Avoiding the Scaling Trap: How to Grow Without Losing Control

Broadcasting from our coastal offices in Mauritius and South Africa, we're Chanelle, Chantal and Jennifer - business strategists who've cracked the code on building thriving businesses while actually living the lifestyle most entrepreneurs file under "someday."

The Task Ticking Trap: Why Hiring Cheap Is Costing You Everything

Here's what we see happening over and over again with scaling businesses. You start nice and lean—a small, nimble team that gets things done. Then suddenly something starts selling well and you're scaling faster than expected. Those small things that were manageable before, like customer support requests, start piling up. So naturally you hire an affordable team member to help.

Then you scale some more, hire another inexpensive resource. Then another and another. Before you know it, you've got a team of people and you have no idea what half of them are doing. You become the bottleneck, reviewing everything, and you're spending more time managing people than growing your business.

You've created a juggernaut that's getting bigger by the day, and your solution is just throwing more resources at the symptoms instead of solving the problems. It's the task ticking trap, and it's costing businesses like yours thousands in wasted resources and countless missed bedtime stories.

We're Chantal, Chanelle and Jennifer, and between the three of us, we've worked with scaling businesses for over a decade—from brick-and-mortar retail to seven-figure coaching businesses. We've built teams, exited businesses, and now work as fractional COOs helping companies navigate that messy middle between $500K and $1M in revenue. We've seen this trap play out so many times that we can spot it from a mile away. In today's episode, we're breaking down exactly how to avoid this trap and what to do if you're already caught in it.

What Is the Task Ticking Trap?

The task ticking trap happens when you scale your business by continuously adding low-cost team members to handle growing workloads, without addressing the underlying process problems. These team members tick off tasks on an hourly basis, but there's no strategic thinking behind what they're doing or why.

Think of it like taking your car to the cheapest mechanic you can find. They'll change your oil perfectly and charge you a third of the price. But it's not their job to tell you that your transmission is about to fail. Whereas the more expensive, experienced mechanic would do your service exactly the same and then say, "Just so you know, you've probably got another 20,000 miles before something potentially goes quite majorly wrong. You need to keep an eye on this." They save you the cost of seizing your engine.

That low-cost resource might be low-cost now, but down the line, you're replacing a car.

The Problem: You're Treating Symptoms, Not Root Causes

Here's how it typically unfolds. Your business starts nice and lean with an agile team. Then something becomes hot and you start scaling. Support tickets that were manageable suddenly multiply. So you get a cheap resource to answer them. You scale some more and need another person. Then another.

Before long, you've got a team of 25 people and you don't actually know what they're doing. You've become the bottleneck because somebody has to review all this work. It all starts feeling very heavy, and huge amounts of energy are going toward managing rather than building.

The real issue? You're just medicating symptoms. You're not asking why there are so many support tickets in the first place. You're not looking at whether the process could be automated or streamlined. You're just throwing more bodies at the problem.

The Hidden Cost: Energy Drain

Without being too woo-woo about it, energy management is massive in business. As women especially, we're wired to prioritize relationships and think about relationships constantly. So much of your energy gets directed toward business relationships based on what's happening—whether it's a problematic client, a team member who needs constant direction, or systems that keep breaking.

When you have low-level team members who need constant oversight, or when balls keep getting dropped because processes aren't clear, it drains your resources. You spend mental energy ruminating, troubleshooting, thinking about it constantly. That thinking depletes you to the point where there's nothing left to create your own content or develop new offers.

We've both watched this happen with clients where the CEO gets resentful of their business and their team. They're paying out more, working more, and they're not sure if everybody's working on things that actually move the needle.

The Solution: Invert Your Team Structure

Here's what most people get wrong: they think the secret to growth is building more minions at the bottom. More VAs, more task-tickers, more hands to do the work. But what you actually need to do is invert that approach.

You want to bring someone in at the top levels earlier, because they're going to save you from building this unnecessarily bottom-heavy structure. A strategist or fractional COO can spot patterns, fix processes, and prevent you from needing three people to do what one streamlined system could handle.

Why Low-Cost Resources Can't Save You

Low-level team members often just don't know what they don't know. They're not going to think about how something could be done better because that's not their role. They're incentivized on an hourly rate or retainer to complete tasks, not to eliminate them.

If you're paying someone hourly to answer support tickets, they're not going to suggest building a comprehensive FAQ or setting up automation that reduces tickets by 80%. Not because they're malicious, but because they lack the experience and strategic thinking to even see that possibility.

When you just put the task in and they tick it off, there's no thought behind whether this task should exist at all. There's no questioning whether the CEO's latest shiny object actually makes sense for the ideal client. There's no expertise being applied.

Start With a Task Audit

If you're feeling overwhelmed by your team or unsure where all the time and money is going, you desperately need to conduct a task audit. At the very least, you need some kind of time tracking or task tracking so you understand where those hours are going and where your money is going.

Look at time tracking by project. Put everyone's rates into the system and see what each project actually costs you monthly. We've done this with clients and found thousands of dollars in waste—tasks being duplicated, three people assigned to one task with no clear ownership, or hours going toward things that could have been automated years ago.

The Quarterly Clean-Up

Every business needs a quarterly audit because of the amount of waste that accumulates. Not only energy waste, but money and time spent on stuff that just builds up. We recommend reviewing:

• Recurring tasks: Should this still be happening? Can it be automated?

• Software subscriptions: Are you paying for tools no one uses?

• Team assignments: Does everyone have clear ownership of their tasks?

• Processes: Are we solving the problem or just managing symptoms?

One of our clients recently completed this process, and we turned 80-90% of all tasks in her business into recurring tasks managed by ClickUp. The system essentially became the project manager. She was able to take a three-month sabbatical with her podcast, social media, and email marketing still going out, and her team costs fully covered.

Why This Actually Matters

When you're at that $500K-$800K revenue mark trying to reach seven figures, this is often where things get messy. You've hired more people, there are more things going on, and it starts to feel heavy. The relationships in your business drain your energy, your family life gets affected, and you wonder if you're cut out for this.

But here's the thing: it's not about working harder or hiring more. It's about building better systems and bringing in higher-level strategic thinking earlier in the process.

As someone with ADHD, structure gives me the foundation so I'm not reinventing the wheel every time. Systems reduce decision fatigue and protect my time and energy so I can show up fully without burning out. Systems aren't the enemy of creativity—they're the container that makes creativity possible.

Your Next Step

If you're caught in the task ticking trap, start here: Pick one area of your business where you feel like you're constantly putting out fires. Look at the last month of tasks in that area and ask:

• What's the root cause of these tasks existing?

• Could this be automated or streamlined?

• Am I solving a problem or managing a symptom?

• Do I have the right level of strategic thinking applied here?

You don't need a bigger team. You need a better structure. And sometimes that means investing in one highly skilled person rather than three low-cost resources who keep you trapped in management mode.

Because at the end of the day, your business should support your life, not steal from it.

Want to dive deeper into building businesses that actually support the life you want? Subscribe to the podcast for more real talk about scaling sustainably, managing teams strategically, and protecting your energy while building something extraordinary.

Your Turn

Have you experienced the Task-Ticker Trap in your business? What strategies have you used to escape it?

The Leveraged CEO Podcast is hosted by Chanelle, Chantal and Jennifer, three business strategists with 30+ years of experience helping multi-six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build businesses that run without their constant attention. New episodes drop every Tuesday.