From Startup to Midsized Company: Managing the Growing Pains

With a great product, smart strategy and lots of hard work, a startup can mature into a midsized company, defined as a firm with between $10 million and $1 billion in revenue. This stage is what Rob Sher, a consultant to these firms and CEO of Mastering Midsized, calls the "teenage years of business." As with human adolescence, it can be a challenging time with plenty of growing pains. Businesses in this stage need a different kind of leadership than in the startup phase, when one visionary was able to call all the shots.

In this interview with EIX's Kimberly Eddleston, Sher, who is author of "Driving Midsized Growth" and two other business books, talks about how businesses can adjust strategies and leadership to the demands that growth brings. Topics include moving from one leader to a team of leaders focused on the future and aligned on what it will take to get there; investing just the right amount of revenue towards growth initiatives; avoiding burnout from growth that happens too quickly; and having a focused plan that concentrates only on the best ideas and weeds out the others.