I had a conversation with a friend yesterday. I asked him about how one of his supplier companies was doing and if they had ever grown that they had expected that supplier to grow. His response back was interesting. "No, they hadn’t." And I asked what the difficulty was. And he said, "It’s the challenge of the founder not getting out of his own way." That’s a particular challenge for many CEOs of early stage companies. You’ve got great ideas for the company. You’re probably very smart and you probably have experience in many different areas of the company. You’ve got pretty good sense on how you want the company to be operating. But, you’re so good at it, you’ve got your hands in everything and you become the limiting factor for the company.

When somebody’s like that, it can be awfully hard to grow. Depending up the nature of the business, you might restrict revenues to no more than 1 million or 5 million or, perhaps, maybe 15 million. There’s going to be a cap though based upon the owner’s habits. And that ceiling that’s going to be on the business is probably well short of what the business could do.

I remember seeing this one company and meeting with that CEO a few years before. I was very impressed with his background and I was extremely impressed with the software product that he was offering. I felt it really offered something for his marketplace. Clearly, I felt this was a company that could’ve gone much farther than what it’s been showing so far.

So, what can you do if you’re in the situation?

1. Take a look at your entire business process of serving your customer on one end and developing your product or service on another end. How much are you involved in each of those particular steps? How much could you be spending off to other people?

2. Look at your management structure. Have you developed much of a team? What holes do you see in the team?

3. Think of the daily decision making. What decisions are you involved with? What decisions do others get to do? Do you see a gap there? Could more be pushed down to other people?

4. What do you think the company could grow to? How are you doing compared to that growth? What kind of shortfall is there? If you were performing at that particular sales volume of your potential, what would be the constraints on your ability to either serve the customers or to produce or develop your product or service?

If you’re not getting where you want to in the company, you might be the problem as the president and the more talented you are the more likely you might actually be that problem. If somebody’s not talented, they have to rely on other resources to get them to where you’ve gotten. But, you might’ve been able to get along just on your talent, but your talent alone just may not be what it’s going to take to get it to the next level.