You’re stuck at $5–10M because you can’t afford who you actually need yet
Let’s say the quiet part out loud.
If you’re doing $5–10M in revenue, you do not yet have the budget for:
The VP of Growth who’s done $50M+
The Head of Ops who’s scaled a complex supply chain
The agency partner who can responsibly deploy seven figures a year
And pretending you do is usually what keeps you stuck.
This is the awkward middle. Too big to wing it. Too small to buy your way out.
The brands that break through don’t magically find more money. They get more leverage out of what they already have.
Here are 5 less obvious, actually actionable moves that work in this stage.
1. Rent outcomes, not resumes
Stop hiring or paying for people. Start paying for very specific outcomes.
Instead of:
“We need a Head of Growth”
“We need a better agency”
Do this:
Pay someone to get one channel from breakeven to profitable
Pay someone to redesign one broken system end to end
Pay someone to build the playbook you can reuse for the next 24 months
Examples:
A fractional retention lead whose only job is lifting LTV by 20%
A short engagement with an ops killer to fix forecasting and inventory logic
A paid audit that turns into a 90-day execution roadmap
You don’t need leaders yet. You need wins you can stack.
2. Kill the idea that “we’ll hire once we grow”
This mindset is backwards.
At $5–10M, your constraint isn’t revenue. It’s decision velocity.
If you say:
“We’ll hire once revenue supports it”
What you’re really saying is:
“We’re okay being slower than our competitors”
Instead:
Hire one scary person earlier than feels comfortable
Offset the risk by cutting three “nice to have” expenses
Make their mandate painfully narrow and measurable
One strong hire in the right seat beats five average contributors every time at this stage.
3. Build systems that replace judgment, not effort
Most teams at this level are overworked and under-systemized.
The mistake:
Hiring more people to do more thinking.
The fix:
Turning decisions into rules.
Examples:
Paid spend scales based on contribution margin, not vibes
Inventory buys triggered by weeks of cover, not gut feel
Campaign calendars locked 30 days out so nothing is reactive
Every decision you don’t have to debate is speed you get back.
Speed is how small teams beat bigger ones.
4. Pick one growth lever and make it embarrassingly deep
Most $5–10M brands are spread thin:
A little paid
A little influencer
A little email
A little retail
A little everything
That feels diversified. It’s actually diluted.
The brands that break through:
Pick one lever
Go uncomfortably deep
Build process, tooling, and talent around it
Not forever. Just long enough to create real momentum.
Depth beats diversification at this stage.
5. Stop outsourcing learning
Agencies are great at execution. They are terrible at teaching by default.
If you are not getting smarter every month, you are paying a tax.
Fix this by:
Requiring documented playbooks from every partner
Forcing post-mortems on wins and losses
Bringing strategy in-house even if execution stays outsourced
The goal is not dependency.
The goal is internal leverage.
The brands that win use agencies to move faster, not to think for them.
The real truth
Breaking through $10M isn’t about doing more.
It’s about doing fewer things with more force.
You don’t need a bigger team.
You need clearer bets.
Tighter systems.
And paid accountability tied to outcomes.
Do that, and the ceiling stops being a ceiling.
It becomes a speed bump.
PS from Bylders
If you’re stuck in the $5–10M range and email is not your #1 revenue driver yet, this is a no-brainer.
We’ll run your email program for 30 days.
Flows, campaigns, optimization, execution.
No fluff. No long-term contract.
If we don’t make you more money than you’re currently making from email, you get 100% of your money back.
That’s it.