When we think of Olympic athletes, it's tempting to pretend that they are somehow "different". We tell ourselves they were born with incredible strength or unusual talent, or had training that we could never get for ourselves. We look at Michael Jordon in sports, or we compare ourselves to Barbra Streisand as an entertainer, and say, "I could never do that."

While there is truth in acknowledging their incredible talent, there is also a lie in pretending that because we don't have their genetic gifts, we are somehow excused from necessity of doing our best. That is simply not true!

The vast majority of highly successful people, in any area of life, are simply those who worked a bit harder, stayed a bit longer, and did a bit more.

Experts identify three main stages of business growth. The Startup Phase is time when you get your business up and running, locate customers, make sales and essentially, try to get money coming in. Typically, at this point, you are an Owner/Operator.

The next stage is Early Stage Expansion. In this phase, your business experiences "growing pains" similar to ones I will discuss below.

In third stage, your business moves from Owner Operated into Management. In other words, your function is that of manager.You are no longer involved in day to day operation of running business or of producing product or service.

Experts claim that only a minority of small businesses move into third phase. Therefore, today's article will address ways of managing growth as you move from Startup into Stage Two.

You know its time to look for ways to manage growth if any of following apply:

1.You have steady income and regular sales but you are working too hard. You are investing "sweat equity". You know that if you continue working at that speed, you will burn out, lose productivity or worse -- become ill. It is time to find a way to increase growth while working less.