got it it's real easy to knock me over notice what happened and go go if I can get back up here what happened in gogo is we started to narrow and we ended up to broad this is common in the go-go phase and that rampant growth stretches every person in that organization the presidents of gogo organizations and in fact gogo organizations themselves love to talk about how fast they're growing they're not too worried about how much money they're making but growth is such a big deal and it's a it's a very kind of testosterone-driven time for an organization this go-go phase as we're going through the go-go phase we are building the risk in the organization we're often taking on more debt and that's where the risk is coming from and we're also expanding we're coming up with lots of new ideas not all of those ideas are going to be so good much like we're hiring lots of people not all of those people are going to be able to stay with that organization over the long period of time so we're building up if you will a lot of baggage we kind of like to say that during the go-go phase organizations create about hundred problems or ten years worth of problems to solve and in fact they will be solving those problems for the next ten years one of the key problems that comes up during this phase or can come up sometime during gogo and maybe even into the next phase is something called the founders trap the founders trap is a trap that a business falls into if the founder doesn't learn how to delegate e.c founders delegate P and a really well that's hard work of detail stuff you want to come in early leave late work like crazy you can do that you want to take care of the books you can do that thank God someone wants to do that oh and you want to think I'm sorry that's my job you get the idea no delegation of e unless the organization begins to delegate the e that II will become restricted as we go further along the lifecycle so we've got to be a little bit careful of the founders trap you could say that the go-go phase is the terrible twos of the business everybody remember two-year-olds little accidents going somewhere to happen I want you to know that when my first son got to be about two years old he had two responses to everything he either ate it or broke it and that's what's going on within this Go Go organization what do we need to do we need to mature that organization a little bit and now it's time to move onward what role do you think it's time to develop more of now you got it a it's time to get our act together it's time to get a little under control it's time to kind of sort things out and learn the magic word for two-year-olds which is what no we've got to learn what not to do in fact it's harder for gogo organizations to decide what not to do than it is for them to decide what to do which is why they do so many different things so it's time to try to build a now here's the trick in order to develop a at this point you're going to have to give up either P or a or give up some of P na there's a long story for this we don't have time for it now but just trust me you're going to have to give up on P P or E which one are you going to give up on well the most common response is let's give up the e you remember E right it's the thing that caused you to be so spread out well so what people do is they give up on the e the single most common mistake that businesses make think about this if we've got big P and we want to develop a so now we're going to go big a and we're going to let the ego down small E and we've already got small I haven't we talked about this already big P big a small e small I we call this premature aging and it is the most common trap that businesses fall into 50 67 probably 60 to 70 percent of businesses move in this direction to premature aging what it really means is what we've got to do if we're going to make it into this next stage which we call adolescence and if we're going to make it through that stage is we've got to learn to balance E and a and allow some of that P orientation to decline now I'm not saying that sales should fall off dramatically whatever I'm saying management focus should move more to ene and really what we need to do is take the e and turn it inward turn the e into how do we make the organization better not just bigger and in so doing the a and the e will in fact begin to get in more and more conflict and in fact that's one of the great challenges of this new phase of adolescence adolescents small P big a big e small I so one of the key characteristics of adolescents is conflict conflict between the old guys and the new guys conflict between the department heads conflict between the A's and the ease the ease are saying let's roll the dice again we've got momentum we got to keep going and the A's are saying let's stop doing this let's quit doing that let's quit doing this let's get ourselves a little organized let's slow down oh by the way whose right to some degree they both are the trick now is to begin to balance a and E so you've got conflict the other real challenge and common problem for an adolescent organization is what business should we be in and what risks should we really be taking and this becomes the dialogue in fact in adolescence the healthy adolescent businesses take E and apply it to a what I mean by that is they take E and begin to get organized they start to get organized by having a mission statement or strategy or goals and objectives you know these things which take creativity to develop actually have a balancing and conservative effect on the organization because it helps put us in the direction that we want to go in I should tell you that the conflict and then adolescent organization can get so great that there's often a divorce and who's the divorce between the divorce is between the ease and the ace oh and who do you suppose buys who out often surprisingly enough the a is by the ease because the A's have got charts and graphs they've got one business that they really want to be in they've been they've been taking a lot of the wrath of the EES for a long period of time and now there's lots more of those A's so they get together they do lunch they create plans and they say we all we got to do is find somebody who speaks a our language and has money now who could that be all its the banker so they go into the banker they say to him a and the banker goes hey hey hey I know it sounds like to Canadians talking but really these are the A's getting together they get the money they go back to the entrepreneur and they say hey we want to buy you out and he goes what haven't we been having a great time here and the a say and I actually know because we've been kind of taking the brunt of your kind of you know phlegmatic personality all this time you attack us on a regular basis you don't really respect us you don't listen to us blah blah blah anyway you got the idea and the e says well you know we're going to fight all the time this isn't as fun as it used to be besides I've got a better idea of and thinking about anyway how much you're going to pay me and this starts the process anyway one of the great challenges at this stage is the potential for divorce but if we can get that group of people to learn how to manage together to manage as a team if we can get them concentrated and behind a common strategy and vision of the organization that organization will move to prime and the prime phase that's the Nirvana of the business world all of a sudden we've got all these letters kind of in balance P a e are tall strong I often measures a little weak but it is really strong it's strong in the background it's strong in the bond that the people have and the commitment we have to the strategy so you can either score this capital letters PAE and I or PAE and a little bit of I depending upon how you want to look at it but anyway what is the trick in prime often people getting enough people this the book good degrade was written really focused on getting people into that prime phase because now is the time you've got to have all kinds of good people in that bus that's your organization the other thing that we need we know is that there are two big challenges in business one is getting to prime and the other one is because once you're in prime mother nature is now against you the people feel a little more confident you now have a substantial market share and you and you feel pretty confident in that the people themselves are getting a little older they've got more to risk they've got more to lose they're not willing to take more risks and in the prime organizations what you begin to hear is words like you know we used to have to take chances like that Wow what's going down what's declining you've got it e e begins to decline now you've got big P big a small e and the eye appears to get even stronger now what is really happening is that the people in that organization have decided we're not going to fight anymore we're the team if we hang in here together we can carry this thing through our retirement this is fabulous and so guess what the rule becomes don't make waves everything is fine we sit in the boardrooms with the pictures of the founders looking down off the walls at us with that in our in our beautiful leather chairs and deep carpets and heavy drapes big sign on the wall don't make waves everything is fine and we've always been powerful and we get older we age we slow down we get more happy with where we are and we move into a phase called stable and during this stable phase big P big a small e a guy lots of things are happening we go from building momentum to writing inertia we go from going after what we want to taking what we can get and the other rule is don't make waves everything is fine if that happens remember the old rule today's a is tomorrow's P right after stable comes a phase called aristocracy with the e down the next thing to go down is the P and so now we have small P big a small e big I and what we are doing now is the or the the leaders of the organization are watching the organization Klein but it still feels pretty good because guess what we've got lots of cash we invest our money in systems and facilities and hard assets our methods of continuing to show greater and greater profitability are now not conquering new markets what are we now trying to do is raise prices and cut costs oh and that's done we cut costs and raise prices then we raise prices and cut costs again oh and once in a while we do an acquisition we grab a young gogo type of organization and bring them into the fold notice that what is happening raising prices cutting costs doing acquisitions the financial people are getting more and more power because guess what they're good at those three things the marketing people kind of begin to take a back seat in the organization and we build a bureaucracy so we can control everything we invest more in our systems and we continue the denial everything is fine we've always been the great organization we will do great and we in the slide continues it continues until sometime in the board meeting someone can't handle it anymore they turn to the person next to them and they say wait a minute we're in real trouble pass it on and guess what that person passes it on to the next one the next one the next one and it goes through the boardroom like a tsunami wave we're in trouble we're in trouble we're in trouble more trouble goes to the second the last person in the room who realizes whoops if I tell Joe here we're not going to have anybody to blame and he passes it back Joe did it Joe did it joe giudice did it and this starts the early bureaucracy phase of that organization's growth the eye has now come down we are now small P big a small a small eye and what we really are beginning to do is we're looking for the scapegoat we're looking for the people who have caused the problem and what do we do then oh we bring him in we're going to have a Joe party Joe come on in here we get them in we take out our knives we hack him up and we throw the body outside we may even put a big sign out there here lies Joe he's the one who caused the problem we do press releases we know we had a little bit of a problem but things are fixed now we get the PR guys in there - let us know that everything is fine because really what we've done it we got rid of Joe you could come and see the body for yourself and what do we really change nothing and if we change nothing the decline continues and if you think about it once the battle for individual survival is what is driving every person in the organization once everybody is walking around looking for someone else to blame and trying to cover their own tush what is really with a chance that that business is going to succeed yeah two chances slim and none and in fact that business is going to die unless of course your organization is big enough and vital to the nation's economy and then the government is going to come in and save you they will rescue you and if they do that who to the government who does the government send in to help you the biggest A's you've ever seen so we're now going to really control things layering more if you will overhead on top of the overhead and that's when a bottle of beer gets to the point where it costs about forty three dollars and fifty cents you get the idea and what is the profile now zero a zero zero zero A zero zero and that organization is going to be that way until someone pulls the plug what is the real prescription what really should you do for that organization probably euthanasia and that is not a foreign exchange program for kids you get the idea someone ought to pull the plug and let that business die or let it find its own way but in any case what we've just talked about is the life cycle of business your business the company you work at the company you lead is somewhere in that life cycle and here's the interesting thing from every place in that life cycle there is a prescription for how you get to prime there are steps you can take to go to prime whether you're over the hill too much whether you're prematurely aged or whether you're just in adolescence trying to make this shift or in gogo trying to make the shift you better start by figuring out where your organization is because this lifecycle is predictable the phases are predictable and at each stays and at each stage we have predictable problems