Mark Kohlert explains how owners kill their own businesses by treating them at the wrong stage. If you extract cash from a company that still needs to build systems and scale, you starve it before it's ready. Knowing which stage your business is actually in changes everything.
Chapters
Most entrepreneurs have several businesses. As a business owner, you may be in this startup mode over here and in scaling over here and being able to switch that hat and switch that mindset can be really challenging. But when you're there and you understand where you're at with that business, you also aren't as hard on yourself. Some people are like, well Mark, I'm just not a good business owner. This business is failing. It's me. It was like, no, you were treating a business that was still trying to get its systemization down, maybe in phase two, but you thought you were over here at exit. You're ready to go golf every day and live off profits of your business. Your business wasn't ready for that and so you made decisions that were incorrect and your business ended up suffocating. You were sucking out profit too soon, not letting it get some breathing room and grow. It was an adolescent and you were treating it like an adult.