Jim Johnson explains stages of small-business growth, framing entrepreneurs' progression from technician → operator → entrepreneur → owner. He emphasizes that at ~$5–$15M in revenue (depending on company type) structure and repeatable processes become critical for the owner to truly own the business rather than be owned by it.
That's the new thing that you become so you're thinking of stage like hey I'm a rookie, a startup. I'm just figuring it out I'm a technician and I've got a skill that works really well I've become an operator so I've got a couple of people working for me but it's not real big yet not scaling it the way I would like to and then I become an entrepreneur so I'm starting to get some of that stuff in place. It's really important and then the next thing usually you're getting into this five to $15 million in doing depending upon your type of company is this idea of a business where structure becomes really important everything starts to get followed at which the idea is to become this well oiled machine and this is the place, this is the key spot where the person that owns the company truly starts to become an owner they start to own the company instead of the company owning them all the others. Entrepreneur, operator, technician the business kind of owns you.
