What works at $500K breaks at $5M.
Not because the system was wrong. Because business changes faster than operations.
Here’s the pattern I see:
Stage 1 ($0-500K): Founder does everything. Scrappy but effective.
Stage 2 ($500K-2M): Hire people, but founder still involved in everything. Chaos begins.
Stage 3 ($2M-5M): Try to systematize, but systems are built around the founder. Bottleneck central.
Stage 4 ($5M+): Either break through with real operations, or stay stuck.
Most businesses get trapped in Stage 3.
Often, the breakthrough isn’t better people. It’s founder-independent systems.
Systems that work when you’re on holiday. Systems that scale without you.
That’s the difference between a business and a job.
Lloyd
PS – Can your business run for 2 weeks without you? Find out with my free Operations Readiness Assessment: https://virtualdoo.com/assess