You’ve been working your ass off but still feel stuck. Growth has slowed, cash flow is tight, and the business has plateaued. Why, and what can you do about it? Sound familiar? 

Here is the hard truth: If the business has plateaued, one of the primary reasons is you. I’ve witnessed this too many times to count. What has served you might not serve you anymore. There are stages to any entrepreneurial journey. The first stage is a startup. This is where hard work, tenacity, and scrappiness make things happen. It is a stage where you, as the founder, have your hand in everything. This stage lasts a few years for some and a decade or more for others. It works until it doesn’t. That is when you hit the plateau. 

Transitioning from the startup to the growth stage requires different skills and new tools. Hard work must be replaced by smart work. Tenacity must morph into company culture, and scrappiness must be replaced by process and procedure. You are no longer the doer with your hands in everything. You must become the leader, with your finger on the pulse, and be highly effective in getting things done through others. The above are radically different skills and tools than those you leaned on during the startup stage. If you don’t adapt and adopt these skills and tools, you’ve taken your business as far as you can. 

Candidly, this is where too many founders give up and give in, allowing, by choice or force, new executive leadership to step in. For some, this is fine, but most entrepreneurs  I’ve met can successfully transition from the founder of a startup to the CEO of a growth-stage business. Often, that is what is best for the individual and the company. You need to know how. 

Let’s examine three key areas: leadership, culture, and process. 

Leadership

You need to become a leader. Start studying other successful leaders. Read books, take classes, and hire a coach; you must become a student of the craft. Your job is no longer to do but rather to do through others. You need to develop a strong EQ (emotional intelligence), learn how to broadcast a clear vision, and develop and execute a cohesive strategy. Get some help with this; invest in yourself. You remain the most essential asset in your business. 

Culture

Too often, culture gets pushed to the back burner. You tell yourself you’re still a small company with only a few employees. You’ll worry about it when you get bigger. When you are finally ready to address it, you realize the horse is already out of the barn, and there is no putting it back. Peter Drucker’s famous quote, “Culture eats strategy for lunch,” still rings true today. If you want to climb past the plateau, a high-performance culture aligned with the company’s vision and the brand’s values is necessary. Start thinking about culture first, and again, get some help. 

Process

Of the three, process is the least exciting; I get it. But it is so essential for growth. Systematizing the business so that key actions are repeatable and scaleable allows you to absorb growth. It’s a hard transition from informality to a more formal process-driven organization, but it is vital. Start with key functions like order-to-cash, financial reporting, objective setting, and HR functions. Once again, I will implore you to get help. 

There is a lot more to this than fits in one article. The key takeaway is that if you’ve reached a plateau in the business, look to yourself first and ask, is what served me before serving me now? If not, start investing in leadership, culture, and process development. Those are the building blocks to help you climb that next mountain.