The Highest Capacity Managers…
Dig Deeper
Okay, it’s not strictly true that grinding isn’t scalable. You can bully a company into growing by personally expanding your effort and hours – but only to a point. We met the owner of an HVAC contractor with a $12M EBITDA who still personally assigned every crew, every morning. It can work, but only if you’re personally super high capacity and never sleep. And it only works as long as you do.
And, the reality is that small business is a grind. Take this comment from one of our operators: “Why do I keep lulling myself into thinking ‘With all these fires put out today, tomorrow I can finally focus on X & Y?’” Spoiler: Fires spread. Fires start spontaneously. And in business, there will always be another fire. That’s the trap of the grind – and why you’ll always hit a ceiling (even if it’s high) if you haven’t put measures in place to scale.
— From Ceilings, Scaling & the Death of a Hustler
