Business growing pains happen when a company outgrows the way it was built to run. Growth adds people, clients and decisions faster than one founder can hold them, so the informal habits that worked at ten people start to break. The fix is a change in the founder’s role, and someone to take the second seat.
More clients. More people. More revenue. And somehow the business is harder to run than it was two years ago. If you’re an owner in that position, you probably have a bigger team than ever, yet more of the work seems to come back to you, not less. Decisions stack up. Things that used to just work now need you to step in.
Business growing pains feel like a sign that something has gone wrong. They usually aren’t. This post explains why growth makes a founder-run business harder before it gets easier, how the founder’s role has to change, and who runs the business once it does.
What Are Business Growing Pains, Really?
The informal habits that worked at ten people
Think back to when the business was small. Everyone sat close together. The founder knew every client by name. If something went wrong, they heard about it within minutes and fixed it themselves. Nobody needed a process, because the founder was the process.
That way of working is usually why the business grew in the first place. It’s fast, it’s personal, and it keeps quality high while the company is small enough for one person to see everything.
The habits that come with it are just as informal. Priorities live in the founder’s head. People understand who does what rather than writing it down. Problems get solved in a quick hallway conversation or a late-night message. At ten people, that’s efficient. At twenty-five, the same habits leave people guessing, and the guessing turns into questions for the founder.
But that way of running a company has a ceiling. In 1972, Larry Greiner published a model in Harvard Business Review that is still widely taught. He described company growth as a series of phases, each ending in a predictable crisis. The first phase is creative, informal, and founder-driven. It ends in what Greiner called a crisis of leadership: the informal, founder-led way of managing stops working, and the company needs stronger, more deliberate management to keep growing.
That is what growing pains in business really are. Not a sign that the founder is doing it wrong, but a sign that the business has reached the end of a stage. That’s also why so much of the strain points back to one person, a pattern explained in more depth in why everything still depends on you.
Why the strain shows up before the revenue does
This stage is confusing because the numbers often look fine. Sales can be up, the client list can grow, and the team can get bigger, all while the business feels heavier every week.
The strain shows up first in the day-to-day. Work waits longer for answers. The same problems come back. Small things fall between people. The founder’s calendar fills with questions that never used to reach them. None of that shows up on a profit and loss statement until much later, which is why many owners push through it for a year or more before they recognize what’s happening.
By the time the strain shows up in the numbers, it usually looks like something else: margins slipping because work gets redone, a good employee leaving because nobody had time to support them, or a client relationship cooling because follow-up fell through the cracks. Each one gets treated as its own problem. Underneath, they often share the same cause.
Why Does Growth Make the Business Harder, Not Easier?
More people means more handoffs
Every new hire and every new client adds something: more handoffs, more questions, and more decisions.
With five people, there are only a few handoffs to get wrong. Add ten more, and handoffs and conversations multiply. Each one is a place where work can stall, wait, or come back to the founder.
A client asks a question the account manager can’t answer, so it waits. A new hire isn’t sure who approves their work, so they ask the person at the top. A project crosses from one team to another and loses a detail on the way. Multiply that by every person on the team, and the business starts to feel slower even as it gets bigger.
Growth also adds layers. The first manager gets hired, and now some information flows through them, and some still flows straight to the founder. Two people end up doing the same task because nobody said who owned it. A client gets two different answers from two different people. None of this means the team is weak. It means the way work moves hasn’t caught up with how many people are moving it. When growth comes quickly, the strain compounds, which is why fast growth so often brings disorder.
Decisions multiply, but the decision-maker doesn’t
In a founder-run business, most of those handoffs and questions land in one place. The decisions multiply, but the decision-maker doesn’t. There is still one founder, with one calendar.
That is one of the central challenges of scaling a business. It isn’t the workload on its own. The whole company still runs through one person’s head and one person’s day. Every new person adds to that one point, so the business grows while the founder’s days get worse.
It also helps explain why so few companies get much bigger. In the Census Bureau’s 2021 Annual Business Survey, as reported by Pew Research Center, 76% of US employer firms had fewer than 20 employees: 49% had one to four, and 27% had five to 19. The data doesn’t say why firms stay that size. It does show that growing past 20 people is the exception, not the rule. A founder feeling the strain of growth is standing at a line most companies never cross.
How Does the Founder’s Role Have to Change as the Business Grows?
From doing the work to leading the business
In the early years, the founder’s job is to do the work: sell it, deliver it, fix it, and decide everything. That’s what gets the business moving.
As the business grows, the job changes. The founder’s role becomes leading the business, not running every part of it. That shift is the heart of getting through this stage, and most founders resist it the longest because doing the work is what they’re good at and what built the company.
The resistance makes sense. For years, stepping in has been the fastest way to fix things. But every hour spent running the day-to-day is an hour not spent on the work only the founder can do, and that work is what the next stage of the business depends on.
Leading looks different from running. A founder who is running the business spends the week answering questions, approving work, and solving whatever lands on the desk. A founder who is leading it spends more of the week looking ahead: where the business is going over the next few years, which clients and partnerships matter most, and which bets are worth making. The first keeps today working. The second decides whether next year is any easier than this one.
What you keep, and what you have to let someone else carry
Some things stay with the founder. The vision and where the company is going. The key relationships with the biggest clients and partners. The few big decisions that only the founder should make. That work suffers most when the founder’s calendar is full of everything else.
The day-to-day changes: running the team, keeping projects on track, holding people to their commitments, and solving the problems that come up every week. That work needs a different owner. Not because the founder can’t do it, but because nobody can do it and lead the business at the same time.
Letting go of that work is rarely one big handover. It usually happens area by area, starting with the day-to-day parts that interrupt the founder most often. What matters is the direction: each month, a little more of the running of the business sits with someone else, and a little more of the founder’s week goes to leading it.
This is also why the practical tactics for freeing up time only last if the role itself changes. The steps for making room while you’re still doing it all buy the first hours back. A changed role is what keeps them.
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Who Runs the Business While You Lead It?
The second seat every growing business needs
Once the founder steps back from the day-to-day, someone has to step in. Every growing business needs a second seat: a second-in-command who owns operations and turns the founder’s vision into an executable plan.
That person holds the team accountable to its commitments. They make the day-to-day calls, so the team isn’t lined up outside the founder’s door for every answer. They keep the work moving between people, so fewer things fall through the gaps that growth creates.
You can fill the second seat in different ways. Some founders promote someone from inside the business. Some hire a full-time operations leader. The right answer depends on the business’s size, budget, and whether the right person is already on the team.
What matters more than the title is the scope. The second seat only works if the person in it truly owns operations and has the authority to make calls without checking back every time. A second-in-command who still has to run every decision past the founder is an assistant, not a second seat, and the founder’s calendar stays exactly as full as it was.
Where a fractional COO fits
For many founder-led businesses at this stage, the practical option is a fractional COO: an experienced operator who works inside the business part of each week as the founder’s second-in-command.
The COO Solution is a fractional COO firm with a bench of EOS®-trained operators who embed in founder-led businesses. The operator takes ownership of day-to-day operations, so the founder can step back into leading. The goal is a business that runs without you day-to-day, while the founder keeps the vision and makes the biggest calls.
The firm’s fractional COO services explain how operators match with a business. For the numbers behind the decision, the cost-benefit analysis of a fractional COO breaks down costs and returns.
Why growing pains are a signal, not a failure
Growing pains aren’t a problem to push through. They’re a signal. The business has outgrown the way it was built to run, and it needs a different version of its founder.
Most founders read the strain as a reason to work harder. They add hours and take back more decisions. But working harder in the old role only keeps them stuck. The founders who get through this stage don’t do more. They change what they do: they lead the business, and they let someone else run it.
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Questions We’re Asked About Business Growing Pains
What are business growing pains?
Business growing pains are the strain that appears when a company outgrows the informal, founder-centered way it was built to run. More people, clients, and decisions arrive faster than one founder can handle, so handoffs slip and work piles up.
What are common company growing pains?
Common company growing pains include missed handoffs, slower decisions, recurring problems, and a team that waits for the owner before acting. Many owners also find they have less time than before, even with a bigger team.
Are growing pains a sign something is wrong with my business?
No. Larry Greiner’s widely used growth model describes them as a predictable stage that most growing companies reach. They signal that the structure needs to change, not that the business is failing.
At what size do businesses usually hit growing pains?
There is no fixed number. The strain usually shows up when the founder can no longer see and decide everything personally. In practice, many owners feel it somewhere between 10 and 20 people.
How does the founder’s role change as a business grows?
The founder moves from doing and deciding everything to leading: setting the vision, holding the key relationships, and making the biggest calls. Someone else takes ownership of the day-to-day operations.
Who should run operations as a business grows?
Some owners promote from within or hire a full-time operations leader. Many founder-led businesses start with a fractional COO, an experienced second-in-command who works part-time in the business.
Full Transcript
[00:03] Bigger but harder. More clients, more people, more revenue. And somehow the business is harder to run than it was just two years ago. You have a bigger team, but more of it comes back to you, not less. Decisions stack up. Things that used to just work now need you to step in. If that’s where you are, I want you to hear this first. Nothing is wrong with you and nothing is wrong with your business. Business growing pains happen when a company outgrows the way it was built to run. Growth adds people, clients and decisions faster than one founder can handle. So the normal habits that worked with 10 people start to break.
[01:01] The fix is a change in the founder’s role, your part in the business and someone to take that second seat. Let’s walk through that. So what are business growing pains really? Think back to when the business was small. Everyone sat close together. You knew every clientby name. If something went wrong, you heard about it in the first five minutes and fixed it yourself. Nobody needed a process because you were the process. But that way of running a business has a ceiling. In 1972, Larry Greiner published a model in Harvard Business Review that they still teach today. He described growth as a series of stages, each one ending in a predictable crisis. And the first crisis hits right where most founder led businesses are now.
[02:13] The informal founder driven way of running things stops working. And the company needs a different kind of management to keep going. That’s what growing pains are. Not a sign that you’re doing it wrong. It’s a sign that you’ve reached the end of a stage. Here’s the confusing part. The strain shows up before the revenue tells you that anything is off. Sales can be up while the business feels heavier every single week. Why does growth make the business harder, not easier? Because every new hire and every new client adds something. More handoffs, more questions, more decisions. With just five people, you had only a few handoffs to get wrong. Add 10 more and handoffs and conversations multiply.
[03:17] Each one is a place where work can stall or wait or come back to you. A client asks a question your account manager can’t answer, so it waits for you. A new hire isn’t sure who approves their work, so they ask you now multiply that by every person on the team. And in a founder-led business, that’s where most of it lands. The decisions multiply, but the decision maker does not. There’s still only one of you. That’s the real challenge of a scaling business. It isn’t the workload. The whole company still runs through one person’s head and one person’s calendar. Most businesses never get through this stage. Census data reported by Pew Research center shows that about three out of four US employer firms have fewer than 20 employees. Growing past that point is the exception, not the rule.
[04:20] And so if you’re feeling the strain, you’re at the line most companies never cross. So how does the founder’s role actually have to change as the business grows? In the early years, you did the work, sell it, deliver it, fix it, decide everything. That’s what got the business moving and as the business grows, the job changes. Your job becomes leading the business, not running every single part of it. Some things stay with you. The vision, where the company is going. I use something I call the 1031 North Star. Where the business is headed in 10 years, what it looks like in three years, and what has to happen this year. I measure every operational decision against it. The key relationships, your biggest clients and partners, and the big decisions only you should make. That’s the work that suffers most.
[05:29] When your calendar is full of everything else, what changes is the day to day. Running the team, keeping projects on track, solving the problems that come up every single week that needs a different owner. Not because you can’t do it and lead the company at the same time. I had to make this shift myself. When the COO solution crossed 7 figures in the first 11 months. I couldn’t keep selling, delivering and running the team all at once. I had to decide what only I should do and let someone else own the day to day. And if I’m being honest, it was completely uncomfortable for me and it was the only way to keep growing. And in that last video I shared, we talked about making room while you’re still doing it all that room only lasts if you are redo.
[06:27] That room only lasts if your role actually changes. So you might be asking the question, well, who runs the business while you lead it? Every growing business needs a second seat. A trusted second in command who owns operations and turns your vision into a plan the team can execute. That person holds the team accountable. They make the day to day calls so the team isn’t lined up outside your door for every answer. And some founders promote someone from inside, some hire full time. But for many founder led businesses at this stage, the practical answer is a Fractional COO, an experienced operator who works inside your business part of the week as your second-in-command. That’s what we do here at the COO Solution. We place experienced operators in founder led businesses so the founder can step back into leadership.
[07:35] As an example, Larry Dix runs Apex Trusts in redo for example, Larry Dix runs Apex Trust in Virginia. A client of ours and his business had been flat for years, but once he had a second in command running the day to day running the operations, the company grew 45%. And Larry will tell you firsthand that what his COO gets done in 10 hours a week beats 40 of his own. and there’s a mindset shift that’s needed here. And here’s what I want you to take from this. Growing pains aren’t a problem to push through. They are a signal the business has outgrown the way it was built to run. And it’s asking for a different version of you. And most founders read the strain as a reason to work harder. More nights, more weekends.
[08:39] They add hours and take back more decisions. But working harder in the old role just keeps you stuck. The founders who get through this stage don’t do more. They change what they do. They do less better. More thinking, less doing. They lead the business and they let someone else run it. So what’s your next step as you are considering this? If this sounds like your business, start here. Take our free quiz at thecoosolution.com. It takes just a few minutes and shows you what kind of operational support your business needs right now. Or skip the line and schedule a discovery call with me and we’ll walk through your business situation currently and discuss what happens next. Listen, you bring division, we run the operations that make it real. This is the COO Solution.
