Hello,
This week, I spoke to a founder running a £2.5m business. On paper, they’d made it. In reality, they felt trapped.
“I feel like I’ve built a cage, not a company.”
That line stuck with me because it’s not unusual.
Every service business hits a ceiling, the hidden limit that stalls growth, drains energy, and makes founders feel boxed in by their own success. Bain research shows 70% of stalled growth comes from internal bottlenecks, not the market.
The enemy isn’t outside. It’s inside.
From what I’ve seen, ceilings show up in four places, each with a tell:
The mistake most founders make? Trying to smash through all four at once. The smarter play is to find the one pressing hardest, and fix that first.
When I was scaling my own agency, we hit the Time Ceiling first. I was still in every client call, every proposal, every problem. The business was growing, but I was shrinking.
It wasn’t until we added the right leadership layer that growth stopped feeling like suffocation. That single move unlocked everything else: cash flow, client wins, and eventually, a clean exit. Within 12 months, revenue doubled, and margins lifted by 5 points, because I wasn’t the choke point anymore.
Your job isn’t to avoid ceilings. It’s to spot the cracks early and choose the right one to tackle. Growth isn’t about smashing everything at once. It’s about sequence.
So let me ask: which ceiling is pressing hardest right now, Time, Team, Tech, or Capital? Write it down. Naming it is the first step to move from firefighting to fixing.
Most founders try to do everything at once. The best founders know momentum is about sequence, not speed.
If you follow me on my social platforms, you’ll have seen this sobering stat: only 4% of agency founders ever sell their business.
The rest hit a ceiling they can’t break through alone.
The agency model’s broken and it’s time to fix it.
That’s why we built Unusual Group.
At Unusual Group, we’re helping our first partners identify and break their ceilings. The most common one? Founder time. No surprise there. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share what we’re learning from the trenches.
See you next week,
Writer, The Success Method
P.S. I’d love to hear from you. Which ceiling is pressing down hardest right now? Hit reply and let me know. I’ll share some of the most common patterns I hear back in a future issue.
%20(1).webp)
.jpg)
