Scaling Isn’t a Straight Line

Happily ever after wasn’t supposed to be this exhausting.

You thought that you would be able to relax after you managed to climb your way to success. Your business is thriving; your profits have never been so high. You would probably be celebrating if you weren’t so tired.

Your business is starting to ramp up — but instead of relaxing, you’ve found yourself working even harder. You slog through 14-hour days, check off tasks on endless to-do lists, and work through the weekends. At this point, you’ve lost touch with most of your friends and can’t remember what it feels like to have a full night of sleep. You feel like a hamster on a wheel: desperately sprinting towards business success, but never truly progressing forward.

Here’s the problem — as impressive as your sprint might be, it won’t help your company grow.

Your business doesn’t need a hamster, it needs a leader. If you don’t adjust your approach and step off of that ever-turning wheel, you won’t be able to ramp up your business effectively, or even keep it from falling once you push it to the top. If anything, your blind dash for success might be what pushes your company into crash!

Business scaling is the most dangerous stage of advancement for high-achievers. Let’s take a look at some of the potential pitfalls that can trap founders at each step of the process.

Stage 1: Happily Ever After — Or Not?

This is it: you’ve finally had your big break and worked through the start-up stage. Sales are coming in at a fast clip; profits are at an all-time high. You have more leads and loyal customers than you ever hoped for, and your income has skyrocketed. From this point on, your success seems assured.

You couldn’t be more wrong.

The ramp-up — or scaling, depending on how you phrase it — stage is the most dangerous one for growing businesses. If you aren’t careful, the happily ever ending you earned at the close of the startup stage can quickly turn into a tragedy.

Stage 2: Life on the Hamster Wheel

As an entrepreneur, you’re so accustomed to working long days and pushing yourself to your limits that the exhaustion you feel seems normal. Being a hamster on a wheel was necessary during the startup stage; you needed to work day in and out to see your tasks through to completion. At the time, the sacrifice of your energy and effort was worth the return on your business.

As exhausting as it was, your approach worked — at least during the startup period. You were responsible for the products, the marketing, the customer service; you wore every hat because you couldn’t afford to bring on someone to take on the tasks for you. You rushed through the day and checked off what you could without pausing or reflecting on the efficiency of what you were doing.

Now that you’ve made it to the ramp-up stage, however, your hamster-wheel approach is beginning to work against you. The company is doing well enough, but you’re burning out; you’re so involved in resolving day-to-day minutiae that you can’t see or enjoy the big picture anymore. You aren’t dreaming up ideas for a better business or charting the future; you’re just scurrying in place.

You’re so trapped within the hamster wheel that you’ve lost sight of your life outside of it. You bring stress home; soon, your closest relationships — even your marriage — might begin to strain. The risk of divorce is at its highest during the ramp-up stage. Despite your fraying personal life, you continue. You are convinced that the only way to maintain your company’s success is to work just as hard as you did during the startup stage.

You are wrong.

Stage 3: Systems and Scaling

At this point, a founder can go in one of two directions.

First, they might continue rushing along the hamster wheel and try to take on the influx of new sales and growth using the same hands-on, small-team approach they used during the startup stage. This strategy will work for a little while, but it will inevitably end with the founder burning out and leading their company into a crash.

Second, they might take a step back and reassess their approach. During the startup stage, the lion’s share of tasks fell on the founder’s to-do list; they never needed to institute systems that would organize the work for a larger employee base. Successful founders accept that they won’t be able to check off every task and grow the business on their own. They design systems that empower employees to complete work efficiently and communicate effectively.

Investing in outside employees will cut into profits in the short term because founders need to pay out compensation. However, taking that short-term hit will ultimately lead to greater business success overall because having a functional team and processes in place will boost sales and revenue over time.

Stage 4: Learning to Lead

If all goes well, the founder will be able to step wholly off of the hamster wheel and dedicate more time towards charting a path towards greater business success.

That said, entering into leadership can be difficult. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are chronic high achievers with exacting standards; it can be hard for them to let go of tasks they believe only they can complete correctly. If a founder doesn’t learn to delegate and trust in their employees, they might create a toxic culture of micromanagement. Employers need to be free to dream and lead — and doing either is nearly impossible if they can’t step off the hamster wheel.

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