Is your business growing and giving you the results you wanted when you started your entrepreneurial journey? Or are you stuck in the muck and can’t seem to get moving?

As small companies begin to grow, they get bogged down, hit challenges, and find roadblocks that hold them back. These include lack of time, energy, money, people and customers. Many business owners stay paralyzed forever and can’t let go or grow. They feel they have to make every decision and hold tight to the controls. Entrepreneurs typically go through a progression:

• Level 1: Worker, employee, manager.

• Level 2: Small-business owner: Hands-on controller and supervisor.

• Level 3: Entrepreneur: Business builder and grower.

• Level 4: Systematized and organized company.

• Level 5: Company owner: Opportunity seeker.

Bitten by the bug

Before small business owners start their companies, they’re usually competent employees or managers doing a great job for their boss. They’re responsible and accountable, they’re hard workers, and they dream about the day they can start out on their own.

Then it finally happens! They get bitten by the E Bug (E for Entrepreneur). These newly minted entrepreneurs announce they have quit their jobs to start their own companies. After the initial shock, many ask where this new entrepreneur will find the money to get started, attract customers, hire good employees, and pay the bills. Without fear, the new entrepreneur says: “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out!”

Once infected, the entrepreneur starts the company and steps up to Level 2 as a small business owner. Here, he or she is in charge of every decision: fully in control of every moving part, supervising every little item, transaction, customer, proposal, invoice, vendor and employee. The owner is the business, and without the owner, there is no business.

Getting stuck

Take Bill, for example. Bill started a successful business seven years ago. It grew quickly to $1 million in sales with 15 employees. Then it stopped growing, and his profits began to shrink. He was stuck at Level 2. When his company was smaller, it was easier for him to act as the ringleader, process the workflow, and meet with customers to keep them happy. But now he had to work harder and harder to keep the company above water.

Bill was frustrated. While he had managers and key employees, he didn’t delegate much responsibility. He still approved every estimate, purchase, shipment, order and personnel move. When he started out, he had time to find new customers, manage the work, and make sure everything went well. Now, that wasn’t happening, and customers were demanding better prices and faster service. Bill was stuck, and his old ways weren’t working.

Most entrepreneurs remain sole practitioners and stay at Level 2 forever. They grow to two men and a truck, or to eight employees at one location or to three managers and 20 employees. But when the company gets to a level where the owner can’t control everything, it stops growing.

The owners know they need to do something different: let go, hire better people, delegate, install systems, find better customers, improve services. But they don’t know what to do next.

Turning the corner

When you get stuck, you hate going to work because you have more demands and pressures than you can handle. So what should you do to get unstuck and grow your business? Here are five basic concepts:

1. Refocus on what you want. Stop and remember your original dream of owning a growing and prosperous company that achieves your vision and goals – a company that is organized and profitable, has lots of great customers, is run by an empowered management team, and gives you freedom and time to enjoy life.

2. Realize that you are a business builder. You will never reach your goals if you don’t grow. Are you too busy working to make any money? To grow, you’ve got to let go, delegate, and do what you do best. Growth starts with customers who want what you sell. And you are the best salesperson in your company. You must make time to go out and build relationships with loyal customers plus find new ones.

3. Replace yourself with systems. In order to delegate to your team, you need systems and procedures that don’t rely on you dictating and directing every move and decision on every transaction. Put your standards on paper and train your people to follow them. This is how you get beyond you as the business. Systems allow you to get out of doing and supervising the work, and create time to make building your business the top priority.

4. Hire the best. Now that you know where you are going and have systems in place, you can start to build a strong management team prepared to take your company to the next level. But remember, good people without written systems can’t do a great job without your constant input.

5. Enjoy the ride. With your company organized and growing, you can now focus on creating more opportunities for your business to prosper.

Doing it differently

As Bill’s company grew, he learned to delegate more responsibility to his managers. As they stopped relying on Bill to make decisions, they started to see the company’s potential and got excited about their new roles and responsibilities.

In order to grow, they next needed to standardize their operational systems. Now, with managers in charge, they would have to get everyone trained to do things the same way through specific systems and procedures.

As his managers began to install systems, Bill gained more time to meet with existing and potential customers and look for better ways to serve them. He began looking for opportunities to expand into new services and products. Profits began to rise, his equity and net worth grew, and free time became more available. Bill had gotten out of the muck, and his business was working.

To get unstuck, what will you do differently to get your business to deliver exactly what you want? Decide what you’ll do to make this happen. Get unstuck and out of the muck.