Successful business planning relies in part on knowing where your business is at in the business life cycle—and where it is headed next. All businesses, large and small, go through these stages of growth: Startup, Growth, Maturity and Transfer.

The way in which each business progresses through the life cycle is unique—there is no set time frame for each stage, and there are no hard-and-fast rules for determining when a business is ready to make the transition from one stage to the next. However, each stage does have its own distinct characteristics.