Letting Go to Grow - Why SME Founders Get Stuck and What To Do About It

Let’s be honest: nobody builds a business by letting go.

You survived the startup trenches by doing it all — sales, strategy, people, clients. It was your energy, tenacity and personal grit that brought in your first million.

But here’s the paradox:

The skills that got you to £1M won't get you to £10M.

In fact, they might be the very thing holding you — and your business — back.

Let’s breakdown what it really means to “let go to grow.”

The Founder Bottleneck

At some point, your business outgrows the founder-led model. The excitement of wearing all the hats starts to feel like weight on your shoulders:

• You’re in too many meetings.

• You're the decision-maker for everything and everyone.

• Nobody moves forward without your go-ahead.

This bottlenecks the business and burns out the founder. Some tell-tale signs:

• You haven’t taken a full week off in 18 months.

• Your team lacks accountability, because they wait for your input.

• Scaling feels less like freedom, more like firefighting.

If that feels familiar, you aren’t broken — the model is.

Three Common Failure Points

Around the £1–3M stage, one of three things often happens:

1. Founder burnout → Health, relationships and clarity wavers.

2. Growth plateaus → Customers churn, team morale dips.

3. The business starts to fail → Too dependent on you, not resilient or systemised.

This is what I call “The Messy Middle” — that painful phase between start-up and scale-up that demands a different version of you as a leader.

So what does “letting go” really mean?

It means:

• Moving from working in the business to on the business.

• Shifting from tactical to strategic.

• Letting go of activity that you can delegate to others

Letting go is psychological before it’s practical.

That’s why I support founders in more than just “getting systems” — I help them embrace the mindset and build the infrastructure that makes sustainable growth possible.

Most of my clients aren’t doing anything wrong — they’ve reached a point where what used to drive momentum now quietly caps their potential.

If you’re ready to scale — and let go —

book a free discovery call to find out how I can help.