Today, we talk about 4 reasons business owners fail to scale. Inspired by an article from the Harvard Business Review called Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale. Let’s dive in.

Loyalty to Comrades

Loyal CEOs can be your best friends but failing to see team members’ weaknesses can cause problems for your company. You can work and overcome these obstacles.

When you expand beyond the starter phase of your business and realize the old way of doing things will no longer work. You have to do things differently shifting your perspective and mindset in order to grow your business to the next level.

Shifting from the workhorse that does it all to being the executive of their business. This is a big shift in separating the entrepreneur from the business and to start seeing the business as an entity of themselves.

Your Business Isn’t Your Baby!

Once you step into this separation it allows you to see your business more objectively. To see what your business needs versus what you need. When these two are intertwined it is easy for the ego to get in the way and problems in our business start to happen. 

When you see yourself as a company of one, you have a hard time having difficult conversations or letting people go. 

Task Orientation

Next, let’s talk about being oriented.

Are you too focused on the things that are right in front of you or the long-term strategy of your business?

If you are focused on the task in front of you, you may find yourself at the employee level. You are able to execute what is in front of you which is probably what helped you to start your own business.

However, as your business grows, you have to shift focus more on strategic possibilities. Leaders know that to scale their business they have to focus on less on what is key for their business - the zone of genius.

Single-Mindedness

Single-mindedness or being laser-focused on a particular thing will hinder your business. Usually, you will see this as people not letting go and letting the people they have hired do their jobs.

As the boss, you are micro-managing and over-checking everything. You still holding to the fact that you have to do it all yourself and not trusting yourself to be a savvy business owner. Leaving your team and yourself frustrated. This means tasks don’t get delegated properly and you aren’t focusing on our zone of genius.

Working in Isolation

Finally, working in insolation. When you first start out you are doing all the work because maybe you can’t afford to hire help. Then your business starts to grow and you bring on more people.

Now, once you start to bring on more people it’s important to let people in on your processes. This requires effective communication, delegation, and the ability to create buy-in from others.

You, as the business, have to learn to be vulnerable, motivate and lead your team. It comes increasingly important to know your company’s values, mission, and vision for the future. So you can hire a leadership team and train them properly. 

If you haven’t defined your role and the role of the business and separated the two from each other you will fall into the loyalty trap and isolate yourself.

Why? Because you won’t have the right team around you. Leading to finding yourself stuck in the day-to-day tasks, forgetting to focus on growth strategy. Driving you back into single-mindedness, the idea that things will all go to hell in a handbasket if you aren’t there to save the day. 

Clearly taking action on these steps will in return grow your business. Find a coach or mastermind group to help you step into the next level and become the Savvy CEO of your business.

Listen and learn: 

The 4 Reasons Why You are Failing to Scale

• Loyalty to Comrades

• Task Orientation

• SIngle-Mindedness

• Working in Isolation

Want to develop your leadership skills to confidently and effectively lead your business to the next level in 2023? I’m now accepting new clients. Click here to book a complementary consultation today.

How can we work together?

If you liked what you read here, and you’re curious to learn more about business coaching, you might also like this other article I wrote: How can a business coach help me?

And here are a few more ways you can get more support from me to become the best entrepreneur you can be:

• Accelerate your growth with this free handy download

• Read my bestselling book, The Up Level Project

• Join my group accountability program: Business Growth Achievers

• Work with me: Book a 1:1 consultation with me here