When you’re in danger of stalling, or worse, you’re treading water, take a deep breath, reevaluate your surroundings, make some brave (expensive) hiring decisions, and push forward. This is how to scale your business when you’re at the invisible growth barrier.
Product-market fit
You may simply have hit the demand limit for your product or service, and you may need to redesign it to suit a broader audience
- It requires a big change in the way you do business – hiring, training, management, project management, etc.
How to break through the growth barrier
Realize that there are stages, and that you need to change at each stage
- You cannot grow because you are optimized for the level you are at
- The only way to do it reliably is to use a systematic approach and involve the people who are going to be the future of the business
- Assemble a team called the “Growth Lab Team”
- They are your future stars, people who really fit your values, who want to see progress and can envisage a stellar future
Departmentalization
When your business is turning over around a million, you might have ten or a dozen people on your team.
- You’re all super-aware of what’s going on, and you read each other’s minds and jump in to help when needed
- North of this first million, it starts to become important that you have specialists, and sometimes specialist teams
Caliber of staff
At this stage of growth, you begin to need more experienced staff to manage teams and bring in workflows and practices that they have seen work well elsewhere.
- Up to the first million, you were training great people you worked well with to deliver what was in your head. Now, you need to hire people with expertise.
