Bottleneck
Revenue is stuck at $28k/month. You've added clients, but every new one means more hours for you. The limit is you—not demand. The bottleneck is the constraint in your business that limits growth. For domain experts, it's often your time and capacity. Identifying your bottleneck is the first step to scaling; until you name it, you'll keep pushing on the wrong lever.
Same business, different bottleneck. A coach at 25 sessions/week has a delivery bottleneck: she is the limit. A consultant who does every proposal and every close has a sales bottleneck: only she can convert. A founder who approves every invoice and every client message has an operations bottleneck: decisions pile up on her desk. Once you name it, you can design around it—delegate delivery, document sales, automate or delegate ops.
The bottleneck doesn't disappear because you work harder. It shifts when you change what you do and what others do.
What bottlenecks look like
Delivery. You're in every session, every workshop, every report. Growth = more of your hours. Fix: productization and delegation—someone else runs the repeatable parts; you keep the high-leverage moments.
Operations. Invoicing, scheduling, client comms, internal decisions—all flow through you. Fix: documentation, SOP, and one VA or fractional ops person with a clear runbook. You free 10–12 hours by moving the repeatable work off your desk.
Sales. Only you can close. You haven't written down how you sell, so no one else can run the first conversation. Fix: scope document, clear offer, discovery script. Then someone else can run the first call; you do the close.
Find the one thing
Last week you spent 8 hours on invoicing and follow-ups. If that ran without you, you'd have 8 hours for the next bottleneck or for sales. That's your first bottleneck to break. Use constraint theory: find it, fix it, then find the next one. No need to fix everything at once.