When You’re the Business
When you first start out, you are the business. You’re the sales rep, the marketer, the finance department, the warehouse team and — in our case at The Cheeky Panda — occasionally the delivery driver as well. In those early days, you know everything that’s happening because you’re doing most of it yourself. You know the customer, the numbers, the product, the process. Nothing escapes your radar.
The Founder’s Dilemma
But then the business grows. What worked at six people doesn’t work at 36. The sheer volume of decisions, problems, and opportunities becomes unmanageable if you try to do it all yourself. And this is where the founder’s dilemma kicks in: do you stay hands-on and risk becoming overwhelmed, or do you step back and risk losing control?
Hiring the Right Team
When Julie and I started The Cheeky Panda, we were running at 100 miles an hour. We were pitching retailers, building the supply chain, sorting marketing, and keeping an eye on the finances — all at the same time. But very quickly we realised we couldn’t do everything. If we wanted to scale, we needed to bring in people who were better than us at their specific functions.
Hiring the right people isn’t just about CVs and skills. It’s about chemistry, values, and whether they can thrive in the culture you’re building. Here
Clear Direction is Everything
Delegation without direction is abdication. Your team isn’t psychic; they need to know what you expect. That means setting the vision, the outcomes, and the standards.
For example, when we first pushed into the US market, I made it crystal clear what success looked like: which accounts we wanted to open, the sales volumes we were targeting, and the level of marketing presence we expected to back it up. Once the team knew the goal, they could get creative with the route.
Stay on Top, Without Diving In
Here’s the trap I fell into early: whenever something wasn’t moving fast enough, I’d just jump in and do it myself. That might feel good in the moment — it scratches the itch of control — but it’s a long-term disaster. You become the bottleneck, the team feel disempowered, and you never really scale.
The way out is to build systems that keep you informed without dragging you into the weeds. At Cheeky Panda, we set up structured reporting — weekly dashboards, clear KPIs, and regular check-ins with the leadership team. That meant I could see the numbers, spot the gaps, and ask the right questions without needing to write every customer email or negotiate every supplier contract myself.
Managing Through Layers
This is where many founders struggle. Six people? Easy. You can manage six directly, sit in the same room, and have eyes on everything. But when the business scales, you can’t manage 36. You can, however, manage six leaders who each manage six.
This is the discipline of scaling. You don’t multiply yourself; you multiply your leadership. The trick is making sure those six leaders are so well aligned with your vision and standards that they can cascade it down effectively.
Still in Control, Without Being Overwhelmed
Being a founder doesn’t mean letting go of control. It means redefining it. At Cheeky Panda, I still set the pace — the strategy, the tone, the priorities, the culture. But I no longer try to control the detail. That’s a young business habit that doesn’t survive scale.
The danger is founders confuse involvement with control. Just because you’re not in the weeds doesn’t mean you’re not in charge. True control is when the business can run at speed without you having to touch every lever.
Final Thought
Scaling a business is as much about scaling yourself as it is about scaling the company. You can’t stay in start-up mode forever. If you don’t learn to delegate, you’ll burn out. If you delegate without direction, you’ll lose control. But if you hire the right team, give them clear expectations, and manage through layers with good visibility, you can stay firmly in control without becoming overwhelmed.
At six people, you can do it all yourself. At 36, you have to build a leadership team. At 360, you’re setting the strategy while others execute it. And through it all, your role evolves — from doer, to leader, to visionary. You can’t do everything — but you can make sure everything gets done.
