What If the Next Level of Business Growth Requires a New Version of Its Leader?
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Every growing business eventually reaches a point where the next stage of growth requires something different from its leader.
At BAILOR, a Huntsville-based business growth coaching firm that partners with small business owners to scale both their companies and the people leading them, that moment is a familiar one.
Across industries, BAILOR has observed a common pattern: the businesses that continue to grow are often led by owners who intentionally invest in their own leadership development before investing in the next phase of growth.
The stories of four business owners illustrate what that decision looks like in practice.
They discovered that scaling their companies first required scaling themselves as leaders, and that building a business was never meant to be a solo journey.
Jeremy Blanton did not hire a coach because his business was failing.
By most measures, the business was already seeing success.
He had spent more than fourteen years building Bee-Safe Security in Ohio from the ground up. The company had grown steadily. The team was expanding. Customers trusted the brand.
Yet he kept coming back to a core question, one that felt deeply personal.
What if the next level of business growth requires a new version of its leader?
"I knew my business, and I had a vision for its future. But the future of Bee-Safe required me, as the leader, to evolve. I had to level myself up before I could take the business to the next level," Blanton said. "When I started working with a coach, it became clear that this was a missing piece."
That realization did not belong to Blanton alone.
Hundreds of miles away in Huntsville, Alabama, Jessica Barnes had reached her own turning point. After years behind a salon chair, she knew her craft well. She knew hair, extensions, client experience, and the discipline required to build a loyal clientele.
But opening her own business, VOUS Salon and Retreat, required more than technical excellence.
It required leadership.
Barnes was no longer making decisions that affected only her own schedule, income, or reputation. She was building something other people would depend on.
"When I was a solo operator, if I missed a step, it only affected me," Barnes said. "My dream was to open a salon and have a team. That meant if I missed a step with them, it affected them."
So she sought the kind of guidance she had trusted throughout her career whenever she needed to grow.
"Every time I needed to scale, every time I needed the next step, I found somebody who knew how to do that."
What none of these founders anticipated was that the greatest challenge would not be learning how to run a business.
It would be learning how to lead one.
Most entrepreneurs start companies because they are skilled at something. They know how to provide a service, solve a problem, create a product, or serve a customer. Leadership is different. Few people receive formal training on how to cast a vision, develop people, create accountability, navigate difficult decisions, or build a culture that can grow beyond the founder. Yet those skills often become the difference between a business that survives and one that thrives.
Afton Harris, owner of Balance Massage Therapy in Huntsville, learned that lesson early. After launching her practice, she quickly discovered that expertise in massage therapy did not automatically translate into expertise in business.
"People think that if you're just really good at what you do, then the business stuff will work its way out, and that's just not always true," Harris said.
Early in her entrepreneurial journey, coaching helped her build the business foundation she lacked. Over the next decade, Harris intentionally shaped her business around raising four children, refining her craft, and creating a practice that reflected her values.
Today, she finds herself at a new stage of growth.
Her youngest child is now in school. Her skills have never been sharper. Her referral network is thriving. And rather than rely solely on experience, Harris has once again chosen to work with a coach.
"I knew very quickly that I needed somebody to come in and refresh me from the last ten years and help me scale," Harris said. "I'm ready to learn how to actually scale a business."
For Harris, coaching is not a sign that something is broken. It is an acknowledgment that every new stage of growth demands new levels of leadership.
For Blake Davenport, the decision to work with a coach came from that same understanding.
Before opening OsteoStrong Huntsville, Davenport had spent seventeen years as an athletic director, hiring and evaluating coaches. He understood the difference between leaders who simply manage tasks and leaders who transform people and businesses.
When he launched OsteoStrong Huntsville, he did not want to build just a business.
He wanted to build a community.
"Our goal wasn't just to help people work toward better bone health," Davenport said. "It was to create a community. It was to be an educational resource."
That kind of organization does not happen by accident.
It requires intentional decisions about people, culture, values, and the experience customers have every time they walk through the door. And while the franchise model provided a strong foundation, Davenport wanted additional leadership guidance around culture, team development, and the kind of local community he hoped to build."
Davenport believes coaching helped him and his team establish those foundations early instead of trying to repair them later.
"It's a whole lot easier to be intentional about your business and culture from the beginning than to get a year down the road and realize you needed it," he said.
For each business owner, coaching served a different role.
For Barnes, it helped turn a vision into a business that could support a team.
For Harris, it helped her move from craft mastery to business leadership while intentionally designing a business that supported the life she wanted to live.
For Davenport, it helped shape a culture before the pace of daily operations took over.
For Blanton, it created accountability after years of success and the realization that the future of his company would ultimately be determined by his own growth as a leader.
"It's having someone hold perspective and hold you accountable to your own growth," Blanton said.
That accountability eventually extended beyond him. He brought key members of his team into the coaching process because he understood that a company cannot outgrow the people leading it.
"Everyone has to level up for us to be successful," he said.
These stories reflect a pattern BAILOR has observed repeatedly among growth-minded business owners.
Coaching is rarely about fixing a struggling business.
More often, it is about preparing a successful leader for the next stage of growth.
Business owners often seek coaching because they want the company to grow. What they discover is that the first challenge is rarely the business itself. More often, it is developing the leadership capacity required for the next stage of growth, whether that means leading a team, shaping a culture, creating accountability, or intentionally building a business that supports the life they want to live.
It starts with how they think.
How they make decisions.
How they communicate.
How they hire.
How they build trust.
How they develop people.
How they stop reacting to the felt urgencies and begin building for what comes next.
None of these founders viewed coaching as a rescue plan. They viewed it as a strategic investment in the future of the business and the person responsible for leading it.
Barnes put it plainly:
"Only take advice from people who have accomplished what you want to accomplish. The reputation of the coach and their methodology matter."
Davenport saw the impact in speed and sustainability:
"I think we would have eventually gotten here, but to do it as efficiently as we did, I would draw right back to the coaching and the structured process our coach led us through."
Blanton described the value as something larger than one person's advice.
"You get one coach, but what you really gain is the benefit of their experience with hundreds of other business owners. It's almost as if a thousand people are sitting at that table."
Four business owners from different industries and very different stages of business made one shared decision: they did not wait until the business was broken to seek guidance.
They chose to build before the cracks appeared.
They chose to grow before the ceiling became permanent.
They chose to become the leaders their businesses were beginning to require.
And while their industries, goals, and challenges were different, they arrived at the same conclusion: meaningful growth rarely comes from one breakthrough moment.
More often, it comes from the quiet, consistent work of becoming a better leader.
Growth was never just about expanding a company.
It was about expanding the leader responsible for where that company could go next.
About BAILOR
BAILOR is a business growth coaching firm headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama. Through its BAILOR Method™ and Build to Scale™ ecosystem, the firm partners with business owners and leadership teams to strengthen leadership, align strategy, and prepare organizations for sustainable, measurable growth.
Media Contact
Sonia Robinson, APR
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SOURCE Bailor Group
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