A Hyrox doubles race taught me something about business growth: you do not need to be strong at everything, you need the right partner. Here is why founders need a fractional growth partner, not just a junior hire, to own go-to-market strategy and scale without carrying it all alone.
A few weeks ago I did my first Hyrox doubles race. I have competed before, in running and swimming events, but always solo, where the result came down to me alone. I had never done something where the strategy, the execution and the performance depended on someone else too. This time I had a partner, and we did not just split the work evenly. We split it by strength. She took more of the sled pull, I took more of the wall balls, and the rest of the stations and the running stayed fairly even between us, so we moved through the course faster and with far less wasted energy than if we had simply divided everything down the middle. In the end, we cut 12 minutes off what we had expected, and we were genuinely amazed by the result.
What surprised me was not just the physical relief. It was the performance and motivation. Playing to what I was actually good at, and trusting her to own what she was good at, made the whole race feel lighter and genuinely fun.
Since then, I have kept thinking about how closely this mirrors what I see with founders and their growth.
Founder-led growth works for a long time, because you know the customer and the product better than anyone. But there is also a tendency in many founders where it is genuinely difficult to delegate and trust someone else to do the job well. That tendency often continues even after a subject matter expert has been hired, and the founder keeps trying to be strong at everything: the vision, the product, the customer relationships, and the go-to-market strategy all at once.
This is something I see often with clients and founders I come across. Many come to me already doing everything in growth alone, confident they have enough knowledge to keep going, and often they do on the fundamentals. Many also ask what strategy can really add on top of tactical execution, such as running Meta ads or posting on social media. But growth is not just taught knowledge. It is knowing what good looks like, the intuition and the network that only build up after doing it many times over, and the nuances that experience teaches you.
The fix most founders reach for is to hire someone junior and hand off the parts they do not have time for. This can sometimes mean more work, not less, because the founder now needs to oversee and manage that junior hire on top of running the company. None of that is the same as partnering. It just means directing someone else through the parts you are not 100% confident in yourself, which still leaves you carrying the strategic load alone.
The better move is closer to what happened on the course. Some founders solve this by bringing on a co-founder, but that comes with a whole different level of complexity and business stake, and it is not something everyone wants to take on. Identify what you are genuinely strong at as a founder, whether that is product, customer relationships, or the vision for where the business is going, and stay focused there. Then bring in a growth expert who is strong at the parts you are not: positioning, go-to-market strategy, revenue operations, building a team around growth. Not someone you direct through everything, but someone you partner with who owns their part the way you own yours.
This is the difference between a fractional CMO or CRO and a junior hire. A junior hire needs direction on almost everything. A fractional growth partner has already run this part of the course many times and takes ownership of it, the same way a strong doubles partner does not need you to explain the sled push.
What stayed with me after the race was how much we could achieve, and how much fun it was, playing to my strengths and trusting someone else with theirs, rather than trying to be equally strong at every station. Business growth should feel the same way. Not one person stretched across everything, but partners, each strong where the other is not, moving the business forward together.
If you are still trying to be strong at every part of growth on your own, get in touch to find out what a fractional growth service could look like for your business.
Nina Jung is a Sydney-based growth strategist who works with founders as a fractional CMO and CRO, bringing senior-level strategy and hands-on execution at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. She also mentors early-stage founders and business students through GrowthMentor, Startmate, and UNSW.
