The Mistake That Kept My Business From Growing

By Art Harrison • June 19, 2025

One critical mistake can cap your business growth for years. Learn the hidden growth killer that most entrepreneurs never identify until it's too late.

For two years, I did everything right. My customers loved our work. Our retention rate was over 90%. We had steady revenue and healthy profit margins. By every traditional metric, we had a successful business.

But we weren't growing.

Month after month, our revenue stayed flat. We'd gain new customers at roughly the same rate we'd lose existing ones. We'd launch new services that performed exactly as well as our existing services—which was good, but not great.

I tried everything I could think of: better marketing, new service offerings, improved operations, team expansion. Nothing moved the needle significantly.

It wasn't until I stopped trying to fix the symptoms and started examining the underlying structure of our business that I discovered the problem. And when I found it, I realized it had been sabotaging our growth from day one.

The Growth Ceiling Nobody Talks About

Most business advice focuses on what you should do to grow: better marketing, more sales, improved products, expanded services.

But sometimes the problem isn't what you're not doing—it's what you are doing that's creating an invisible ceiling on your growth potential.

In my case, the problem was that I had built a business that required me personally to deliver the highest-value work. I was the bottleneck, but I couldn't see it because I was too close to the operations.

Every time we tried to scale, we hit the same wall: there was only one of me, and customers specifically wanted to work with me, not with team members I might train.

I had accidentally built a job for myself, not a business that could grow independent of my personal time and attention.

The Personal Dependency Trap

This is one of the most common growth killers for service-based businesses, and it's particularly dangerous because it feels like a strength, not a weakness.

Customers love working with the founder. They trust your expertise. They value your personal attention. This feels like validation of your approach.

But if your business can't deliver value without you personally involved, you haven't built a business—you've built an expensive hobby that pays you.

The Warning Signs

You know you're trapped in personal dependency if:

Customers specifically request to work with you instead of your team
You can't take vacation without business operations suffering
Revenue stops growing when you stop personally selling
Quality problems emerge when you delegate important work
New team members can't replicate results you achieve easily

I had all five warning signs for two years and kept treating them as operational problems instead of structural problems.

The Deeper Psychology: Why We Create These Traps

Smart entrepreneurs often unconsciously create personal dependency because it feels safer than building systems that could work without them.

If the business needs you personally, you can't be replaced. If customers want you specifically, your job security feels guaranteed. If you're the irreplaceable expert, your value feels protected.

But this safety is an illusion that caps your growth and creates stress that eventually becomes unsustainable.

The Control vs. Growth Trade-off

The growth mistake I made was choosing control over scalability at every decision point:

I hired people to support me instead of people who could replace me
I created processes that required my approval instead of processes that worked independently
I positioned myself as the expert instead of positioning the company as the expert
I optimized for quality control instead of quality systems

Each of these decisions felt smart in isolation, but together they created a business that couldn't grow beyond my personal capacity.

How to Identify Your Growth Ceiling

Most growth problems aren't marketing problems or sales problems—they're structural problems that prevent your business from scaling past your personal involvement.

Here's how to diagnose whether you've accidentally built a growth ceiling:

The Vacation Test

Plan a two-week vacation where you'll have no contact with your business. What would break? What decisions would get delayed? What deliverables would suffer?

If the answer is "most things," you've built a personal dependency, not a business system.

The Delegation Audit

List your daily activities and mark which ones only you can do versus which ones someone else could learn to do.

If more than 30% of your activities are "only you" tasks, you've created a personal bottleneck that will limit growth no matter how hard you work.

The Revenue Multiplication Test

Ask yourself: if you had 10x as many customers tomorrow, could your business deliver the same quality without you working 100-hour weeks?

If the answer is no, you haven't built a scalable business model.

The Systematic Solution

The solution isn't to remove yourself from the business—it's to systematize your expertise so the business can deliver your value without requiring your personal time.

Document Your Expertise

Everything you do intuitively needs to be documented so others can learn to do it systematically. Your natural problem-solving approach needs to become a repeatable process.

This feels like giving away your competitive advantage, but it's actually multiplying it. One person with expertise can serve limited customers. A system based on that expertise can serve unlimited customers.

Train Multipliers, Not Supporters

Instead of hiring people to help you do your work, hire people who can learn to do your work independently. This requires different hiring criteria and different training approaches.

Look for people who can think like you, not just people who can follow your instructions.

Build Quality Into the System

Instead of maintaining quality through personal oversight, build quality checkpoints into the process itself. Create systems that produce consistent results regardless of who's operating them.

What Growth Actually Requires

Real growth requires letting go of being personally indispensable. It requires building something that works better than you could personally deliver, not just something that works as well as you personally deliver.

This transition is scary for most entrepreneurs because it feels like losing control. But it's actually gaining leverage—the ability to create value beyond what your personal time and energy allow.

If you're struggling with analysis paralysis about how to systematize your business, you're overthinking it. Start by documenting one process you do naturally and training one person to do it independently.

Your Growth Breakthrough Action Plan

This week: Identify your biggest business bottleneck. Is it a process problem, a people problem, or a personal dependency problem?

This month: Document one expertise area and train someone else to handle it without your direct involvement. Test whether quality suffers when you're not personally involved.

Next quarter: Build systematic solutions for the bottlenecks that currently require your personal attention.

The goal isn't to remove yourself from your business—it's to evolve from being the business to running the business.

If you're ready to stop being the ceiling on your own growth, the FSTEP program includes modules on systematizing expertise and building scalable operations that work whether you're personally involved or not.

Remember, waiting for perfect systems before starting is just another form of perfectionist procrastination. Start with imperfect systems and improve them based on real operational experience.

Your business can't grow beyond your personal capacity until you build systems that capture and multiply your capabilities. Stop being the bottleneck and start being the architect.

For related insights on systematic thinking, explore how to turn small actions into big results and learn about building momentum that doesn't depend on your constant personal effort.

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Video Transcript

When you're trying to start a business or even if you just have an idea, you're probably going to ask yourself How do I know if I'm doing any of this right? The reality is you can't know. You won't know. You're almost certainly doing it wrong. We all are when we get started. I know that because I've been there. OK, I'm still kind of there, but I am coming out of it. When I started 12 months ago I thought that going fast was going to save me time. I thought that experimenting, even if I didn't have any real direction or purpose, was going to bring me clarity somehow, and I thought that just being myself, being authentic, was going to be enough. And then I spent the better part of a year proving that I was wrong every single day. So I had to do it all over again. This is exactly what I would do. That if you follow the same advice, if you avoid these mistakes, not only will you save yourself time and money, you'll save yourself the headaches and the heartache that makes most people quit. I'm not somebody who's afraid to take action. That's something I'm proud of. And combined with the fact that I'm not afraid to fail, and I'm willing to look silly and to just try pretty much anything means that on any given day I can outwork and out produce just about anybody. And the reason I do it is because I have seen so many smart people, so many people with big dreams, good ideas do absolutely nothing because they get overwhelmed. They overthink things and they never even take their first step. So when I started, I said that I was just going to go fast. I I kind of lived it. Over the past year, I've made 70, 80 videos. I have a newsletter, a website. I've made a couple of courses. But I did all of that without really questioning why I was doing it. And when things weren't going well when I wasn't seeing results I didn't stop to reassess. I just doubled down. I tried to go even faster. But the reality is if you're going fast, that can be just as problematic as going slow. You need to figure out what problem you're really solving, what your purpose is, what other people want from you. Otherwise, you're just making noise. You're creating a chaotic life for yourself, and if you're like me, you might burn yourself out. I almost did. Other than going fast, I didn't really have a plan when I started. So I just decided that no matter what idea I had, I was going to do it. Because I have no shame, because I'm not afraid to fail, I tried everything. I would sit on the floor and eat a sandwich. I would pour my heart and soul into videos and I'd sing weird songs. Time to make a video. Wait, is there anything? with the expectation and hope that eventually people would show me what they liked best. But the reality is I didn't have any underlying thing I was testing, so every day was just a new experiment. None of those experiments added towards any further learning, any more clarity on what was the most valuable thing I could be doing with my time. What people ultimately wanted from me. It was kind of a selfish act. It was fun, but if I could go back in time, I certainly wouldn't do nearly the same type of experimentation because it wasn't very productive at all. one's hard to admit because I let my ego and my pride stom me from learning things that I should have learned in the first few weeks of starting this business. I saw other people doing things but I didn't like them. I didn't want to be like them. So I just shut it all out. You know I didn't research. I didn't study the masters and the grades. I didn't take little pieces from other people instead. Every single day I had to learn everything. There was nothing to build upon because I was so focused on being unique. So here it is. Here's what I learned from those mistakes and how it would start differently if I could do it all over again. The first thing I would do is I'd sit myself down and I'd say, hey, listen, I know you want to get started. I know you want to move fast, but before you do anything we need to at least think about the intersection of these four things. you need to think about what you love to do, what it is you're good at. You need to think about what other people need and how you're going to impact some sort of a change or relief in them. You don't have to have it perfect, but every day you need to be thinking about and refining your understanding of those four things. The reason I would do that s because when I started, I really only focused on the first two. I knew what I loved. I loved to talk. I think that's pretty clear. And I knew that it was pretty good at it. But if I had spent just a little bit more time every day asking myself, what do other people need? I would make sure I wasn't just looking at what excites me or when I was good at. I'd make sure that I was doing things that were helping other people. Every idea, every business, every success is an engine for some kind of a transformation. If you can't name what that transformation is, how people are going to change, then you have to ask yourself, why would they pay attention? Why would they care? But I was starting over, I would still make sure that experimentation was at the center of everything I was doing. I would just do it a little differently. Instead of just throwing stuff in the wall, instead of hoping that the experimentation was going to lead me to clarity, I would use experimentation to further my understanding. Every day I'd wake up and I'd have a question, a thesis. I'd say, I think this particular type of person needs this type of help or support. Then I'd go out and I'd do something to see if I was right. I'd send an email. I'd make a video. I'd get on a call no matter what I did I would just be doing something to try to validate that that thing was true. And if it was, I'd doubled down. I'd try a new experiment. I'd think about the different ways I could bring that information or change to their life and see if it was better than the previous way. And if it didn't work out, which is basically how the first 10 or 11 months of my business started then I'd go back to my assumption. I'd change my thesis. I'd ask myself, do I have the right people? Do I actually understand what their needs and wants are? Because maybe I don't. And if I don't that I'm probably headed in the wrong direction. Take it for me somebody that's experimented a lot. I would trade everything I did for the first ten months of this business for one little signal every single day, positive or negative that helps me understand what I'm doing well and what other people need. It's still fun to experiment within parameters, but is so much more effective if you know why you're doing it instead of just doing it because it was an idea you had. As I said, when I started, I was so focused on being an original that I was just ignoring things that were working. I was ignoring other people's success because I didn't like the way they were doing it. I didn't like the things they were talking about or how they were maybe giving people a full sense of hope or expectations. But if I could do it all over again, I would tell myself to just get over it, look at what they're doing well. You may not like them, you may not want to be like them, you certainly shouldn't copy everything they're doing, but there are pieces of everything they do that you can learn from. There must be a reason people are buying their products and paying attention. You don't have to like them. We have to respect the work they're doing. Learn how they frame the problem and their solutions, learn how they package, how they talk about things, learn the frequency that they create new material, and take those pieces and make them your own. You can still be completely original. You can still be different. You can still do things your own way, but why invent everything? Just focus on the parts that are unique to you and build your foundation off the things that have been working for other people. The best advice I can give myself and the best advice I'll give you right now is that you have to learn what works, you have to learn the rules, and then and only then can you break them with intention. That's how you get out of the game that's how you stay relevant. That's how you avoid having to guess at everything you try to do. I wish I knew all these things a year ago. So if you're just getting started Learn from this. Use me as an example. This is what I do every day when I talk about I'm going to continue making mistakes and I got to keep sharing them. So subscribe to the channel, join the newsletter, drop a comment. We can do this together. You are the people that I want to impact change with. The only way I'm going to do that is if you tell me when my assumptions are right or wrong, when my lessons help you change your life and find success faster than you thought. And just remember, you don't have to outwork me or anybody else. You don't have to do more. All you have to do is be a little bit smarter, figure out what really matters can go forward.