Most of my clients come to me at around $10 million of revenue. Sometimes $15 million if they got lucky, or were willing to work really hard.
Maybe you’re in that situation right now.
You hired an EOS implementer. You worked on time management. Delegation. You brought in senior people to lead key functions.
None of it worked. You’re working harder than ever and wondering what you did wrong.
Here’s why—
For a long time, everything running through you was your biggest strength. It’s how you put your stamp on it. Your client relationships. Your offerings. What actually makes you different from the other four companies bidding the same job.
Depending on the industry, that works up to about $15 million.
Then it turns, and it turns fast. The exact thing that was your advantage becomes the thing holding you down. You’ve built a business and a client base that needs you, and there isn’t enough you.
You’ve handed off plenty. The scheduling, the invoicing, the things that were never really yours.
But every time it’s something that actually matters, you take it back. The client who’s called your cell for eleven years. The bid that has to be right. The call that was easier to just take than to explain to someone else.
You have a reason every time. A good one. Usually a true one.
There’s a whole industry serving founders at this stage. EOS implementers, recruiters, time management consultants. Some of them are excellent, and your consultant probably isn’t wrong about anything he told you.
But every consultant is working the same problem: how to get more out of the same you.
And that you is already at your limit.
The same you who needs to be in the middle of it. The same you who will fight to give up as little as possible — and who can produce three legitimate business reasons for every one of those fights.
You’ve never had a bad reason. Not once. That isn’t good judgment — that’s the mechanism.
You know exactly what you’d have to hand over. You’ve known for two years.
What you don’t know is who’s left when you’re no longer holding it.