There comes a point as a founder where you hit a frustrating ceiling with your growth. And it’s not an effort problem. It’s not a talent problem or a product problem either. In reality, it’s a playbook problem.
There are two very different playbooks.
Playbook one is the founder-led playbook. It’s built so the business succeeds on you as the founder. That’s what successfully launches a company.
Playbook two is the executive-team-led playbook. It’s built so the business succeeds without you. And it’s the only one that’s going to get you past the ceiling you’re hitting right now.
I learned this the hard way. As a CEO, the founder-led playbook, the hustle, the ideas, the energy, got us to about two and a half million dollars. Then it stalled. And the harder I pushed, the more stuck we got.
This isn’t a size thing. I’ve worked with companies doing $250 million a year in revenue that are still running the founder-led playbook, and they’re hitting the exact same wall. The scale changes. The problem doesn’t.
What actually changes
- In founder-led, you’re throwing twenty ideas at the wall to see what sticks. In executive-team-led, you’re spending your time growing what already stuck.
- In founder-led, you grow with passion and charisma. In executive-team-led, you grow with clarity and with brand.
- In founder-led, decisions are founder-made. In executive-team-led, the team makes decisions and implements them together.
Switching to the second playbook is what breaks you through. In my case, we went from about $2.5 million to $8.5 million, and from seventeen people to around fifty. In other companies I’ve worked with, revenue goes to $100 million while the team only goes from eight to twenty. Same market. Same product. What changed was the playbook they were running.
To grow, the goal has to stop being “how hard can I work as the founder” and start becoming “how do I get everyone else contributing as close to 100% of their unique potential as possible.” Otherwise you stay stuck in the scenario where the business lives or dies based on what you bring to the table that day.
So if you’re stuck at that ceiling, know that you didn’t run out of talent. You’re not really even failing. You’re succeeding into the ceiling of your old founder-led playbook. And doing more of what got you here is probably just going to make you crash harder into it.
The only thing that breaks you through is switching you and your team to the next right playbook.
— Craig