Every growing company I talk to is stuck in the same cycle. Doesn’t matter if it’s service, product, local, online. It applies to anyone and everyone.
Step 1 — You hustle. Your sales team prospects, your marketing team runs campaigns, your people grind to bring in new business.
Step 2 — It works. People buy. Revenue flows. Pipeline and sales looks great.
Step 3 — Buried. Alive. There’s so much work that the entire team stops doing step one. Everyone’s heads-down on delivery. Not enough inventory. Too many clients to service. Sales stops prospecting because they’re managing existing accounts.
Marketing pauses campaigns because there’s nobody to handle the leads anyway. Your best people are drowning in fulfillment.
You sabotage yourself on the front-end because your back-end can’t handle it. Kind of like eating something spicy. You stay away from the ultra-spicy curry because you know you can’t handle it the next morning.
Step 4 — The pipeline dries up. “Where did all the business go?”
Oops.
And then it starts all over again.
I’ve watched this happen to agencies, eCommerce companies, SaaS startups, service businesses — you name it. The industry doesn’t matter. The cycle is always the same.
And here’s the thing:
The reason your company is stuck in this loop isn’t because demand dried up…
It’s because your team physically cannot sell and deliver at the same time. Not without burning out. Not sustainably.
When everyone is wearing three hats — something gives. And it’s always the growth stuff.
Because fires feel urgent.
Growth doesn’t…until the sales are dryer than the Sahara.
And the worst part? Your best people know it’s happening. They can feel the revenue thinning out. But they’re too buried in delivery to do anything about it. So they just keep their heads down, hoping things hold together.
They won’t.
They never do.
Now, pay attention:
The only way to break this cycle is to hire.
Not next quarter. Not “once things settle down.” Because things don’t settle down — they collapse. And then you’re scrambling again.
One hire in the right place — someone to take the operational load off your revenue-generating people — can break this loop entirely.
If your company is stuck in the cycle and your best people are buried in the wrong work, let’s have a conversation about it:
Kyle Mau
