Happy New Year!

I hope you were able to enjoy the holiday season and find at least a little time to rest and recharge.

Before I get into today's topic, I want to share a quick note that's been top of mind as I've talked with business owners coming out of the holiday season. For many, this time of year highlights just how hard it is to fully step away from the business. Coverage may have fallen apart, decisions still landed on your plate, or issues were escalated that employees should have been able to handle on their own. Instead of feeling rested, you may have realized how reactive things still are.

As we head into the new year, a lot of companies are thinking about these issues, and about growing. I'll be spending some time on social media, and specifically in my group, The Operational Exchange, sharing quick operational insights around what the holidays tend to expose, such as gaps in coverage, unclear ownership, systems that rely too heavily on you, and teams that aren't fully empowered yet.

All of that leads directly into today's focus: Scaling, or - how not to scale.

Are you adding more clients before your operations can actually support them?

Growth is exciting. More interest, more leads, more revenue... it can feel like proof that what you're doing is working. But growth without operational capacity doesn't create momentum, it creates strain. When your team is overwhelmed, your clients are frustrated, and no one feels successful, that's not scaling. That's stress multiplying.

Scaling doesn't fail because of ambition. It fails because of ignored capacity.

One of the clearest signs that a business has outgrown its operations is when client demand keeps increasing, but the team's ability to respond does not. Intake calendars fill up months in advance, clients wait weeks or months for follow-ups, and frustration lands squarely on employees who are doing their best with limited time and resources.

When growth starts happening, businesses often respond by trying to "move people through" faster; adding more intake calls, pulling other team members in to help temporarily, or continuing to accept new clients despite growing backlogs. On paper, it looks like momentum. In reality, it creates a widening gap between what's being promised and what the team can actually deliver.

The cost shows up quickly: overwhelmed employees, unhappy clients, and systems strained well past their limits. Growth may still be happening, but it's no longer sustainable and everyone feels the weight of it.

Tip: How Not to Scale (and What to Do Instead)

How not to scale your business:

• Bringing in new clients faster than you can serve existing ones
• Treating hiring as a future fix instead of a current requirement
• Creating a role (like intake) that feeds demand without ensuring delivery capacity
• Letting critical work live on "lists" that nobody has time to work on, or without clear ownership
• Solving bottlenecks by asking already-busy people to "just help a little more"

What to do instead:

• Pause or pace intake until service capacity catches up
• Define capacity clearly. How many clients can each role actually support?
• Align intake with operations - new clients should only come in as fast as they can be assigned and served
• Fix the system before adding volume, not after
• Assign ownership to every critical queue, list, or backlog to a person who is actually able to handle the work

Scaling isn't about how many clients you can sign. It's about how many clients you can support well, consistently, and without burning out your team.

Update:

The end of the year has been all about uncovering what the holidays, and last year, exposed including systems that worked until they didn't. I've been spending time helping clients slow down just enough to assess what's actually sustainable before pushing forward again.

If growth has started to feel heavy instead of exciting, that usually a signal, not a failure, and it's one you need to listen to.

As always, if you're unsure whether your operations can support your next phase of growth, or if you just need help with a reset to gain clarity before moving forward in 2026, let's chat.

What specific operational challenges are you currently facing that you'd love to see covered in future newsletters? Reply to this email with your questions.