You might think that a solopreneur trying to crack their first million and the founder of a business with a run rate in the hundreds of millions wouldn’t share the same growth issues. But I believe you’d be shocked to discover how many of both groups (and even some billionaires I’ve worked with) have the same two issues that cause their sales to plateau at a level that drives them crazy.
Over four decades I’ve interacted with thousands of entrepreneurs through my blog, podcast, and books. I’ve learned plenty from them. But of particular interest are the lessons I gained working more intimately with a smaller group of fewer than 100, through strategic coaching, consulting contracts, and my Breakthrough U entrepreneur accelerator.
That’s where the two issues come up again and again…
Issue One: Strategy. Or more specifically, the lack of it.
These entrepreneurs are sharp. As a rule, they’re highly intelligent, never afraid to work, and possess strong leadership skills. Yet 80 percent of them haven’t had a strategic thought in at least five years.
They obsess every waking moment over tactics and through sheer brute force they build high-revenue businesses. (Although if we’re being honest, they have virtually destroyed their health and relationships to do it.) It sounds crazy to suggest you can build a business in the hundreds of millions without owning a category, having a strong distinction from your competitors, or a strategic plan. But it happens a lot more than you may think.
What you can’t do is keep it going. At some point, you have a stroke on the hamster wheel. I know this because I did it for many years. You can rush from putting out one fire to the next one all day every day, and the revenue will keep climbing right up until the day it doesn’t. Then it flattens, and no amount of additional brute force moves it.
That’s what drives me now. I’m doing my best to show entrepreneurs how to eliminate the bullshit busywork and concentrate on the stuff that matters. The stuff that allows you to scale.
But here’s the part you won’t learn in the business books or MBA program…
Issue Two: The self-identity ceiling.
Every one of the plateaued entrepreneurs I’ve worked with had a number. A few of them knew it. Most had no idea it existed. It’s the revenue level they had unconsciously set in their own mind as the amount someone like them gets to earn. Not the amount they want. The amount they believe, down where the beliefs actually live, that they’re worth.
The solopreneur stuck at $800,000 and the founder stuck at $300 million have different numbers and the identical mechanism. The business grew to the exact size of the founder’s self-identity, and then it stopped. Not because the market ran out. Because the founder did.
I’ve said it for years and I’ll keep saying it until it sinks in: you can’t out-earn your self-identity.
You can outwork it for a while. That’s what the hamster wheel is for. Brute force will carry you past your number temporarily, the way you can hold your breath underwater for a minute or two. But the identity always wins. You’ll unconsciously sabotage the big deal. You’ll hire the wrong person for the key role. You’ll get “too busy” to follow up on the opportunity that would have blown through the ceiling. You’ll take your foot off the gas the moment the numbers get uncomfortable, and you’ll have a perfectly logical business reason for every one of those decisions.
Where does the number come from? Not from your spreadsheet. It comes from the programming you absorbed before you ever had a business. What your parents said about rich people at the dinner table. What your church taught you about money. The neighborhood you grew up in and the ceiling everyone there quietly agreed to. What you decided about yourself the first time you failed publicly. Whether people like you get to have that kind of success, and what it would say about you, and who might resent you for it.
That programming becomes your operating system. And your operating system sets your number.
Now here’s how the two issues connect. Strategy requires you to sit in silence and ask who you would have to become for the business to reach the next level. The self-identity ceiling makes that question terrifying, because the honest answer is “someone I don’t yet believe I’m allowed to be.”
So you stay busy.
Busywork is a hiding place. Tactics give you a dopamine hit and a to-do list you can check off, and they never once require you to confront your number, or the identity that set it.
It’s a perfectly closed loop. You don’t think strategically because strategy would expose the ceiling. And you never raise the ceiling because you’re too busy executing tactics beneath it. That loop will run until your body, your marriage, or your cash flow breaks it for you.
And once the plateau shows up, it becomes evidence. The story writes itself. The market’s saturated. We need a new funnel. Let’s hire a fractional CMO. Every one of those is a tactic, which means every one of them is another lap on the wheel.
Raising the ceiling
Nobody breaks this loop accidentally. Here’s where to start.
Find your number. Pull up your revenue history and look for where the line went flat. That’s not a market signal. That’s a mirror. Now ask the real question: what were you afraid would happen if you blew through it? Sit with that one. The answer is almost never about business.
Trace the programming. Write down the three most powerful things you were taught about money and success by age 8, and who taught them. Then ask whether the people who installed those beliefs ever built anything at the level you’re trying to reach. If they didn’t, why are you still running their software?
Get off the wheel for one full day. Not a “working retreat” with your laptop. A day with no phone, a legal pad, and five questions:
- What distinct category could we own?
- What is the distinction a customer would actually pay more for?
- What would this business look like if it didn’t need me at the center of it?
- What are we delivering physically or in person that should be digital?
- What clients do we need to fire in order to create a vacuum for the ones we really want?
Notice which of those questions makes you desperately want to check your email or phone. That’s your ceiling talking.
The plateau isn’t punishing you. It’s informing you. It’s telling you that the business has outgrown the strategy, and the strategy has outgrown the identity of the person running it. Both are fixable. But only one of them gets fixed on a whiteboard.
So here’s my question: What’s your number? And who would you have to become to make it irrelevant?
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