Congratulations! Your company cracked the $ 1 million barrier. But growth has stalled, profits are shrinking (ie. inflation, 2nd China shock, etc), and complexity is ballooning. Welcome to the toughest phase in scaling a business. Here’s your brutally practical playbook for reigniting momentum.
Step 1: Face reality (again, but harder)
Companies at $1 – 10 million often stagnate due to comfort with mediocrity. The numbers still look decent, but they’re hiding serious problems.
Gather your key leaders. Display your actual growth metrics:
– Revenue growth trend
– Profit margins
– Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
– Customer lifetime value (LTV)
Declare openly: “Our current trajectory is not sustainable.”
Step 2: Cut through the noise
At this scale, complexity is a silent killer. The solution: radical simplification.
- Immediately stop marginal activities that generate little profit.
- Consolidate products or services around your highest-margin offerings.
- Streamline your leadership structure: fewer decision-makers means faster action.
- Consider laying off 10 to 20% of your workforce. That’s also a reason for your situation.
Consider widely deploying AI-driven productivity tools to pinpoint and eliminate time-wasting workflows and meetings.
Step 3: Rediscover your growth engine
To scale beyond $10 million, you must clarify exactly why customers choose you over competitors.
- Conduct structured interviews with your top 20 customers: Why exactly do they stay?
- Narrow down to the single biggest value driver they identify.
- Double down on improving that one thing relentlessly.
Understanding what is keeping you in business might be one of the greatest insights to cross the chasm.
Step 4: Scale your acquisition machine
To accelerate past $10 million, your customer acquisition must be predictable and repeatable.
- Audit your marketing ROI ruthlessly. Stop all unprofitable campaigns immediately.
- Implement AI-driven personalization at scale: highly tailored outreach via email, Social Media, or content marketing.
- Invest aggressively in the channel delivering the highest LTV-to-CAC ratio.
Your scope here is to achieve hyper-personalization efficiently and cost-effectively.
Step 5: Operationalize AI everywhere
At this revenue stage, every incremental gain in efficiency compounds significantly.
- Automate internal workflows (finance, customer support, HR) extensively with AI tools like Zendesk AI, or Deel.
- Implement an AI-driven decision-making culture: data-driven, fast, clear.
- Regularly audit operations with AI analytics to proactively detect inefficiencies.
Introduce an internal AI “copilot” (e.g., Chat GPT Enterprise) to accelerate decision-making and reduce information bottlenecks.
Step 6: Pricing for growth
Most businesses at this stage undervalue their offering due to legacy pricing.
- Immediately experiment with targeted pricing increases, tiered pricing and / or “pay as you use”
- Offer premium services to upsell existing customers.
- Monitor closely, iterate quickly, and find your optimal value-price fit.
Pricing rule number one: When in doubt, increase the price.
Step 7: Discipline in execution
Scaling from $1 – 10 million demands rigorous, disciplined execution.
- Set weekly check-ins on clear, measurable objectives.
- Focus relentlessly on revenue, profitability, customer retention, and operational efficiency.
- Empower leaders, remove friction, and relentlessly prioritize impact.
Leverage management software tools to simplify progress monitoring and ensure team alignment.
Final thoughts
Turning around a USD 1 – 10 milion company it’s about getting your hands dirty, fixing the leaky pipes, and realizing that 80% of what’s broken isn’t a strategy problem, but a distraction problem. You simplify not because it’s trendy, but because complexity compounds, and not in a good way. You operationalize because every dollar you don’t waste on chaos is a dollar (euro) you can spend on growth. And you invest where it actually matters, where $1 becomes $3 without ten meetings and a three-month pilot.
Execute like your runway depends on it (because it does), iterate before your assumptions expire, and treat the USD 10 million line not like a destination but like your company just passed kindergarten. The real work starts now. And yes, bring AI to the party because it lets you do all of the above faster, cheaper, and with fewer headaches.
