The Hidden Bottleneck That Makes Scaling Feel Exhausting (It’s Not Time)

Business growth. The ravenous beast.

Should we be so lucky … our businesses reach a point where there’s more work than our current workforce can handle. But in the run-up to this point, it’s never so simple as thinking “Things are going so well, I’d better hire someone to help take on the extra work!”

More realistically, it’s impressed upon you that in spite of what we’re told, you are not the master of your fate or the captain of your soul. You’re not even the master of your nights and weekends. Your time is gone, and your grand hope is that if you hire someone you’ll return to some semblance of normal. Maybe.

Maybe you’ll get some time back.

Maybe.

And yet … your time, or lack thereof, isn’t the real problem. It’s a symptom.

In the corporate world, most companies are more than happy to take and take and take until you have no more to give. You’re the only one defending your time, and they are a ravenous beast that will consume all you’re willing to give.

In your firm it’s very similar, only you’ve trained yourself to believe that the business lives and dies by how much of yourself you feed the beast. The more clients you serve, the more employees you bring on, the more structure you create, the more it consumes. Which honestly seems counterintuitive. You hired people to solve this problem and it didn’t go away.

Now, you may recall an in depth conversation in December about delegation. At this point, in stage 6, you’re confidently handing off tasks … and while that helps, you’re still not where you want to be. Tasks are relatively easy to delegate, but decisions often stay with the owner.

Your problem didn’t go away because you still own the decisions, and decisions continued to compound with every attempt to manage your growth.

Decision authority.

At Apple, decision authority was pushed upward. If there was a disagreement on prioritization, the managers got involved. If they hadn’t pre-emptively been given a specific priority list, they escalated to their manager. It kept going in that manner until the decision reached the person who was responsible for both parties involved. This was often a director, vice president, or SVP.

You don’t run Apple, and frankly you don’t want to run your business like Apple.

For true scalability you want to push decisions down and away from yourself. If your employees are equipped to make important decisions, and their decisions are trusted and supported … you might be surprised by what else improves. Priority calls, client edge-cases, day-to-day “how should we handle this?” You name it.

Imagine a world where your people were coached, trusted, and empowered to make decisions and take full responsibility for their role and contributions.

Let’s be clear though. You didn’t wind up where you’re at because you’re an egomaniac, or because you’re flawed in some way. You and your business are the result of the best practices that built your current success. Essentially, what got you here won’t get you there … your business needs to evolve. You need to evolve.

Your role shifts from decision maker to mentor and leader. Hiring takes on a new dimension where you’re screening applicants for more than their ability to complete tasks. Perhaps more important now is their coachability and their ability to learn. When employees make poor decisions, it’s no longer about punishing them and rectifying the mistake.

It’s not even a mistake. It’s a learning opportunity.

How can you teach them to make better decisions in the future? What do they need to remedy their misstep and succeed in the future?

This is your job now.

Diagnosis

In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy, you might have a decision-making problem if:

• Your calendar fills faster as you grow
• Your team waits instead of making a decision and moving
• Small issues escalate upward
• You feel needed in everything, even minor calls
• Time off creates anxiety, not relief

If any of those sound familiar, we may have identified your problem, or an element of it at very least.

Knowing is half the battle. And now that you know, you can start to shift how you think about your role within the business. You are now an architect (remember?). A mentor and coach. A trusted confidante and consultant. You are not the escalation path nor are you Caesar at the gates with thumb outstretched.

You need to design the structure and the systems to support your employees and the authority they will possess. From clear prioritization, to loose frameworks and guidance so their decisions align with the business’s goals and values.

When your delegation includes decision authority, your business stops depending on your personal availability and starts building real capacity.

At this stage, growth doesn’t slow down because there’s too much work to do.
It slows down because every meaningful decision still needs you.

That’s not a failure of delegation. It’s a signal that your role has changed.

In Stage 6, scalability comes from designing how decisions are made, not from personally making more of them yourself. Your job is no longer to be the fastest or smartest answer in the room. It’s to create the conditions where good decisions happen without you.

When decision authority is clear, time off becomes possible. Momentum doesn’t depend on your availability. And the business begins to function as something more durable than your calendar.

That’s what scalability actually looks like.

And if growth still feels exhausting, the most important question isn’t how much more help you need.

It’s which decisions still require you, and why.