Fractional COO Natalie Hoop breaks down the founder's bottleneck, and how a 90-day reset can free you from it.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Founders building teams / Leaders stuck in approval loops
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A clear framework for spotting the founder's bottleneck, a 90-day reset plan, and a real client case showing what's possible when you fix systems first.
Most founders blame the market when growth slows. The real ceiling is you. And until you fix that, hiring more people just adds weight to the one person who's already drowning.
Natalie Hoop is a fractional COO who helps founders break free from the founder's bottleneck — the point where business growth stops because every decision, approval, and escalation runs through one person.
In this East Trade Winds session, Natalie covers:
Real numbers from a real client: 238% sales growth in 30 days, 68% margin increase, 71% shorter sales cycle — without replacing a single team member.
Connect with Natalie:
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Natalie (00:05)
So the founder's bottleneck,
We have a lot of clients that are founders and we ourselves are founders. And what happens when growth really stalls when everything kind of depends on you?
So, here's a core, truth. a lot of times in businesses, growth isn't stalling because the market itself is shrinking. Now, of course, there's always exceptions to that, but in many cases, the market itself is still there. What happens is the founder themselves really becomes the system where everything has to rely on them, especially where some of you guys named.
That you work with founders who go from founder-led sales to team-led sales, So if you do it the way, you expand the capacity of the team. But in a lot of cases, what ends up happening is the founder is the be all end-all. And everything still has to run through the founder. And so it's really getting the idea that as founders, for us to scale and
For our clients to scale anything, it could be sales, profit, you name it, that we need to move and evolve our business and ourselves so our business can continue scaling with us and without us. The biggest thing to really think about is if you are the only one that everything runs through, then what ends up happening is your business can.
only move at the speed of you and your decisions and your time and capacity. And so what ends up happening to a lot of people is what I consider the founder burnout, where you have a team, you have people that you can, I will say, delegate or help, but because the systems aren't there, they can't perform the way you really need them to perform. So what ends up happening is you still keep
all the approvals. And then what ends up happening is you become really kind of resentful because your team can't function without you. So your workload actually increases.
every time you get a new client or project, it really just adds weight to yourself and more responsibility instead of the momentum of, my God, I got Yeah. Me too, We we've all been in this way.
then the next, which is I find the biggest opportunity for founders and business owners is letting go feels risky, You're not sure that your business would hold without you. I have a fractional client.
And we call it, and again, I apologize people find it a little morbid, but we call it what happens if she gets hit by a bus. Because if she gets hit by a bus tomorrow, there is no company. The startup is dead on water. No one knows how to do the next steps. So we have really been working on building a team and processes. So if something happens to her, she knows that her business keeps running.
And until she's ready to come back. And this is the a really scary thing for a lot of business owners is you want to let go, but you are really doubtful your business will hold up if you let go. But in the reverse, you'll also run into the problem of it will never be able to run without you if you don't start to let go at some point. So, really, what I do is I call this a transition point, And this is a natural evolution in every scaling business. It could be
Small businesses, it could be startups. I have this, I have a client who's a nonprofit and it's in her business as well. It's not a flaw in leadership. I know everyone seems to think it is, but in in ability, it's really the structure in your business. You built it one way. And now as your company is growing and scaling and evolving, your business, your structure, your foundation, everything needs to evolve with it. And a lot of business owners think.
They have time to evolve the foundation, it has to go with it.
So, this is what is the founder's bottleneck. And as I mentioned before, it's really when the business can only move as fast as you can decide, approve, or intervene. And it's really this part of how do you recognize this is happening? And what are some of your options to get out of this mode and really get to your business to the next level?
So the first is how do you recognize it, And you recognize it usually by a couple of signs. The first is suddenly you stop hitting your revenue numbers, So you were really great, everything was going wonderful with sales. And then suddenly you're missing your numbers, even though you have a team that's supposed to be able to help you with sales. The second is your profit margin. You're spending a lot more on expenses.
But you're not getting a profit because of the way your business is running. And so the expenses are increasing, but your team is not able to deliver more. So the ROI on your expenses is really off. And the last is team morale. So if you have a team, even if you have a team of other contractors, you'll notice that they become really burnt, they're starting to become snippy, they're missing deadlines.
These are some of the obstacles that you will really see in a business. So, what's the real cost, at the end of the day, there's a couple of things, The decisions slow down, your team has to wait for you on every step. The growth plateaus on the company, but the big one is you're always on. a lot of the people I work with are just exhausted. There's no mental space left for strategy or rest.
They're answering the phone at 11 o'clock at night, even though they're not a business that's open. they can't sleep, their mind is constantly racing, they are stressed out. And, a big common thing I hear a lot is I'm drowning. I am just don't know what to do. I feel stuck and I feel like I'm in quicksand and I'm just really getting overwhelmed.
The thing to think about is even if you didn't have any of these other cost issues, that alone is a huge cost. we all build businesses, our clients build businesses because they want to support a life. They want, they have a mission, they have a dream. They're not doing it to have it become like an albatross almost. and and that's the thing that really ends up happening. It just becomes exhausting.
And so you become very frustrated, your team becomes very frustrated. And the things that your company can do, you guys can't focus on because you're doing all of this like minutia stuff instead.
So, how I always like to say is usually what ends up happening is I talk to a lot of founders and business owners where they're telling me that they have a people issue. They need to replace their team. but I'm actually going to push back and say that in nine times out of 10, it's actually a process problem. So there's actually an issue that's underneath that is causing the team to not be able to deliver. If you fix the process before
Before you actually fix the people, you will find that the team itself will start performing automatically. Very rarely do you have team members that don't want to do their job successfully. They are also stuck, just like you are as a founder. if you have workflows, accountability, and decision making that is very clearly defined, then your team will be able to.
Succeed. What I find a lot of times are the team is spending a lot of their time on what I call BS tasks, and they are waiting on others or they are not aligned with other departments. So they're trying to navigate a system that isn't supportive of them. And it's really feeling like, again, no matter what they do, they can't actually hit their numbers. So
Once you really see that as a founder, that it's really your systems and your foundation, and you don't need to replace your team, which is very expensive, let's be honest, Then you will be able to build the infrastructure that allows them to succeed without you having to be involved every step of the way.
Okay. So I always like to give an example. And so this was one of my fractional clients. He really took we were talking about something else. I was actually hired to do create a new program for him. And he was really upset because the company wasn't hitting their revenue targets. He couldn't figure out how to do it. and as he said, when I was the one, only one doing sales, I never had a problem closing.
I have a team now and I cannot hit my numbers. Like, what is going on? So he really is just venting to me and telling me that he believes that he needs to let go of his team. Now I had worked with his team, I knew his team, and there wasn't anything that I saw that was a will issue, And so I just basically asked him if I could come in and just see what was going on and talk to the team and
See if maybe there was another problem. And what ended up happening was the process to sell any new clients all.
speaker-8 (09:12)
ran through him.
Natalie (09:13)
And he was so busy, So the client came in. and instead of it going that client going through a natural sales process, it basically sat in an email queue for the founder to personally review every single
Client, potential client. And as we all know, that is very labor intensive. So by the time he got to them and then went back and forth and assigned a salesperson manually and went through all of this, it turned out that the person who was going to buy just didn't buy. Or because he did pick some of these people and there wasn't a system in place to really score each individual potential lead.
The team was spending a lot of their time on clients who were never going to buy. So really, because the business couldn't scale behind the past the founder, every single thing depended on him. So I came in, I rebuilt the system, I automated everything. I worked with the sales team to make sure we really understood who the current correct ICP was and how to correctly score them.
Created email sequencing campaigns that were automatic, removed a ton of admin burden off the sales team. And in this whole thing, without adding one additional sales team member or letting go and replacing the team, they had a 238% sales growth in 30 days. They had a 68% increase in margin. And they also decreased the sales cycle by 71%.
So these are huge numbers and it wasn't anything that was earth shattering. It was just they did not have the processes for the team to be able to succeed. Of course
speaker-3 (10:58)
Yeah.
Natalie (10:59)
the sales team was thorough because they, commission based, bowing to
speaker-3 (11:02)
They want it
Natalie (11:03)
sell and it really invigorated the team to just keep rocking and rolling again.
what I always tell everyone is this is something that you really have to understand. What do you fix first? So I always tell founders and business owners as well that you should really look at doing a 90-day reset, This is something you do yourself, which again, I understand is additional workload for you. But what you want to do is really try to take a step back.
And look at your business objectively and really identify where are you the bottleneck? Where is every decision process an escalation that requires you to step in? And then once you take a look at that, I want you to really understand: does it have to be that way? Or do you only feel like it has to be that way because previously something went wrong?
you're worried that the company would fall apart if you weren't involved in it. So again, is fear making you make these decisions? Or if it's just you don't feel like you have somebody to trust? And if that's the answer, it's really a system issue. So what you want to do is then figure out how do you get that knowledge that's in your head out on paper and really be able to give your team tools to be able to figure that out.
So I always say it's really creating clarity. You need to document the base work and the essentials and really establish frameworks that work for your team. So again, you're not going to be able to do everything away. It's 90 days. But if you pick one thing that you are struggling with in your company is struggling with, and you really are able to document exactly how you do it.
who are the decision makers and the process and really explaining exactly step by step what somebody should have to do. Then again, I always do the see one, do one, teach one. It really makes a lot of difference. You will be able to then release and delegate with confidence because your structure now supports independent action without you. The other thing that's really important too is visibility,
A lot of times when founders or business owners delegate, they lose complete visibility into what happens with their team. And that's also creates that fear structure. So as you're stabilizing, make sure that there's dashboards or reporting or check-ins that allow you to still have visibility in exactly what's going on. So you can trust but verify that things are working the way you need them to work. Again, this isn't about.
Perfection. It's about creating just enough structure to break the patterns of dependency on you. 90 days is enough time to see meaningful change. You're not going to see a total transformation, but it is a clear shift from reactive to intentional. So, here, let's be honest, This is where fractionals can really come in and help you.
with these processes. So be it a fractional business owner, fractional founder, any type of company, as I said, startups, nonprofits, tech, medical teams, no matter what it is, sometimes you're just too bogged down to see what you need to see and actually be able to execute that. That's where you want to bring in a specialist. A fractional will come in.
And they will come in to help you not only build the strategy, but they will help you lead and execute the initiatives to ensure that everyone is getting to the point and you can start delegating that. Once you start getting that relief, you can release more and more and more, and your company can start scaling because you are now focused on things that only you can do as a founder or a business owner.
That's my presentation on how important it is to start evolving your business. And again, getting help where you need it so that the business works for you instead of you just working for the business.