Caliber of staff

At this stage of growth, you begin to need more experienced staff to manage teams and bring in workflows and practices that they have seen work well elsewhere. In other words, you need more senior people.Except you can’t afford the really experienced ones yet. 

Up to the first million, you were training great people you worked well with to deliver what was in your head. Now, you need to hire people with expertise. They are expensive. Perhaps you need to do without a few junior staff. Or sacrifice your own salary. Or give away shares.

This is where it gets seriously frustrating. It’s not so much that you come unstuck, it’s the opposite. You grind to a halt. You stall. Your business just stops growing.