From Stages and Size to Circles and Paths
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For some time now, I’ve been thinking about the stages of business growth.
Not just in the abstract. Not just as a tidy framework. But as a real question: How do we understand where a business actually is—and what kind of support makes the most sense next?
That sounds simple until you begin pulling on the thread.
At first, it is tempting to think in terms of size. Revenue. Employee count. Age. Customer count. Capitalization. These are the obvious measures. They are concrete. They are easy to compare. They seem like they should tell the story.
But they do not tell the whole story.
Two businesses with the same revenue can be in entirely different places. One may be fragile, founder-dependent, and lurching month to month. Another may be stable, profitable, and quietly well run. A construction business and a SaaS business may both generate a million dollars in revenue, but the meaning of that revenue is not the same. Margins matter. Cash flow matters. Working capital matters. Team structure matters. Owner dependence matters. The reliability of demand matters.
In other words, size is not stage. That realization has been pushing me toward a more developmental way of thinking.
The question is not just how big is this business.
There are many:
What kind of business reality is this owner living in right now?
What is working? What is fragile? What has been proven? What remains unclear? What kind of challenge sits most heavily on the business at this moment?
That has led me back to some of the classic stage models, especially Churchill and Lewis, whose well-known Harvard Business Review framework described five stages of small business growth: Existence, Survival, Success, Take-off, and Maturity.
There is a great deal of wisdom in that model. It recognizes that businesses do not simply get bigger. They become different. Their management needs change. Their systems change. Their owner’s role changes. Their strategic questions change.
But as I sat with that framework, I also found myself wanting language that felt a little more direct, current, and useful for entrepreneurs in conversation with one another.
What we (me and ChatGPT) have landed on, at least for now, is this sequence:
Launch
Validation
Success
Scaling
Stewardship
These feel both practical and human.
Launch is about entering the market.
Validation is about proving that demand, delivery, and economics can work reliably.
Success is about reaching the point where the business works—and deciding what success should mean from here.
Scaling is about building capacity for growth beyond the founder.
Stewardship is about leading a durable, well-resourced enterprise with care and long-term intention.
I like this set because it acknowledges something important: not every healthy business should be pushed toward growth at all costs. Some owners want a strong and steady business. Some want expansion. Some want to reduce their role. Some want to prepare for transition. Some may discover that an eventual exit is their form of success. A mature model of entrepreneurship needs room for all of these possibilities.
Why stages alone are not enough
Even with better stage language, another question quickly appears.
If we can identify a stage, is that enough to help someone?
Probably not.
A business in Validation may be wrestling with repeatable sales. Another may have customers but weak margins. Another may be struggling with debt, cash timing, or owner dependence. They may all be in the same stage, but they do not need the same next step.
That led us toward the idea of a next gate.
Instead of treating stage as the whole answer, we can ask:
What is the main constraint standing between this business and its next stage of development?
For one owner, the next gate may be capital.
For another, demand.
For another, systems.
For another, leadership.
For another, strategic clarity.
And for someone just beginning, it may be the more foundational work of developing a founder mindset—understanding risk, separating personal and business realities, measuring opportunities, and seeing both the resources already in hand and those still needed.
This is where the thinking starts to become more useful.
A business is not just in a stage. It is in a stage with a primary challenge.
Not simply Validation, but perhaps Validation—Capital.
Not just Launch, but perhaps Launch—First Customers.
Not just early exploration, but Explore—Building a Founder Mindset.
That combination feels far more actionable.
The role of industry
Another thing has become clearer as this model has evolved: industry matters as an overlay.
The core stage logic may be shared, but the meaning of the numbers changes depending on context.
A service business, a construction firm, a retailer, a nonprofit, a manufacturer, and a software company do not experience growth in the same way. Their margins differ. Their capital needs differ. Their team structures differ. Their patterns of demand differ. Their path from fragility to stability differs.
So industry should not replace stage, but it should shape interpretation.
That means the same scorecard can ask common questions while still interpreting the answers through an industry-aware lens. This matters because it makes the model fairer, smarter, and more grounded in the real economics of different businesses.
From scorecard to Circles
As this work continued, another possibility emerged—one that may be even more exciting than the scorecard itself.
What if the scorecard is not just a way to classify businesses?
What if it is also a way to form better groups of entrepreneurs who meet together regularly for a set period of time? We intend to offer this as "Circles." Six to twelve similarly structured business owners who do not know one another but are matched through Toppertunity.
Traditionally, business groups are often assembled by rough size: under a million in sales, over a million, fewer than ten employees, more than ten employees, and so on. There is some logic to that. But it is limited.
A better Circle is not always made of businesses that look the same on paper. A better Circle is made of owners who are wrestling with similar developmental questions.
Someone in construction and someone in professional services may have a great deal to say to one another if both are trying to reduce owner dependence. A retailer and a manufacturer may learn from each other if both are struggling with margin discipline and cash flow. A successful owner who wants steady-state health may have a powerful conversation with another successful owner who is leaning toward growth—or with someone beginning to consider transition or exit.
That is where the scorecard becomes more than a diagnostic.
It becomes a placement tool.
A coaching tool.
A path-selection tool.
A Circle-building tool.
Stage helps tell us where an owner is.
Next gate helps tell us what they need.
Industry helps tell us what terrain they are navigating.
And Circles become a place where people in related realities can help each other move forward.
Why paths matter
The next natural step from here is paths.
If intake can help us understand a business’s stage and next gate, then Toppertunity can begin to guide owners into a path that fits their moment.
This is the part that feels especially promising.
Imagine an owner completing intake and receiving something like this:
Stage: Validation
Path: Capital
Next Gate: Improve visibility into financial structure and financial decision-making.
Or:
Stage: Launch
Path: Founder Mindset
Next Gate: Build the judgment and structure needed to evaluate their opportunity more clearly.
From there, the owner is not just told where they are. They are given a way forward.
A path might include:
- twelve carefully chosen readings, viewings, or listenings
- reflection prompts
- practical tools
- discussion questions
- future entrepreneur group placement (Circles)
- a clearer sense of what progress looks like
Right now, two paths feel especially important to begin with.
One is Validation—Capital, for businesses with real traction but fragile financial footing. This path would likely focus on basic psychology of money, business vs. personal finances, margins, cash flow, pricing, customer concentration, debt burden, capital strategy, and learning to see the financial reality of the business more clearly.
Another is Explore—Building a Founder Mindset, for people at the beginning of the journey who need guidance around risk, separating personal and business, measuring opportunity, understanding resources, and beginning to think like a founder in a grounded way.
In both cases, the path is not a generic content dump. It is a guided response to a particular business reality.
Concrete names, living Circles
One other design choice has become clearer in this process.
There was some temptation to give all of this a metaphorical language—gardens, seeds, roots, and so on. There is beauty in that, and metaphor can help people feel pride and identity. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that the paths themselves should stay concrete and explicit.
Launch. Validation. Success. Scaling. Stewardship.
Founder Mindset. Capital. Demand. Systems. Leadership.
These names are clear. They help people understand where they are and what the work is.
The place for more creativity, I think, is in the Circles themselves. Just as students often name their own groups, owners in a Circle may give their own community an identity. That feels more alive, more participatory, and more earned. The framework can stay clear. The Circle can develop its own personality.
What this is becoming
What began as a question about stages is becoming something larger.
It is becoming a way to think about:
- how business owners describe where they are
- how they understand what comes next
- how they find the right resources
- how they enter Circles that fit their reality
- and how Toppertunity can support them with more precision and humanity
That is exciting to me.
Because many owners do not just need information. They need orientation. They need language. They need a more accurate mirror. They need help recognizing whether their main challenge is sales, capital, systems, leadership, or mindset. They need a way to say not just, “I’m a small business,” but “I’m in Validation, and my next gate is Capital,” or “I’m in Success, and I’m trying to decide what success should mean now.”
That kind of clarity can change the conversation.
And once the conversation changes, the support can change too.
That is where these Field Notes leave me for now: thinking about a Scorecard that does more than score, Circles that do more than group, and Paths that do more than organize content.
A business journey is not only about getting bigger. It is about becoming clearer, stronger, and more intentional over time to accomplish the founder's mission and make a better world.
Toppertunity, I hope, can help make that journey more visible.