By CAROLYN CARY
ccary@thecitizennews.com

The Fayette County Chamber of Commerce Small Business Council invited its 1999 award winner, Jim Pace, to speak at the luncheon for the year 2000 winner.

Pace spoke about the work involved in starting a small business and nursing it through various stages of growth.

He said that the life cycle of a company is not unlike the stages of a person's life in that the first stage is a “courtship,” in which everyone is excited and the level of commitment is high.

If things go well you reach “infancy,” a period in which there is never enough cash and the CEO must spend his time managing resources and not people, he said.

Next would come the “go-go” phase when more cash becomes available and growth becomes the main subject. It is at this stage that the founder must begin to let control go to others, he added.

In the “adolescence” stage, growth will begin taking a toll on your workers and the energy level goes down, Pace said. The CEO must work hard to keep from losing money.

By the time you reach the “prime” stage, everything is working right, he said. It is a glorious time to be in business and the CEO can now shift back to managing people.

“Success is not measured by wealth, fame, power or by where you are in life, but rather by how far you have come,” he concluded.

Pace is cofounder of Group VI in 1988. It was a contracting firm originally, and has diversified into real estate brokerage, designing/building, construction and development. It has just moved its headquarters from Henry County to Peachtree City and has been cited as the seventh fastest growing company in the Atlanta area.

He serves on the board of the YMCA, the Fayette County Board of Health, is an elder in his church and has just completed a term as a city councilman for Peachtree City.

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