The Business Growth Blog

If you know me, you’ve likely heard about my obsession: to inoculate immortality into small businesses. I call this mission “Eradicating Business Covid.” What is Business Covid™? It’s a pandemic quietly killing 180,000 small to medium-sized businesses every year. This silent epidemic takes 2 million jobs and 4% of U.S. GDP growth with it annually. […]

Years ago, I worked as an M&A advisor with Laszlo, the owner of an HVAC business. Over time, he became one of our best customers, snapping up every service we offered—valuation, acquisition advisory, capital raising—you name it. Laszlo was a mix of challenging and entertaining to work with. His curiosity and self-reflection made him a […]

In my last blog, we talked about the difference between Lifestyle Businesses and Growth Businesses. To recap: If you want to own a Growth Business, you need to: Sounds exciting, right? Here’s the catch: growth is painful. Why Growth is Always Painful Both spotting opportunities and building a scalable business require creating something entirely new—amid […]

Do you feel like younger generations just aren’t as motivated as we used to be? They want remote work, “Bare Minimum Mondays,” and “Flexible Fridays.” They don’t care about your company’s mission or your endless meetings. They just want to check off tasks and live their lives outside of your business. But here’s the thing—this […]

I’ve always struggled with the idea of the “Integrator”—a person who runs your business while you focus on being the “Visionary.” In 2015, Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters published Rocket Fuel, promoting the concept of hiring an Integrator to free visionary entrepreneurs from the burden of managing their businesses. According to Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating […]

Setting priorities is one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur… Wait—scratch that. Setting priorities is easy. Sticking to them is hard. Actually, both are hard. Let me explain why and what you can do about it. First, let’s talk about why setting quarterly priorities (Rocks or OKRs) is so challenging: Why Sticking to Priorities […]

In 2007, Gino Wickman famously declared in Traction: “Everybody should have a number.” The idea is simple: every employee should focus on a specific KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to optimize business performance. It’s a great concept, but here’s the real question: How do you actually figure out your team’s Killer KPIs? KPI Basics Before diving […]

In a 1994 PBS documentary, Steve Jobs famously said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” You might think, “Well, that’s easy for Jobs to say. He had the resources to hire top-tier executives. I […]

“If you’re not growing, you’re dying” is one of those overused phrases that still manages to hit home. Why? Because flat business growth isn’t just unsustainable—it’s a flashing neon sign of deeper issues. Inflation erodes profits, competitors steal market share, and ambitious employees look elsewhere for opportunities. Here’s the truth: If your business isn’t growing, […]

Do You Have the DESIRE to Succeed? I’ve long suspected that business success, like any noble endeavor, ultimately depends on DESIRE. Skeptical? Here’s a question: What’s the one indispensable component for building a successful business? Is it IDEAS? Nope. Ideas are everywhere. Since 1968, attempts to create a tablet included the Dynabook, the GRIDPad, and […]

For years, I’ve noticed a pattern with small to midsize companies. They go through cycles of intense activity and success, followed by burnout and stagnation. It left me wondering, why do they do this to themselves? Wouldn’t consistent, stable performance be more productive and less stressful? Then I had a flashback to my college days—nights […]