You've got $10,000 and a dream. You start a business and find early success. You're great at what you do and build a good reputation, and the business rolls in. You wake up one day with an office, seven employees, fifty customers, and things are falling apart. Your customers are unhappy, your employees are unhappy, you can't keep track of everything, you have no processes, no structure, and cash flies in and out of your bank account like food in your golden retriever's breakfast bowl. You're working crazy hours, can't find time to grow the business, can't fix the problems you know about, and are terrified of the ones you don't. Gut feel isn't working anymore.
This is a shift many new business owners struggle to make. You're great at doing "the work," but when you reach this point it's no longer enough.
You have to learn to stop working in your business and start working on it. It's a hard leap to make, maybe harder than starting the business in the first place.
Your job now is to pull yourself away from the day to day and focus on the bigger picture. Create structure. Make decisions based on data and facts, not entirely on gut feel, though there's always some value to good instincts. You have to learn to hire, train, and rely on other people, people who may do things a bit differently than you did, and maybe even better. You slowly take hats off yourself and put them on someone else. Then one day you wake up with a business of thirty-five employees, two hundred customers, and all your hard work paying off.
If you find yourself in this phase, I'd love the opportunity to walk beside you as your guide.