By Nate Nisley

Success is a journey, not a destination.

It was 4:00 in the morning. The order was almost done. He was just getting the last bits together and he looks at the clock. 4:00. Oh no, the workers are going to come pretty soon. They're going to see me in the same clothes they did yesterday. So he drops his tools, runs to the house, showers, eats a little breakfast, and puts on a new set of clothes. Then he comes running back out to the shop just in time to see his workers coming in the door. He greets them with a “Good morning.”

They finished the order; they got it shipped out that day, which was the due date. He had committed never to be late on an order again. And this is what it sometimes took, he told himself. Sometimes you have to pull an all-nighter. He shipped the order, the order got there in time, and then he got the call. Something's wrong with the order. Actually, the whole order is wrong.

He had just spent the whole night working on an order that was wrong.

Something had to change. Something had to change in his business. He was burned out. He was frustrated. He decided that business was no longer for him. The sad day came. Another Anabaptist business died—the result of someone hitting the ceiling and not knowing how to break through that ceiling, how to go to the next level, how to delegate some things, how to simplify some things, and how to get the right structure in place so that he doesn't have to do all this by himself.

Each Level Has a Ceiling

There are many stages in business. There's a start-up stage. This is kind of the run-run-run stage. It's where you're on the treadmill and you just go, go, go. You're the chief cook, you're the bottle washer. You're doing it all.

At some point, you have to change your thinking a little bit. You have to change your doing. You realize you can't do it all. You have to delegate some things. Then there's kind of this next stage where you're managing people. It's more of the management side. You're still responsible for everything, but you have a couple of Gophers. They're like a couple of dogs. You throw a stick or a task out there, they do the task and they come running back and say, “What's next?” You throw a task out again. They do it, come back again and say, “What's next?”

At some point, you have to elevate to the next level where you're in the manager stage—you have to train other managers so you can step out of that. Your business has to keep breaking through that ceiling and going to the next level. Different thinking, different doing, different set of skills—or you'll become a statistic.

Stages of Business

I talked a little bit about some of the stages of business, hitting the ceiling, and how to break through those. Now, we’ll talk about five things leaders do to break through those ceilings.

Everybody agrees on the stages of business. Dave Ramsey calls it “The Five Stages of Business.” At the start-up stage, you're one and all—you do it all. Next, there's more of the survival stage where you're kind of going, but you have to train someone else in. Then at some point it gets a little more stable. Finally, there is the growth stage and the maturity stage.

Leonard Meador had a similar thing: start-up, rapid growth, maturity, and decline. Walt Brown has a thing where he says every time you double your employees, it goes into another stage where you're hitting that ceiling. And every time you go from one stage to the next, you have to change your thinking to break through that ceiling.

What Is a Ceiling?

A ceiling is when we're flying along in business, everything seems great—and all of a sudden we just kind of hit a wall. We get burned out. We get frustrated. Three things happen when we hit a ceiling: Some of us break through those ceilings kind of naturally. We're natural delegators. We're natural simplifiers. We are able to predict and systemize things and we just break through that ceiling and keep on going.

Some businesses flatline. They'll start up a business and grow it. Maybe it's a one-man shop—and there's nothing wrong with one-man shops. My grandpa had a nice little one-man shop that did repairs. He supported his family, he supported the church, he was in the ministry, he had a place to work, and he had things to do. It was a perfect little one-man shop. He actually wasn't hitting the ceiling. He wasn't burned out or frustrated. He was just a one-man shop, and he loved what he did and did what he loved. So he flatlined at that one person. Sometimes they hire four or five people and as long as I can manage everything, I flatline.

And then sometimes, like the story I said earlier, the business starts up and they come to this point where they’re frustrated, they're burned out and they say, “Business is not for me.” Everyone hits that ceiling. They either break through, flatline, or fail.

There are different departments. As businesses get larger, sometimes the whole company hits the ceiling. Sometimes it's a department—maybe the sales department hits the ceiling and you know, “We could do twice as many operations if the sales guys would just do their job.” Sometimes it's an individual within the company. Maybe it's me that's holding the whole thing back. I just need to be aware of that. Be aware of where I am. What capacity do I have? Am I using the tools? Am I keeping things simple? Am I delegating the things that I'm not good at? Am I doing good at predicting? Am I holding this whole thing back?

The Need for Growth

It's natural. Growth is natural, and we need to grow. And some people are going to kill me for this. Maybe not kill me, but they're going to think I'm saying the wrong thing. We need growth. And I'm not saying growth for growth's sake, but if we're not growing, we're dying. John Henry Newman says, “Growth is the only evidence of life. You are green and growing or you are ripe and rotting.”

If I look back two years—I had a manufacturing facility, I had CNC routers, I had employees. Now I'm working in a mini barn. That's my office. One employee in Boon Books, but pretty much doing it all myself. Is that growth? I feel like I've grown a lot in the last couple years. I've read about 50 books. I've done a lot of studying. I've done all that, but externally I have downsized. But I feel like I've grown internally.

Here's a unique saying: “Growth is not just about what you accomplish in your life. It is about what you do to inspire others.” Have you ever thought about the growth you're giving to your people, your employees, your family, your community—without growing your business?

Another thing is, the only way to grow is to let go of your fears. As long as you have your fears—as long as we're hanging on to that—we're not going to grow.

So what are the leadership abilities? What do we need to do to grow? What do we need to do to break through those ceilings? What do we need to do to get unstuck when we're stuck in our business and kind of just grinding wheels? When we're frustrated and we don't have enough time?

The Five Leadership Abilities coming next month.