Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
Business Plan Writer & Financial Projections
Growth Glossary: Business Growth Terms in Plain English
Halfway through the loan meeting, the banker asks about your unit economics and your customer concentration. You know the business cold. You just do not know the words. This growth glossary defines every term from the book in plain English, with a link to the chapter or guide that shows you how to use it.
Last Updated: 11/08/2026 · Written by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA
The Definition
What Counts as a Growth Term?
Short Answer
A growth term is any word lenders, investors, and buyers use when they judge whether a small business can get bigger safely: how each sale makes money, where new customers come from, how the next step gets paid for, and what keeps quality and cash steady at a larger size.
Every term here answers one of four questions: When? Where? Fund? Hold?
Doctor Owl, in Plain English
“The banker is not trying to trick you with the vocabulary. Learn twenty of these words and you can answer every question he asks.”
How This Guide Works
Need a word fast? Jump to its letter and read the one-line definition. Want to use it? The link under each term opens a chapter page or a short guide that shows the idea at work, with a story from Dr. Paul’s Fabled Forest Business School Series and the math in one marked section.
Need More Than a Definition?
Knowing the word is step one. When the growth decision is real, here is how Dr. Paul can help.
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Start learning →From Dr. Paul’s Fabled Forest
Who Are the Owners Behind These Terms?
Some lessons stick better as a story. Dr. Paul’s Fabled Forest Business School Series teaches business through a forest full of small business owners who run into the same problems real owners face. Doctor Owl, a dry-witted consultant who lives in the Lone Oak, asks them the question nobody else does.
Each chapter page linked below follows one of these owners through a growth decision: a raccoon pricing a third truck, a bee with one buyer taking half her honey, a hawk who buys three businesses in a week.
In the Fabled Forest
A few words on this page are story words, not business terms. They are listed just below so you know which ones you will only find in the forest.
The Terms
Growth Words From A to Z
Each term below is taught by name in Growth for Small Businesses, Book 7 of Dr. Paul’s Fabled Forest Business School Series. The link under each definition opens the chapter page or guide that shows how to use it. Prefer the big picture first? Start with the small business growth guide.
Story words from the forest are left off this list: coins (the forest’s only money), fire or foundation (Doctor Owl’s first question about any problem), the ladder (the levels of a plan, from the five-year picture down to today), and the Talon Way (the hawk’s tempting shortcut that makes a business bigger and blinder).
- Acquisition
- Buying a business, or a piece of one, that someone else built, including its customers and staff, and accepting that some of what made it work may leave with the seller.
- Chapter 18: Acquisitions →
- A Cap
- A ceiling you set ahead of time on how big a share of your sales any single customer can become.
- Chapter 4: Customer Concentration →
- Channel
- One route your product or service travels to reach a buyer: your own counter or website, other shops that resell it, or one large buyer.
- Chapter 3: Channel Strategy →
- Channel margin
- The coins you actually keep on each sale through a given route, after that route’s lower price, fees, and costs.
- Chapter 3: Channel Strategy →
- Channel strategy
- Deciding which sales routes to use, how much of your output each one gets, and what job each route does for the business.
- Chapter 3: Channel Strategy →
- Check points
- A small number of set spots in the work where a lead or owner inspects it, instead of watching every step.
- Chapter 8: Scalability →
- Checking the copy
- Watching a new crew, location, or hire closely in the first weeks to confirm the work matches the original.
- Chapter 14: Replication →
- Copying the system, not the sign
- Duplicating how the work actually gets done, rather than only the name, truck, or paint job.
- Chapter 14: Replication →
- Core business
- The part of the business that earns most of the money and that you do better than anything else.
- Chapter 20: Core Business →
- Custom work on set days
- Holding truly unusual jobs for chosen days of the week so they stop slowing down the standard work.
- Chapter 12: Productizing a Service →
- Customer concentration
- How heavily your sales or profit lean on one customer or a small handful of them.
- Chapter 4: Customer Concentration →
- A Damage tally by cause
- A running count of every return, redo, or mistake, sorted by what caused it, so the cause gets fixed.
- Chapter 15: Quality Control →
- Entering small
- Testing a new market with a small, low-cost version of your offer so any mistake is cheap.
- Chapter 6: Market Entry →
- Equity investment
- Cash an investor puts in for a slice of ownership, instead of a loan you pay back with interest.
- Chapter 10: Equity Investment →
- Fit
- How well a new product or a purchased business matches what you already do and the customers you already serve.
- Chapter 7: Product Line Extension →
- Fixed costs
- Bills that show up every month no matter how much you sell, like rent, salaried wages, and storage.
- Chapter 16: Growing Fixed Costs →
- Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed time
- The three locks on a packaged service: a defined deliverable, a set price, and a promised turnaround.
- Chapter 12: Productizing a Service →
- Fund
- The third growth job in the book: paying for growth from profits first, then with money that fits what you are buying.
- Introduction: Small Business Growth Guide →
- Growing sideways
- Adding a business that sits beside your core and seems related, but demands new buyers, new skills, and its own share of your time.
- Chapter 20: Core Business →
- Growth
- Deliberately getting bigger, in customers, locations, products, or staff, without losing what made the business work at its best.
- Introduction: Small Business Growth Guide →
- Growth financing
- The way a business pays for getting bigger, from kept profits to loans and investors.
- Chapter 9: Growth Financing →
- Growth readiness
- Checking, before any expansion, that the business can handle more: demand that holds up, work that runs without you, someone for your part, and cash to spare after the purchase.
- Chapter 1: Growth Readiness →
- Hold
- The fourth growth job in the book: keeping the method, quality, cash, and owner’s attention intact as the business gets bigger.
- Introduction: Small Business Growth Guide →
- A Jig and a checklist
- A tool plus a written method that let more than one person do the hardest step the same way.
- Chapter 8: Scalability →
- A Lead
- The single person in charge of a site or a section of the team each day, trusted to make calls on the spot.
- Chapter 5: Multi-Location Expansion →
- A Local partner
- A business or person a new market already trusts, who can introduce you or sell your product for you.
- Chapter 6: Market Entry →
- Long money for long assets
- Paying for things that last for years, like buildings and big equipment, over a longer term, with payments the business can carry.
- Chapter 9: Growth Financing →
- Market entry
- How a business moves into a town, region, or customer group it does not know yet.
- Chapter 6: Market Entry →
- Middle management
- Supervisors who sit between the owner and the front-line team and make day-to-day calls so the owner stops being the only decision-maker.
- Chapter 11: Middle Management →
- Multi-location expansion
- Running the same business at a second site, or a third, instead of only one.
- Chapter 5: Multi-Location Expansion →
- The Nightly card
- A short report each site fills in at closing: output, sales, freebies, the cash count, and one problem from the day.
- Guide: What Goes in a Daily Sales Report? →
- The One step only the owner does
- The point in the work where jobs wait for the owner, which usually sets the limit on how much the business can do.
- Chapter 8: Scalability →
- Optimal business size
- The scale that gives the owner the income, hours, and kind of work they want, before costs and quality start slipping.
- Chapter 19: Optimal Business Size →
- Organizational growth stages
- The shapes a company moves through on the way up: the owner doing it all, the owner directing every helper, then the owner leading a few leads.
- Chapter 13: Organizational Growth Stages →
- The Owner’s schedule
- A fixed calendar showing which days the owner works at each site, so every team knows when the boss will be in.
- Chapter 5: Multi-Location Expansion →
- Payment terms
- The number of days you give buyers to pay, or that suppliers give you.
- Related guide →
- Price against earnings
- Weighing the asking price of a business against the profit it can realistically produce once it is yours.
- Guide: What Is a Fair Price for a Business? →
- Product line extension
- Bringing a new item or service into the lineup you already offer.
- Chapter 7: Product Line Extension →
- Productizing a service
- Packaging a job you do again and again with a set scope, a set price, and a set timeline.
- Chapter 12: Productizing a Service →
- Profit per oven hour
- What one hour of your tightest resource brings in after direct costs, used to compare what earns most from that hour.
- Chapter 7: Product Line Extension →
- Quality control
- Checking that the finished work is what you intended, at the spots in the process where problems usually start.
- Chapter 15: Quality Control →
- Guide: Quality Control vs Quality Assurance →
- Replication
- Copying a crew, site, or service that already works, so the copy performs the same way.
- Chapter 14: Replication →
- Returns
- Product a retailer or buyer ships back without selling it, plus the deal on who absorbs that cost.
- Guide: What Is Consignment Selling? →
- Sampling
- Inspecting a set share of ordinary items instead of every one, while still checking risky items every time.
- Guide: What Is Sampling in Quality Control? →
- Scalability
- Whether the business can take on more without the owner having to do more.
- Chapter 8: Scalability →
- Step costs
- Costs that jump in big blocks, a full salary or a full room, instead of rising a little at a time.
- Chapter 16: Growing Fixed Costs →
- Terms in and terms out
- The gap between how many days your customers take to pay and how many days you get to pay suppliers. A wide gap locks up cash as you grow.
- Chapter 17: Working Capital →
- The Unit
- The piece of the business you would copy to grow: one location, one truck, or one crew, measured over one month.
- Chapter 2: Unit Economics →
- Unit economics
- The profit a single location, truck, or crew produces on its own, measured before you open the next one.
- Chapter 2: Unit Economics →
- Variable instead of fixed
- Paying per day, per job, or per use rather than signing a monthly commitment, until demand is steady enough to carry the fixed bill.
- Chapter 16: Growing Fixed Costs →
- What the investor decides
- Any decisions an investment agreement lets the investor weigh in on. Big decisions it does not mention are for the owners to work out together.
- Guide: What Is a Silent Partner in Business? →
- What the manager decides, what the owner keeps
- Two written lists that make clear which calls a manager can make and which stay with the owner.
- Chapter 11: Middle Management →
- What walks out with the seller
- The relationships, know-how, and habits that leave a purchased business when the old owner does.
- Guide: How Long Should a Seller Stay On? →
- When
- The first growth job in the book: timing, including proof that a single unit makes money before you duplicate it.
- Introduction: Small Business Growth Guide →
- Where
- The second growth job in the book: direction, meaning which channel, place, market, product, or purchase.
- Introduction: Small Business Growth Guide →
- Working capital
- Short-term assets, such as cash, receivables, and inventory, minus bills due soon. Profit can be high while working capital runs thin.
- Chapter 17: Working Capital →
- Your own profits first
- Using cash the business has already saved to pay for expansion before taking on any debt.
- Chapter 9: Growth Financing →
Put the Terms to Work
Which Growth Decision Are You Facing?
The book sorts every foundation into four jobs. Pick the question that sounds like your week, then open the foundation that answers it.
A Plan Writer’s View
What Growth Terms Do Lenders Use Most?
When Dr. Paul writes a growth plan for a lender, the same handful of terms carry the meeting. Unit economics shows whether the first location earns on its own. Customer concentration shows how much rides on one buyer. Working capital and the cash cycle show how much cash the next step will tie up. Use of funds and debt coverage show whether the loan fits what it buys. Owners who can explain those in plain words walk into the bank with an answer ready, instead of a stack of numbers they cannot defend. That is the real reason to learn the vocabulary.
The Book
Learn the Terms, Then Read the Stories
Every term here comes with a story in the book: a raccoon walking around a truck, a jaguar with two long lines and no profit, a bee reading a whale’s letter, a hawk who buys three businesses in a week. 20 foundations, a Nutshell for each, and line 7 of the Owner’s Scorecard. Book 7 of Dr. Paul’s Fabled Forest Business School Series.
More Glossaries
Other Business School Glossaries
All 20 foundations are on the small business growth guide. More subjects are in the Small Business Education Center.
Written by Dr. Paul Borosky, DBA, MBA, business consultant and author with 14+ years of experience and 1,000+ clients served. Want help putting these terms to work in your own business? Dr. Paul works with owners one-on-one.
This page is for general educational purposes only. It is not legal, employment, tax, financial, or other professional advice. The Fabled Forest and its characters are fictional. For decisions about your own business, consult a qualified professional.