Why Most Growing Businesses Hit the Wall (And How to Break Through)
The Australian Productivity Commission reveals a startling truth: most businesses that close aren't financial failures—they're solvent operations shutting down for reasons unrelated to money. As a business coach working with growth-stage companies, I know this pattern.
Take Sarah, a driven entrepreneur whose unique offering caught fire in the market. Her vision was bold — go national and ride the wave. But rapid growth created a perfect storm: cashflow pressure, overwhelmed leaders, and mounting daily frustrations. Sound familiar?
The problem isn't the growth itself—it's that the skills that made you profitable won't automatically make you scalable.
The Three Essential Scaling Strategies
When businesses hit growth walls, they need to focus on three critical areas:
Platform: Strengthen your foundation to support the next level. Your current systems, processes, and structure must evolve before you can scale effectively.
Growth: Extend your market reach strategically. This isn't just about doing more—it's about doing different.
Leadership: Build people capability and capacity. Your team needs to grow with your ambitions.
Most leaders try to power through growth challenges using their work-harder mindset. But advanced growth requires different skills: clear market positioning, expanded distribution channels, efficient functional structures, robust capability planning, and succession strategies.
The key insight? Better understanding leads to better decisions, which creates fewer problems down the road. Whether you're feeling frantic, stressed, excited, or frustrated about your business, recognising where you are in the growth journey is the first step to breaking through to the next stage.
Need Support?
We specialise in helping business owners, leaders & teams achieve intentional, sustainable and abundant growth. Reach out to founder Dan (dan@thryve.net.au) to start a conversation.
