Every business has growth ceilings where doing things the old way doesn’t scale to the next step.

The problem seems to be two-fold.

The first is us, the owners. Our skill set was great for going from phase 0 to 1, but a different skill set is always needed for phase 2. Maybe you went from $0 to $250k in sales or from $250k to $1m. The next chapter requires an upgraded skill set, and the longer we fight that, the slower and more painful the process becomes.

For example, you can force your way to $1m in sales by doing the majority of the work. That doesn’t work, though, to get to $3m in sales and beyond. The skill set required may change to include hiring higher-quality talent, managing individual contributors, and being smarter about customer selection.

The second problem is people. You may be lucky enough to promote an individual contributor to manage other people, and it works, but generally speaking, those are two different roles and capabilities. Overhead increases as true managers are not cheap.

It seems these revenue breakpoints are roughly:

• $250k
• $1m
• $3m
• $10m

If you plan to break through them, prepare to uplevel your management team, increase payroll, and improve your own skill set.

I’ve found it helps to set time aside and plan this out. Ask yourself questions like:

• If we grew by 10%, which people and roles might break?
• Do I have the right people in the right seats to grow 10%?
• Where do I feel stretched thin and need to delegate better?
• If I were hiring a coach to grow this company, what would they say I needed to do better?

Happy growth ahead (not just people or revenue)!