Q. I read your book, Let Go to Grow. I'd like to grow my company into what you call a fully developed midsize business -one where the business effectively runs itself on a day-to-day basis so that I can focus on more strategic issues. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time. Are there some businesses that just can't get to this point? A. First, thank you very much for reading our book. We hope you found it to be helpful.The short answer to your question is, yes, there are some situations where it is very difficult or even impossible to grow a company into a fully evolved midsize structure. Such companies are not easily scalable. Those businesses tend to have one or more of three characteristics.1. The owner has a unique skill set - If the owner's skill set is so unique that it would be difficult to hire another person to do the primary work of the business, the enterprise is not scalable. For example, it would have been essentially impossible for Rembrandt to have scaled his business. No one else had his skills. As a painter, Rembrandt was stuck in what we call a micro business structure-one where the owner does the primary work of the enterprise. The same could be said of great composers like Beethoven, Brahms, or Bach. Having phenomenal skills in a particular area like these masters is an amazing gift, but it will make your enterprise almost impossible to scale.
