The framework is the map. An advisor is the guide.
7SG Certified Advisors are trained in the framework, its assessments, and the facilitation that turns your team's data into an aligned plan. Every advisor below can take you from your first intro session through a full 7SG Business X-Ray.
What working with one looks like
An advisor doesn't arrive with opinions about your business. They arrive with a process: your leadership team's own assessment data, mapped against your stage of growth, facilitated into the conversation your team has been circling for months. The certification means they know the framework cold: the 27 Challenges, the Non-Negotiable Rules, the Builder/Protector Ratio, and how to read your team's results against all of it.
OWNER & STEWARD OF THE FRAMEWORKEric Schultz
Today the framework is led by Eric Schultz, who took on stewardship of the 7 Stages of Growth in 2023. His focus: keeping the framework as rigorous as the research that built it, and growing the community of 7SG Certified Advisors who bring it to leadership teams. Having grown multiple businesses and spent thousands of hours advising and coaching leaders, Eric knows firsthand the value of the 7 Stages of Growth as a roadmap for success.
FOUNDERLaurie Taylor
Research doesn’t help anyone until someone makes it usable. Laurie Taylor did that. She built 7 Stages of Growth into a framework a leadership team could actually work with: the assessments, the facilitation methodology behind the 7SG Business X-Ray, seven stage-specific books, and the training that produced the 7SG Certified Advisors delivering it today. Having taken a company from $250,000 to over $12 million in sales while running a 100+ employee business, Laurie Taylor’s perspective on enterprise growth comes from real-time experience. Committed to helping business owners succeed, she works with leaders to embrace and respect the intelligence that exists within each employee — reducing ‘employee anxiety,’ creating dialogues around key indicators, and getting employees thinking like ‘owners.’ Her work is grounded in the 7 Stages of Growth, a research-based model built on employee count. She remains close to the work as its founding voice and its most demanding reader.
