The founders stopped doing repair work, even though it brought in steady revenue, because constant customer interruptions prevented the focused work needed to build new guitars. They locked the door to distractions in order to scale their core manufacturing business.

After years of slow growth, the business doubled the year after buying out their third partner who consistently resisted change. Removing this source of friction and misalignment acted like "taking the brakes off," enabling the remaining two founders to make decisions and execute rapidly.

Facing minimal growth for nearly a decade, the founders maintained morale by viewing the struggle as a free education, comparing their journey to doctors or architects who invest years in unpaid training. This psychological reframing helped them persevere when financial rewards were absent.

Anticipating the post-COVID demand slump, Taylor Guitars' sales team spent months calling retailers to cancel $50 million in purchase orders. They recognized this was "phantom demand" that would overload their channel. This short-term revenue sacrifice protected their retail ecosystem's long-term health.

To break the cycle of not paying themselves, the founders instituted a mandatory $15 weekly paycheck. This forced them to develop financial discipline and treat their venture as a real business, not just a passion project, long before it became profitable.

Co-founder Bob Taylor divided his workday into two parts. The first was production (making guitars). The second was innovation (making tools and jigs to improve the production process). This system of continuous improvement was key to scaling their craft and escaping repetitive manual labor.

When at equilibrium, you must choose what to sacrifice for growth: profit or reputation. Increasing demand first strains your team, damaging quality and reputation. Increasing supply first costs money and hurts short-term profit but builds capacity, protecting reputation and enabling sustainable growth.

Applying the Theory of Constraints, a startup's growth is limited by a single bottleneck in its factory (pipeline, sales, or delivery). Improving onboarding is useless if you have one sales call a month. All focus must be on solving that single constraint to make progress.

To identify your business's core constraint, start by asking why you can't simply scale your current successful activities. The answer will immediately point to the true bottleneck, whether it's a lack of metrics, money, manpower, or a flawed model.