Davide V.

President & CEO | Fortune 500 trained expert strategist and executive enabling start-ups to billion-dollar brands to differentiate, compete, grow and scale predictably in any market condition.

I believe the future will be shaped by leaders who understand people, build durable systems & use AI to amplify positive impact.

I am a Fortune 500–trained CEO with 25+ years leading complex organizations across CPG, retail, and healthcare in Canada and the U.S.

I have led national organizations, nine-figure P&Ls & enterprise transformations through turnaround, scale & modernization, delivering sustained margin expansion, growth & organizational resilience.

I have also lived the personal cost of leadership done without systems. The tension between performance and health, ambition and family, scale and sanity is not a personal failing. It is a systems failure.

As a CEO, I align strategy, operations & talent into a coherent operating rhythm. I remove hidden friction that drives burnout & inefficiency, install decision clarity & accountability, and build governance cadence that boards can trust.

My work is grounded in execution, not theory. I connect dots others miss and translate complexity into systems teams can actually run. The result is calm, predictable execution at scale.

Despite my experience & training, I operate with a beginner’s discipline. Business is my NHL. I never stop training, studying the game, refining fundamentals, and adapting to faster play. I keep investing in learning across leadership, systems design, AI, governance & human performance. 

Sustained advantage comes from continuous improvement. Compounding is a moat.

ManagementOS® is the outcome of my Executive MBA thesis & years of real-world application as a CEO. It is my trademarked executive operating system for North America, documented to formalize how I think, lead & differentiate as an operator. It replaces heroics & ad-hoc decision-making with repeatable operating rhythms across strategy, operations & talent. ManagementOS® is not a commercial pitch. It is the protected expression of my leadership craft, and I apply the same discipline to my own brand.

Strong leadership today requires fiduciary responsibility not just for the P&L, but for durability, operating rhythm & human sustainability. That is the lens I bring to every organization I lead and every board I serve.

CONNECT
I share frameworks, systems thinking, & executive insights through my newsletter. If you’re a CEO, founder, board member, or executive operator navigating complexity at scale and value disciplined thinking over noise, I’m glad to connect and exchange perspectives.

Davide Viola, MBA
Dad | Hubby | Son | Loyal Friend
CEO | Fortune 500–Trained Exec
ManagementOS® - Intellectual Property

Chief Executive Officer

► President and Chief Executive Officer reporting to a board represented by each province across Canada
► Canada's largest network of retail health and wellness operators representing over 9 figure sales in the growing category of natural health and wellness.
► Founded in 1999, Health First Network, is a national network of 140+ independent health and wellness stores offering supplements, organics, gluten-free foods, natural health & beauty aids, as well as sales, marketing, retail flyer, category management, and distribution services.
►  The focus will include growing retail member sales across all vendors, increase retail traffic and revenue through collaborative vendor partnerships and best-in-class marketing to drive demand generation.
►  Responsibilities include sales, marketing, business development, category management, finance, operations, warehouse, procurement, new product development, and vendor/partner relations.
►  Hybrid retail/CPG model
►  Coast to coast representation across English and French Canada

HFN Board Position Open!

Most people don’t realize how much health retailers shape the natural health industry and impact the broader healthcare landscape.

Behind thousands of products, brands, and wellness trends are passionate managers and store owners serving their communities every day.

Across Canada, we serve 164 retailers, and growing, who work together through Health First Network to compete, innovate, and grow in an increasingly complex market.

And like any organization navigating change, strong governance matters.

For the first time in years, we are opening nominations for our Board of Directors.

Health First Network is a 27-year-old organization that today ranks in the top 1% of companies in North America by revenue.

Our Board operates with a full governance structure and fiduciary oversight, quarterly meetings, and two committees (Audit & Risk, Governance & HR).
 
This is a volunteer role, but it is not passive.  
Expect to engage 10-14 hours per quarter.

Board members bring experience, perspective, and leadership to help guide the direction of a national organization serving hundreds of entrepreneurs/intrapreneurs and tens of millions of customers.

We are particularly interested in candidates with strengths in areas such as:

• retail leadership
• natural health and wellness
• governance and strategy
• change management
• marketing, technology, and digital transformation
• supply chain and operations

If you care about the future of independent natural health retail, this is a rare opportunity to help shape it.

Applications are open now.

DM me "HFN Board" and I will send you the link to apply.

Nominations close soon.

If you know someone who would be a strong contributor, please feel free to share this post or tag them below.

The next chapter of independent health retail will be shaped by the leaders willing to step forward.

Davide Viola, MBA

CEO | Fortune 500–Trained Operator | Operating Systems for Scale, AI Leverage & Leadership Health | ManagementOS® | TEDx Texas

Do we all need vitamin supplements?

It’s one of the most common questions in health today.

The honest answer is: it depends.

A healthy diet should always be the foundation. 
Healthy, whole, unprocessed, and real.

Whole foods provide vitamins along with fibre, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and thousands of beneficial compounds that supplements simply can’t replicate.

But modern reality is more complicated.

Busy lifestyles, soil depletion, food processing, aging, and dietary restrictions mean many people don’t consistently reach optimal nutrient intake through diet alone.

That’s where supplementation can play a powerful role.

Not as a replacement for good food.

But as an overlay for optimization.

Think of it this way:

Food builds the foundation.
Supplements help strengthen the structure.

When used intelligently, high-quality supplements can help support immunity, energy, cognitive function, sleep, and overall resilience, especially when addressing specific deficiencies or life-stage needs.

But one thing is equally important:

Quality and guidance matter. A lot.

Not all supplements are created equal, and more isn’t always better.

Mega-dosing nutrients without understanding your needs can sometimes do more harm than good.

And the human expertise and intelligence are critical.  
That’s why working with your local knowledgeable practitioners and trusted natural health retailers can make such a difference.  

Our retailers help people navigate the overwhelming number of choices and focus on what actually supports their health goals.

At the end of the day, the goal isn’t pills or powders.

It’s better health outcomes.

Start with real food.
Support your body intelligently.
And make informed choices.

If you’re curious about how supplementation might support your health journey, you can find a Health First store near you here:

https://lnkd.in/gzdsQnvm

Do you believe diet alone is enough today, or can supplements play an important role in optimizing health?

#Nutrition #PreventiveHealth #Supplements #NaturalHealth #HealthFirst

Open article: Find Your Store | Health First Network | Member Stores by healthfirstnetwork.ca

Find Your Store | Health First Network | Member Stores

I've realized over time that most companies do not fail because of bad strategy.

They fail because of friction.

Not the obvious kind.

The quiet kind that builds up over time.

The meeting after the meeting.
The approvals that require five signatures.
The report nobody reads, but everyone still produces.

Individually these things feel small.

But stack enough of them together and you create something dangerous.

Organizational drag.

And like investments, it compounds over time.

Drag slows decisions.
It frustrates your best people.
And it quietly drains energy from teams who would rather be solving real problems.

The tricky part is that friction almost always starts with good intentions.

Processes are added for control.
Systems are introduced for visibility.
Meetings are scheduled for alignment.

Then the layers keep stacking.

And suddenly the company is moving more slowly than the market around it.

One quote that always sticks with me comes from Jack Welch.

When the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

That line has stayed with me for years because it forces a simple but uncomfortable question.

Are we actually moving as fast internally as the world around us?

Great leaders do not just think about strategy.

They constantly ask a different question.

Where is the friction inside the system?

Where do decisions stall?
Where does accountability blur?
Where are we creating work instead of enabling it?

Remove friction, and something interesting happens.

You usually do not need more motivation.

People simply move faster.
Personally, I love speed but can't be reckless either.

Ideas travel further.
Execution improves.
Momentum returns.

Through books, mentors, and observing great operators over the years, I have learned that strong organizations are rarely built by adding more layers.

They are built by removing the ones that slow people down.

In a world now moving at AI speed, the companies that win will not always be the biggest.

They will be the ones with the least internal resistance.

This is something I am constantly trying to balance at HFN.

Empowering individuals while also building systems that accelerate good decisions instead of replacing them.

Where have you seen unnecessary friction slow organizations down?

#Leadership #Strategy #Execution #OrganizationalDesign

Corporate turnarounds rarely fail because of a lack of ideas.

They fail because the system around those ideas doesn’t change.

A recent story in Entrepreneur highlighted a turnaround led by Saina Babaee at Siemens Energy.

What stood out wasn’t a bold strategy announcement.

It was a leadership shift.

Instead of pushing solutions from the top, she asked the people closest to the work to identify the real roadblocks.

At first, there was skepticism.

That’s normal in organizations where change is often announced but rarely owned.

But something powerful happened once the team was invited into the problem-solving process.

Ownership began to replace resistance.

And when ownership increases, performance usually follows.

Targets were hit.
Momentum returned.
And the team rediscovered something many organizations slowly lose over time: belief in the work they’re doing.

What this story reinforces is an important leadership truth.

Sustainable transformation rarely comes from a single strategy decision.

It comes from aligning three things that too often operate in silos:

People.
Processes.
And the systems that connect them.

When those elements are aligned, organizations move faster, not because leaders push harder, but because friction disappears.

That’s when innovation actually becomes possible.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about starting companies.

Sometimes it’s about rebuilding the operating environment inside them.

Where have you seen leadership successfully turn skepticism into ownership?

#Leadership #Entrepreneurship #OrganizationalDesign #Teamwork

Open article: How a Corporate Turnaround Taught Me True Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneur by entrepreneur.com

How a Corporate Turnaround Taught Me True Entrepreneurship | Entrepreneur

I help service businesses turn marketing into a measurable, revenue-driving engine.As Co-Founder &amp; Managing Director of Ollo Metrics, we typically partner with $2–50M companies to:• Increase qualified leads, customers, and sales• Improve marketing ROI• Eliminate wasted ad spend• Fix broken ad platform and analytics tracking• Build clear, accountable growth systemsMost businesses don’t have a traffic or visibility problem.They have a strategy, measurement, and process problem.We fix that.Our team specializes in performance marketing (Google Ads, Meta Ads, Programmatic, AI, SEO, Analytics) built on clean data, accurate tracking, and real business metrics, not vanity clicks or boosted posts.We work best with growth-oriented:• Private medical practices (RMT, Chiro, Physio, Dental)• Home service companies (Roofing, Plumbing, HVAC, Electrical)• Ecommerce DTC brands• Tourism &amp; hospitality operators• Lead generation businesses with in-house marketing teams⸻Before founding Ollo Metrics, I led marketing internally as a Marketing Director and saw firsthand how hard it is to connect strategy, execution, and reporting.Today, I focus on building:• High-performance marketing teams• Clear growth strategies• Simple frameworks that make complex marketing understandableI’m also an active marketing educator and speaker.I’ve spoken at PPC Hero Conf and Social Pacific, and will be speaking at SocialNext in May 2026.I teach digital marketing at Jelly Academy, Small Business BC, University of British Columbia, and BrainStation, helping business owners and marketers develop practical, real-world skills.My long-term mission:Build a team of exceptional marketers who help good companies grow so they can positively impact more people.If you’re a founder or marketing leader who wants marketing to finally make sense (and drive real results), let’s connect.

Warren Thompson

Over the past 6 months, some of our strongest inbound leads have come directly from AI tools.

Not from ads. 
Not from organic search. 
From ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude conversations. 

That’s changing how we think about SEO in 2026.

Because SEO is no longer just about ranking pages. It’s about becoming a trusted source inside AI answers.

Next week I’m partnering with the Whistler Chamber of Commerce to teach:

Rank in AI: The 2026 AI SEO Playbook
 🗓 Wednesday, March 4 | 9–11 AM PST

We’ll cover:
• How to increase your brand’s visibility inside AI chats
• How to structure pages for Google’s AI Overviews
• Robots.txt and sitemap updates for LLMs
• The schema markup that actually matters

If you’re a business owner or marketer who wants to stay visible in 2026, I’d love to see you there.

https://lnkd.in/gxv9Aeue

#AISEO #MarketingStrategy #PerformanceMarketing

Co-Founder @ Ollo Metrics | Performance Marketing Agency | Building Measurable, Scalable Marketing Systems | Speaker & Educator

A big thank you to Maheen B. for having me on the CanadianSME Small Business Magazine podcast.

We talked about how small and mid-sized businesses can prepare for AI-driven changes in marketing.

Here’s what I've seen lately:

If your strategy is clear and your approach is intentionally human, you can polarize against the wave of AI slop in a refreshing way. We are seeing this at Ollo Metrics right now with an intentionally “inefficient,” but more human and personalized, new business process.

If your metrics are messy and your positioning unclear, AI will not save you. It will amplify the noise and make you spin your wheels faster without going anywhere.

I also share a few practical ways we are integrating AI into our operations at Ollo.

Grateful for the opportunity to share what our team is building and learning.

Full episode here:
https://lnkd.in/gsr9Yh-p

#MarketingStrategy #PerformanceMarketing #AI

Marketers now have access to more data than ever. But more data doesn’t always mean better decisions.

Here's the full interview with Marketing News Canada, where we talked about the idea of finding your Marketing North Star.

Instead of trying to monitor dozens of KPIs, identify the one metric that best reflects the health of your business. Your North Star KPI.

Think of it as a litmus test for the rest of your funnel.
If it’s trending in the right direction, your strategy is likely working.
If it isn’t, it tells you it’s time to investigate further.

This simple idea can bring a lot of clarity to marketing teams that feel overwhelmed by dashboards and reports.

We also talked about my journey as a marketer and agency owner, the marketing skills gap, and my experience teaching at Jelly Academy.

Thanks to Rachel Thexton and the Marketing News Canada team for the conversation.

Full episode here:
https://lnkd.in/g6m6uhya

#PerformanceMarketing #MarketingStrategy #MarketingAnalytics

Open video: Finding Your Marketing North Star on youtube.com

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The Battle

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