A few years ago, I decided to cut goals out of my life. Why? They weren't working for me. Simple as that. And I suspect the way most people set goals doesn’t work for them either ..read more

It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Picture this. I had just graduated from the University of Maryland magna cum laude with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. But instead of following the expected path of working at a big fancy engineering firm, I became employee #2 at a startup energy auditing company running out of the back room of a house in the suburbs. I was living my entrepreneurship fantasy. There was just one problem ..read more

I did two things differently on my summer vacation. It made all the difference. I'm back! Did you miss me? Did you even know I was gone?? Over the past few weeks, I was enjoying the sunny Mediterranean with my partner, Joe and our families. But I did a couple of things differently this time. First, for the first time, I kept the marketing lights on while I was on vacation. Emails went out. LinkedIn posts were published. Responses to my free Scalability Assessment were followed up with. And I didn't have to lift a finger, because they were all scheduled, automated, and delegated before I left ..read more

Treating imperfection as an operating expense In 2008, some college friends and I started the first stationless bike sharing program in the North America, a decade before bikes and scooters appeared on the streets of every major city. And the first question everyone asked us was this... Won't people just steal the bikes? How are you going to prevent that? People assumed theft would be rampant, and they expected Fort Knox level security accordingly. But we knew some things most people didn't.  Assumption: Without impenetrable security, all the bikes would be stolen. Reality: Most bik ..read more

Blame the system first. This is my culture ethos. In business, stuff goes wrong. We all know this. And as a company scales, there's more stuff to go wrong. So it will. And when that inevitable something goes wrong, how do you respond? Blaming the system first means that instead of immediately placing blame on a person, always look to find blame in the system first. Was there a breakdown in our process? Our policies? Our tools? Our support structures? If there's a deficiency somewhere in our systems that can explain why things happened the way they did, let's fix them. And if we can't find faul ..read more

Brad tells his story on the Financial Guy Podcast If you could have a meal with anyone famous alive or dead, who would you want to have a meal with? What is the #1 place you have always wanted to visit, but haven’t gotten the chance to go? What's your favorite podcast? These were the hard hitting questions Brian Haney asked me when we sat down to record an episode of The Haney Company's Financial Guy Podcast. (Spoiler Alert: The answers are Julia Child, the Great Barrier Reef, and How I Built This with Guy Raz) But the conversation soon turned to my absolute favorite topic, scalability. And bo ..read more

How a Liz Whitehead used scalability to see the future Do you ever wish you had the power to see the future? ? Having a scalable business gives you that power. Why? Because when your business is scalable, it has the flexibility and adaptability to respond to future possibilities that you can't see today, but you very much expect to happen. Case and point, Liz Whitehead and her "follow up like a machine" subscription service, TouchPoint. Two years ago, Liz came to me with a bold idea. After seeing her clients struggle to consistently follow up with their prospects, she thought, "I can coac ..read more

How to use abstraction to scale your business Complexity is easy. Simple is hard. This hit home for me recently when a client said something that I thought was really insightful. "Brad, we need our systems to be as simple as our business is complex." But why is simple so hard? It's because every single thing you do has the potential to add complexity to your business. Every decision you make. Every new person you hire. Every new strategy you implement. Every new system you put into place. How those elements get added to the whole determines if you're building an infrastructure as strong ..read more

What are the most important metrics if you want your business to be scalable? ? I get this question a lot. I guess people think I'm a data nerd (and they're not wrong. ?) While of course there's not a one-size-fits-all answer, the key metrics you want to pay attention to very much depend on what stage of growth your company is in and what you’re focusing on. Here are the 4 key metrics that I focus on with my clients as they scale their business: ? Sales Conversion There's probably no better metric to measure whether your customers actually care about the things you sell. If you want more ..read more

Think you want your business to grow? You might want to think again... I recently conducted a poll on LinkedIn where I asked people if they wanted their business to grow or to scale. Here were the results: I wasn't surprised. See, a lot of people confuse growth with scaling. And I don't want you to be one of those people. Here's the difference between growth and scaling and why that difference is important. Growth means increasing revenue while also increasing costs and resources. If I gave you a million dollars to spend, could you grow your business? You most certainly could. You could hire ..read more