After running AdTribe for six years and managing over $100M in ad spend, I learned how hard it is to build and keep a world-class media buying team.

Finding great talent takes months.
Training takes even longer.
And the wrong hire can cost you clients and profit fast.

So I built the service I wish existed back then — Haven.

Haven is a white-label media buying partner that helps marketing agencies scale without hiring.

For $799 per account, you get a complete senior-level growth team:

✅ Media buyer
✅ Creative designer
✅ Video editor
✅ Developer
✅ Performance strategist

No hiring. No overhead. No training headaches.

Today, more than 20 agencies partner with us to handle their paid media.

A few of them said it best:

Olivia Kean, CEO at Fusion Hub
👉 “It’s allowed me to focus on the things I love, knowing they’re crushing it on their end.”

Kory Baraba, CEO at Grow Fast
👉 “We’ve worked with 4–5 different media buyers from Haven, and they’ve all been amazing.”

See more client stories here: https://www.hirewithhaven.com/clients

If you run a marketing agency and want to scale fulfillment without adding headcount,
connect with me or reach out at dmitry@hirewithhaven.com

Dmitry Fesenko

Looking for a TikTok Shop agency.

I just had a call with a $15M CPG brand. They need help with:

→ TikTok Shop setup
→ Affiliate management
→ Magento integration

Anyone in my network have an agency they'd recommend? I will make an intro

Drop a name in the comments or DM me.

UPDATE: Got hundreds of responses. Going through every comment and DM. Will respond to everyone. Thank you all.

CEO at Haven | Hire world-class media buyers for 65% less than in the US | $100M+ in managed ad spend

Took a few weeks off. First break in months.

No Slack. No LinkedIn. No client calls.

Just rest.

Honestly? It felt weird. Almost guilty.

But I came back to our busiest January ever.

→ onboarding 2 new agency partners for white-label offer
→ signed 3 new clients for media buyer placement offer

Not bad for week one.

Looking back, 2025 was really about laying the groundwork.

Building the team. Launching a new offer that's more profitable and easier to sell.

2026 is when we scale.

The break gave me some clarity too. I've been running at 100% for years. Two agencies. Teams across time zones. Always on.  

Turns out stepping away for a bit doesn't break everything. Who knew 😅

Anyway, here's what we're going after this year:

→ Scale placements to 3-4/month
→ Add 10 agency partners
→ Build creative department from scratch
→ Launch AI copilot for media buyers

Feeling good about this one.

What's your biggest goal for 2026?

Our Head of Paid Media just left to serve in the Ukrainian Army.

Andrii was my first hire. I trained him personally. Over the years, he became the backbone of our delivery.

When I heard the news, my first reaction was panic.

We're screwed.

But after the emotions settled, I realized something:

If a business can't operate without one person, it's not a business. 

That moment forced me to rethink how we build Haven going forward:  

→ who we hire next 
→ how we structure leadership 
→ how knowledge is distributed instead of living in one person’s head

The good news: Andrii helped raise incredibly strong team leads. I trust them to maintain the quality standards we care so much about.

Will the next few months be uncomfortable? Absolutely.

I'll need to step back into fulfillment more than I'd like.

But I'm confident we'll come out of this with a stronger, more resilient company than before.

Building an agency that lasts means building one that doesn't depend on any single person. 

Including me.

What's the most underrated skill in media buyers?

It's not platform knowledge.
It's not creative strategy.
It's not attention to detail.

It's enthusiasm.

We recently hired a junior media buyer.

Every call, he's smiling. Every monthly recap, he shows up with a full presentation, pumped to share results. Last week he built a dashboard no one asked for, just because he wanted to understand the data better.

He makes it incredibly easy to work with him. And because of that, everyone wants to help him get better.

Skills can be taught. Platforms change every year anyway.

But energy and curiosity compound.

A highly enthusiastic junior will often outperform a grumpy expert over time.

Not because they know more. But because people actually want to work with them.

Next time you're hiring, don't just check the resume.

Check the energy.

5 years ago, we got hacked.  

Over $20k of client money was stolen (fkn casino affiliates).

At the time, our agency was doing $20k/month in revenue. So, needless to say, this was devastating.

It took 6 months to get the money back from Meta.  

Luckily, none of our clients left. We worked for free for 3 months to make it right.

But here's what came out of it:

We wrote two documents that we still use today.

1. "When FB account got hacked" protocol

→ How to identify which profile was compromised 
→ How to lock it down immediately 
→ How to contact Meta support 
→ How to protect the ad accounts 
→ Red flags to watch for before it happens

2. "How to keep your Business Manager safe" checklist

→ 2FA for everyone with access 
→ Regular audits of who has access 
→ Security checkup for all personal FB accounts 
→ Alerts for unrecognized logins 
→ Review apps and browser plugins regularly

We've used these internally ever since. Never got hacked again.  

Mistakes are unavoidable, but making the same mistake twice is a choice.

If you're running ads for clients, you need this.  

Comment "protocol" and I will send these two docs your way.

Slack is killing your media buyers' output.

Not the workload. The constant interruption.

I had a call with an 8-figure agency owner last week. He shared a simple system that changed how I think about client communication.

His media buyers used to be glued to Slack all day. Context switching between campaigns and client requests. It was destroying their focus.

So he implemented time blocks.

Here's how it works:

→ 9 AM: First communication window (30 min)
→ 12 PM: Second window (30 min)
→ 5 PM: Final window (30 min)

During those blocks, they clear every Slack channel. Outside those windows? Deep work only.

But here's what makes it actually work.

Clients know about it from day one.

During onboarding: "This is Ali. He's running your ads. Here are his response times: 9 AM, 12 PM, and 5 PM EST. If you message outside these times, he'll respond at the next block."

They frame it as a benefit: "We do this so Ali can focus on actually working on your campaigns, instead of multitasking all day."

Most clients are fine with a 2-3 hour response time. The problem is never the wait. It's the uncertainty about if or when they'll hear back.

Clear expectations beat fast responses.

We'll be rolling this out soon at Haven across all 90+ accounts. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

What systems do you use to protect deep work time?

What's the fastest way to have $1M in your bank account?  

I'm not talking about equity or paper gains. I mean cash you can actually spend.

Start an agency.

You don't need investors, a 7-year exit plan, or to pray for an acquisition.

Just clients paying you every month.

Now look, if you're the Elon Musk type who wants to build life-changing technology and is willing to suffer for 10-20 years without seeing real money, by all means do it. The world needs people working on groundbreaking stuff.

This post isn't for you.

This is for people who want to make good money, play golf on Fridays, pick up their kids from school, and actually enjoy the life they're building.

Most agencies never get to $1M, though. Here's why:  

→ Wrong clients (needy, low budget, bad fit) 
→ Wrong partners (or trying to do it all solo) 
→ Burnout from chasing every dollar

But if you pick your clients wisely and surround yourself with the right partners (like Haven ), agency life is beautiful.

Think about it.

What other model pays you to learn new skills and apply them to real companies with real budgets?

We get to do the sexiest parts of business:

→ Build strategies 
→ Run ads (spending other people's money) 
→ Be creative

Tech founders grind for years hoping for an exit.

Ecom founders are equity rich but always cash poor. Inventory eats everything.

Agency owners deposit cash every month. Cash they can actually spend on upgrading their life.

I will choose agency every time.  

Prove me wrong.

A few years ago I was visiting Vancouver for a few days.

One of our agency partners was organizing a small dinner for agency owners.

I joined without any expectations.

That dinner became one of the highest ROI decisions I've ever made.

First

One of the agency owners there, Gabby, became one of my closest friends. Later, she became a client.

Second

Another owner introduced me to a few friends who were way ahead of me in business.

Every time I meet them, my thinking expands. Problems feel smaller. Possibilities feel bigger.

Third

An agency owner I didn't even talk to that night just booked a call to hire media buyers from us.

Three outcomes from one dinner I almost skipped.

We spend so much time optimizing funnels, running ads, and writing content.  

All of that matters.  

But the best opportunities I've ever had didn't come from impressions or clicks.  

They came from showing up in person and shaking hands.  

The more rooms you walk into, the more doors open later.

Brent started his agency a few months ago.

He signed his first medspa client and asked us to run their ads.

One month later, here’s what he said:

👉 "Amazing work team. I'm seriously so proud of the results we're already getting, and it's only going to get better."

This is why we do what we do.

The best media buyers don't want to work for you.

Here's what most agency owners get wrong:

They try to hire great talent before they're ready for it.

Top media buyers want to work on interesting accounts. They want variety, challenge, and growth.

If you only have 3 clients and they're all low-budget headaches, you're not going to attract A-players. You'll get whoever says yes.

So what do you do before you have 10+ solid accounts?

→ Do the work yourself
→ Use contractors
→ Partner with a white-label team like Haven

Don't force a full-time hire when you don't have the client base to support it.

Once you have:

→ 10+ decent-sized clients
→ A pipeline strong enough that losing 5 won't break you

Then start thinking about bringing someone in-house.

Because the worst position to be in? Paying a six-figure salary while your media buyer sits at 50% capacity because you lost a few accounts.

Build the business great talent wants to join first.

The right people will follow.

Agency owners don't need more promises.

They need proof.

Here's what our partners said this week 👇

Ask 5 agencies what a "media buyer" does.  

You'll get 5 different answers.

At some agencies, media buyers manage millions in ad spend without touching a single creative.

At others, they're basically creative strategists — spending 90% of their time on new ads (like ours).

At others, they're client-facing growth strategists who own the entire funnel.

Same title. Completely different jobs.

After placing dozens of media buyers, here's what I've noticed:

The bigger the client, the more specialized the role needs to be.

Enterprise brands want someone who does one thing extremely well. Smaller brands want someone who can do it all — not just run ads, but actually grow the business.

Neither is wrong. 

But if you're unclear on which one you need, you'll hire the wrong person. 

And that's an expensive mistake.

At Haven, before we even sign a contract for placement, we run an extensive intake form to get 100% clear on who we're looking for.

Some of the questions we ask:

→ Does the media buyer need to be on client calls? 
→ What platforms do they need to be expert in? 
→ What industries or niches? 
→ Do they touch creatives or not?
→ How much ad spend will they manage monthly?

The clearer we get upfront, the better the match.

P.S. If you're hiring media buyers in Q1, we have a few spots left.

🚀 December 2025 results at Haven (our biggest month ever)

Ad spend: $1.7M
Revenue: $4.2M
Leads generated: 85,692

Top-performing niches:
→ Apparel & Accessories ($1.9M in rev)
→ Home & Lifestyle ($680K in rev)
→ Food & Beverage ($520K in rev)

Platform breakdown:
→ Meta: 54%
→ Google: 44%
→ Pinterest, LinkedIn, Taboola: 2%

December highlights:
✅ 83% of accounts hit or exceeded targets
✅ Closed 3 media buyer placement contracts
✅ Built a first version of our AI media buying copilot
✅ Hired a new pod leader 
✅ Wrapped up the year with 87 active accounts

But the biggest win? We've assembled a killer team of media buyers.

Took 7 years to build this crew for Haven and Adtribe.  

Now we do it for other agencies too.  

P.S. If you need media buyers who actually deliver, DM me.

The most boring client we ever had made us the most money.

I'm talking about a network of men's health clinics.

→ One offer
→ Same creatives
→ Just different locations

One media buyer managed 30-40 accounts by copy-pasting campaigns.

Boring as hell, but we were printing cash. Both the agency and the media buyer (we pay a % of revenue generated).

Now compare that to a 7-figure DTC brand.

→ New creatives every week
→ Constant testing 
→ Strategy calls
→ Slack messages at all hours

You give it ten times the effort, and results still aren't guaranteed.

Is it more interesting to work on a challenging DTC account than running Meta lead forms for a local business? Absolutely.

But here's the thing. Every exciting project comes with a hidden cost: your time.

You overinvest. You obsess over details. You give it way more than the retainer covers. And it kills your margins.

Agencies making real money aren't chasing the coolest brands. They're running the same boring playbook over and over again.

So ask yourself: 

Are you building a fun business or a profitable one?

Because in my experience, it's really hard to do both.

We just moved every account we’ve ever worked with into Airtable.

All of them.

621 accounts over 7 years. 

That's 621 onboardings.
621 founders. 
621 different business models and niches.

Some stayed for months. Some for years. Some came back twice.

Every single one taught us something.  

What works. What doesn't. What kills accounts. What scales them.  

You can't fake 7 years of reps.

P.S. If you're an agency owner looking for media buyers who've seen it all, DM me.

Marketing is just the game of impressions.

Businesses that serve the most impressions to the right people win the market.

That's it.

Every tactic, every hack, every "secret strategy" is just a way to get more eyeballs on your offer and make more of them buy.

SEO? Impressions.
Paid ads? Impressions.
LinkedIn content? Impressions.
Email/SMS? Impressions.
Influencer marketing? Impressions.

The channel doesn't matter. The math is the same.

More people see your offer → more people buy.

Shopify recently released 150+ updates.

One of them will change how people shop online.

It's called Agentic Storefronts.

This feature allows brands to sell products directly inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot.

Think about what this means.

People are already asking ChatGPT "what's the best running shoe for flat feet" instead of Googling it.  

Now they can buy right there in the conversation without leaving the chat.

No ads. No landing pages.

For the last 20 years, ecommerce worked like this:

Search → click → website → convince → buy.

Now it’s becoming:

Ask → decide → buy.

Your storefront is no longer just a website.

My prediction: websites will become almost like a business card. Most commerce will happen directly in chats or on social.

Two things brands can do right now:  

→ optimize your product catalog mapping so AI agents know how to present your products in searches 

→ use the Knowledge Base app to add answers to your most frequent questions

The new era of commerce is already here.  

Brands that adapt fast win. The rest get left behind.

I started a newsletter with zero strategy.

No content calendar. No lead magnet. No "10x your agency" promises.

Just me every week sharing what's actually happening in my life: agency stuff, travel stories, random thoughts.

Last week I wrote about my trip to Vietnam and how we're rebuilding our internal systems to run Haven more like an ecom platform than a traditional agency.

I treat it more like writing updates to my friends. 

And agency owners are liking it 👇

→ "I just opened your latest email and it blew my mind"
→ "It's very informative, please keep them coming"
→ "I'm really inspired by your recent newsletter"

My last newsletter had 46.2% open rate.

Not bad for something with "zero strategy."

If you want to hear what's going on behind the scenes at Haven, the good and the ugly of running an agency, subscribe.

Link in comments.

One change saved our team 10 hours a week.

The last few months at Haven have been busy. We signed a few new partners, and our team is now doing 3–5 account audits every week.

Great problem to have. But it created a new one.

Our team leads were spending hours on Slack every day. Partner requests, audit coordination, invoicing follow-ups. The back-and-forth was eating into actual work time.

That's not sustainable.

So we're making a shift.

My long-term vision for Haven is to operate more like a platform than a traditional agency. Less Slack chaos, more deep work that actually moves the needle.

First process we're fixing: audits.

Before:

→ Partner messages us on Slack
→ We gather context and access
→ Team leads coordinate the work
→ Someone has to remember to send an invoice

It worked, but coordination was taking longer than the audits themselves.

So we automated the entire intake process.

Here's how it works now: 

→ Partner submits a simple form 
→ Chooses platform, adds context, pays upfront 
→ System auto-notifies the team on Slack 
→ Task gets created in Asana automatically

I estimate this one change alone will save our team leads 10 hours per week, which is huge.

That's time they can spend on strategy and results instead of chasing invoices.

Audits are just the start. Onboarding new accounts is next 💪

Which tequila shot got you drunk?

My client asked me why attribution is so hard. Since she's not technical, I gave her this analogy (not my idea):

Imagine you're at a bar with friends doing tequila shots.

You get wasted.

So the question is: which shot got you drunk?

→ The last one? That's last-click attribution.
→ The decision to do shots in the first place? That's first-click.
→ Every shot contributed equally? That's linear attribution.

Same thing with marketing.

There are tools that claim to solve this, but here's my honest take:

Consumer behavior is too complex. Knowing exactly which ad made someone buy is almost impossible.

Someone sees your Meta ad Monday. Googles you Wednesday. Clicks an email Friday. Buys Saturday after a friend mentions your brand.

Which one gets credit?

The real answer: stop chasing perfect attribution.

Instead, use a combination of:

→ Blended ROAS (MER) across all channels
→ Post-purchase surveys
→ Multi-touch attribution tools (Triple Whale, Northbeam)

Even then, data won’t give you the full answer.

Experience and judgment still make the final call.

Helping Founders Break the $10M Ceiling | Strategy, Cash Flow & Leadership Systems | Scaling CFO

I help founders simplify scaling.

You started your business. You pushed past $1M. Now you're stuck somewhere between $3M and $10M, working harder than ever but not moving faster.

The problem isn't effort. It's complexity.

Too many priorities competing for attention. Financials that don't tell you what to do next. A team that still needs you for everything. Growth that feels like grinding instead of building.
I fix that.

I'm Cruz Gamboa, founder of Ascend Growth Ventures. I combine Scaling Up methodology with CFO-level financial clarity to help founders cut through the noise and scale with confidence.

Before this, I spent 25 years in corporate finance - including Regional CFO at GE and strategic finance leadership at GE Capital. I've seen what works at scale. Now I bring that to founders building something that matters.

I work best with CEOs in professional services, coaching, SaaS, and service-based businesses who are ready to scale profitably without burning out.

One conversation can change your trajectory: calendly.com/cruzagamboa/call-with-cruz-ascend-30min

Cruz Gamboa

Scaling isn’t about being nice.
It’s about being clean.

Clean with roles.
Clean with standards.
Clean with truth.

You don’t fire people.
You outgrow misalignment.

As the Netflix CEO puts it:

“If I wouldn’t fight to keep you, I owe you honesty—and a generous exit.”

Not because someone failed.
But because one of three things is true:
•	The role evolved faster than the person
•	The seat was wrong from the start
•	The bar moved—and the company didn’t move it back

High-performing companies don’t drag this out.
They decide early and act with dignity.

No drama.
No ego.
No moral stories.

Just:
•	Radical clarity
•	Respectful exits
•	Fair severance
•	Clean energy left behind

Dragging misalignment is the real cruelty.
Clarity is the kindness.

Scaling isn’t loyalty to individuals.
It’s loyalty to the mission, the team, and the future.

Right people.
Right seats.
Right standards.

And when someone no longer fits?
You don’t shame them.
You set them free.

If you want to scale, stop managing discomfort.
Start architecting teams.

Managers hesitate.
Leaders make room.

#scalingup #founders #growth #ceo

Most businesses don’t fail because they’re bad.

They fail because they’re trying to be someone else.

Burger King copied McDonald’s for 30 years.
Same audience.
Same positioning.
Same “family-friendly” nonsense.

And they kept losing.

Because you can’t beat the market leader
by playing their game better than them.

By 2004, Burger King was dying.
So they asked the only question that actually matters:

“Who is already buying from us?”

Not who they *wanted*.
Not who looked good in presentations.

The truth.

The answer?
Men aged 18–34.
Heavy fast-food users.
People who came back again and again.

And those customers didn’t want:

➡️ Safe
➡️ Cute
➡️ Corporate

They wanted:

➡️ Flame-grilled food
➡️ Control
➡️ Edge
➡️ Personality

So Burger King stopped pretending.

They brought back “Have It Your Way.”
Not as a slogan.
As a strategy.

They built everything around that one customer.

Marketing got bold.
Messaging got raw.
Campaigns got polarizing.

Subservient Chicken.
Whopper Freakout.

Not for everyone.
Exactly the point.

What happened next?

Same-store sales jumped.
Franchises grew.
And net income increased 2860% in three years.

That’s not a pivot.
That’s a resurrection.

Burger King didn’t beat McDonald’s.

They sidestepped them.

McDonald’s owned families.
Burger King owned young men who wanted control.

Different customer.
Different lane.
No direct competition.

Here’s the real lesson:

If you try to serve everyone,
you get ignored by everyone.

The fastest way to grow isn’t copying the leader.

It’s finding the customer they don’t care about
and building obsessively for them.

Specific beats broad.
Always.

#ceo #founder #growth

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Most businesses don’t fail from lack of effort.

They fail from listening to themselves instead of the market.

Dunkin didn’t pivot loudly.

They pivoted quietly by watching what people kept paying for. 

Then they let the data rewrite their identity.

That’s the real upgrade:
✅ Feelings → Facts
✅ Ego → Evidence
✅ deas → Income that repeats

The market is always talking.

Your sales are the language.

So here’s the uncomfortable check:
What do people come back for again and again?

And are you building more of that… or still pitching what you’re emotionally attached to?
#scalingup #CEO #founder #growth

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cruzgamboadrive

patagonia-solar-llc

Your First Product Is Not Your Last

The first $5M? Brutal.
The next $5M? Still hard.
After $10M? Growth accelerates.

Here’s the scaling truth Kevin O’Leary calls out:

The first $5M is about survival. You’re learning how to deploy capital, take smart risks, and build systems that work. 

Most entrepreneurs quit here.

The next $5M? 

Execution matters. You’ve survived the grind, learned what works, and can now scale with confidence. Decisions compound. Efficiency improves. Strategy becomes your edge.

Beyond $10M? You’re playing a different game. Capital works for you, not the other way around. Systems, processes, and disciplined execution create leverage.

Lesson: 

Wealth and business scales the same way. 

Master the first phase. 
Build discipline. 
Then scale.
#scalingup #founder #growth #ceo

Bill Gates could have flown First Class every day or flown on his own plane, even as a billionaire, 

But he chose to fly Economy until around 1997.

Why?

Because it wasn’t worth the money.

Same plane.
Same arrival time.
5× the cost for a tiny upgrade.

That’s how smart people think about scale.

Most people make money and immediately upgrade their lifestyle.

Smart operators upgrade what makes money.

More spending doesn’t equal more growth.
It usually equals more noise.

When you’re scaling, ask one question:
👉 Does this change the outcome?

If it doesn’t:
Cut it.

A fancy office doesn’t increase revenue.
A luxury car doesn’t improve execution.
Premium tools don’t fix broken systems.

Wealth has one real job:
Buy back your time.

Once you have enough, the goal isn’t more stuff.
It’s fewer constraints.

Less distraction.
More focus.
More leverage.

Scale isn’t about looking successful.
It’s about building something that works without you.

That’s real wealth.
#scalingup #ceo #growth #founder

He was 78 years old
…when he launched a vodka brand
…with no distillery
…in an industry that laughed at him

Sidney Frank.
The man behind Grey Goose.

No product breakthrough.
No secret formula.
No startup hype.

Just one insight most people missed:
People don’t buy vodka. They buy status.

Sidney didn’t make better vodka.
He made a better story.

France on the label.
Luxury in the bottle design.
A price so high it forced belief.

While others chased volume,
he chased perception.

He didn’t market to the masses.
He placed Grey Goose in elite bars first.
When bartenders poured it,
the world followed.

He moved slowly.
Protected exclusivity.
Ignored trends.

8 years later:
➡ Grey Goose became the default “premium vodka”
➡ Competitors copied the look
➡ Bacardi paid $2.3 BILLION

No overnight success.
Just disciplined positioning.

Lesson most builders miss:
Innovation gets attention.
Positioning creates power.

Experience didn’t slow him down.
It sharpened him.

Long vision.
Clear narrative.
Unshakeable belief.

#founders #scalingup #businessstrategy #longtermthinking

Most people think Starbucks’ rewards program is about free coffee.

It isn’t.

It’s about cash flow.

Starbucks Rewards is not a loyalty perk.
It’s a prepaid deposit system.

When a customer loads money into the app, Starbucks gets paid before any coffee is made.
Accounting-wise, that money sits as deferred revenue.

But operationally?
It’s usable cash.

That’s the move.

Instead of waiting for daily transactions, Starbucks created a system where millions of customers fund operations in advance.

No interest.
No bank fees.
No dilution.
No debt.

Every preload improves:
✅ Working capital
✅ Liquidity
✅ Balance sheet strength

And Starbucks holds that cash until the customer redeems it.

Some never do.

Unused balances.
Forgotten cards.
Abandoned apps.

That “breakage” flows straight to profit.

Multiply this behavior across ~29 million users and you don’t have a rewards program anymore.

You have a deposit base.

This is why Starbucks scales so efficiently:
▶ Stores expand faster
▶ Cash flow stays predictable
▶ Capital stress stays low

They didn’t out-market competitors.
They re-engineered when money moves.

The lesson:-

Growth isn’t always about selling more.
Sometimes it’s about getting paid earlier.

Starbucks didn’t build loyalty.
They built a financial engine and wrapped it in a green apron.#ceo #scalingup #growth #ceo #founder

Most companies scale faster by cutting people.
Publix scaled stronger by owning the opposite.

95 years. Zero layoffs.
Not luck. Not culture posters.
A Scaling Up system done right.

➡ Promote from within
➡ Clear succession planning
➡ Everyone thinks like an owner
➡ Leaders built, not bought
➡ Long-term value over short-term savings

When people own the outcome, execution compounds.
When leadership is grown internally, trust scales.

This isn’t a feel-good story.
This strategy may not be your strategy. 
For Publix, It’s a people strategy that beat Walmart.

You have to find what it's true for your company. 

Scale isn’t about size.
It’s about who owns the results.

#scalingup #growth #CEO

No Layoffs?

ADIDAS LOST €1.5 BILLION.
NOT TO NIKE.
NOT TO THE MARKET.
BUT TO ITS OWN BUREAUCRACY.

January 2023:
Dead Yeezy stock.
First loss since 1992.
Slow teams. Scared decisions. Broken speed.

9 months later?
Profitable. Faster. Sharper. Beating Nike.

The turnaround wasn’t magic.
It was leadership.

One CEO did 3 things most companies avoid:
→ Cut layers
→ Killed approvals
→ Simplified what already worked

No hype.
No noise.
Just speed, clarity, and conviction.

Big lesson:
You don’t lose because you’re small.
You lose because you’re slow.

Sometimes the fix isn’t more strategy.
It’s less nonsense.

#scalingup #CEO #founders #growth

ADIDAS Story

He didn’t fail for 10 years.
The market just wasn’t ready yet.

Hwang Dong-Hyuk sold his $675 laptop to buy food.
Lived with his grandmother.
Got rejected for a decade.

Studios said:

➡️ Too weird
➡️ Too violent
➡️ Not commercial
➡️ Too complex

Same script.
Same idea.
Same “no”.

Here’s the part most people miss 👇

This wasn’t a talent problem.
It was a timing + distribution problem.

He had the product early.
The market came late.

In 2018, Netflix expands globally.
Needs bold, non-safe content.
Needs local stories with global emotion.

One exec reads the script and says:
“This is exactly what we need.”

$21.4M invested.
Zero marketing push.
No homepage love.

Result?

✓ #1 in 94 countries
✓ 1.65B viewing hours
✓ $900M+ value created
✓ Best ROI in Netflix history

Scaling lesson most founders ignore:

Great ideas don’t die.
They wait.

If you’re early:
Don’t dilute the vision to get small yeses.
Build proof elsewhere.
Survive long enough to meet the right platform.

Scaling isn’t about changing your idea.

It’s about finding the right leverage.

One right distributor > 1,000 wrong pitches.

Ten years of “weird”
became a global empire.

Sometimes the world just isn’t ready yet.

Stay in the game long enough… and it will be.
#scalingup #founderstories #growth #CEO

The World Isnt Ready

Growth without cash flow is just noise. 📉
Dives deeper into why founders who master cash strategy scale faster, stay resilient, and win long term.

Full Cash Is King podcast episode premiering Friday 🚀

🔔 Turn on notifications so you don’t miss the next clips—and the full conversation.

👉 Set your reminder & watch the premiere here:
https://lnkd.in/eBnXhnie

#CashIsKing #DevinSizemore #PodcastShorts #BusinessPodcast
#CashFlowManagement #ScalingBusiness #FounderMindset
#SustainableGrowth #WealthStrategy #EntrepreneurLife
#YouTubePremiere #PodcastReels

GIANTS don’t fall overnight.
They fall one comfortable decision at a time.

They built the category.
Owned the market.
Had money, talent, and trust.

Then they did one thing wrong 👇
They stopped adapting.

Motorola. 
Intel. 
Netscape. 
Borders.

Not stupid.
Not unlucky.
Just late.

The market doesn’t punish failure.
It punishes complacency.

Scroll through this carousel if you want a reminder of one brutal truth:
➡️ Past success is not future security.
➡️ Comfort is more dangerous than competition.
➡️ If you’re not improving, someone else is preparing to replace you.

Stay hungry.
Or become a case study.
#SCALINGUP #CEO #FOUNDER #GROWTH

CRITICAL MISTAKES

Most people don’t need a new year.

They need a new operating system.

2026 won’t reward louder marketing, more hustle, or more tools.
It will reward founders who build clarity early and compound it fast.

What I’m seeing with founders between $3M–$10M is consistent:
• When financial visibility improves, decisions slow down in the right way
• Leadership shifts from reactive to intentional
• Teams stop guessing and start executing
• Growth becomes calmer, not heavier

Breakthroughs rarely come from doing more.
They come from removing noise and tightening the system.
That’s the mindset I’m taking into 2026.

Less chaos. More leverage. Fewer moves. Better ones.

If you’re also thinking about how you want to operate differently next year, I wrote a short piece on what actually creates momentum at this stage.

DM me or write "2026", and I will share the memo I wrote for my clients and friends with you.

#ceo #founder #scalingup

He refused to touch a $1.50 hot dog, and it helped build a ~$250B business.

Jim Sinegal.
Costco co-founder.

Inflation hit.
Costs rose.
Wall Street pushed the obvious move:

“Raise prices.”

Jim’s response was blunt:

“If you raise the price of the hot dog, you’re done.”

No slides.
No consultants.
No narrative gymnastics.

Just a rule.

So Costco did what most companies won’t:

They redesigned the system.
* Built their own production capacity
* Reduced supplier dependency
* Ruthlessly simplified SKUs
* Absorbed costs where trust mattered most

Instead of passing pain to customers, they owned it.

While others:
→ Blamed inflation
→ Shrunk products
→ Optimized short-term margins

Costco:
→ Held the line on iconic prices
→ Added ~5M new member households
→ Sustained ~92% renewal rates
→ Scaled to ~$250B in annual revenue

Here’s the part most founders miss:

They weren’t protecting a hot dog.

They were protecting trust.

And trust compounds faster than margins ever will.

Most companies raise prices to survive.
Strong companies redesign economics so prices don’t have to.

Boring moves.
Brutal discipline.
Unfair long-term advantage.

So what’s the one price, promise, or principle in your business that you refuse to break, no matter the pressure?

#scalingup #founders #leadership #pricing #ceo

A Sony engineer watched his daughter play Nintendo in 1984 and thought “the sound on this thing is garbage.”

Ken Kutaragi secretly built a better chip and gave it to Nintendo. Sony almost fired him for it.

Then he convinced Sony to partner with Nintendo on a CD-ROM console called the “Play Station.”

June 1991. Sony announces the partnership at CES.

Next morning? Nintendo takes the same stage and dumps Sony for Philips.

Sony’s board wanted to quit gaming entirely. Called it a “toy business.”

Kutaragi stormed into the president’s office. “Are you going to be a laughing stock to Nintendo for the rest of your life?”

The president’s response: “Just do it.”

They had to exile Kutaragi’s team to Sony Music because headquarters refused to house the project.

Then Kutaragi pitched Sega on a joint console. Their board laughed: “That’s a stupid idea. Sony doesn’t know how to make hardware.”

Betrayed by Nintendo. Rejected by Sega. Nearly killed by his own company.

December 1994. PlayStation launches. 100,000 units sold day one.
At E3, Sega announced the Saturn at $399. Sony’s Steve Race walked to the mic, said “$299,” and walked off. Standing ovation.

By 1998, PlayStation was 40% of Sony’s total profit. 563 million PlayStations sold across all generations. The PS2 is still the best-selling console ever.
The prototype’s codename? “PS-X.” Everyone knew the X was a reminder of who crossed them.

Most founders think this is a story about revenge. It’s not.
Kutaragi’s biggest fight wasn’t Nintendo or Sega. It was his own organization that thought the vision was beneath them.

That’s usually the real constraint. Not your competition. The blind spots inside your own company that nobody’s willing to name.

#scalingup #founder #ceo #growth

In 1997, Jeff Bezos was stressed for all the right reasons.

Amazon was losing money.
Online retail wasn’t proven.
Most investors thought he was wrong.

Here’s the part people miss:

Stress doesn’t come from working hard.
It comes from knowing what to do and not doing it.

So Bezos acted.
Packed boxes himself.
Made the calls.
Shipped anyway.

No fancy office.
A door for a desk.
A Honda Accord in the parking lot.

Fast forward to amazon have $2.6 TRILLION market cap.

Lessons for founders:

▶️ Action kills anxiety
▶️ Clarity is earned through execution
▶️ Fancy setups don’t build big companies
▶️ Ignore opinions, obey the math
▶️ The long game compounds quietly

If something is stressing you out right now,
it’s probably your to-do list calling you out.

#scalingup #founder #ceo #growth

If everything is a priority, nothing scales.

That’s why most companies don’t stall from lack of ideas.
They stall from lack of focus.

The Power of One fixes that brutally fast.

Here’s the rule:

At every level of the business, there is ONE thing that matters more than everything else.

Not a vision board.
Not 12 KPIs.
One outcome that moves the needle now.

Company:
→ One #1 priority for the quarter that makes growth unavoidable.

Leaders:
→ One measurable result they own. No hiding. No excuses.

Teams:
→ One clear objective that directly supports the company's priority.

Individuals:
→ One commitment that, if done daily, makes execution inevitable.

Why this works (and why most won’t do it):

➡️ Focus beats intelligence
➡️ Clarity beats motivation
➡️ Ownership beats meetings
➡️ Execution beats strategy decks

Scaling isn’t about adding more people, more tools, or more plans.

It’s about removing everything that doesn’t matter
until what’s left cannot fail.

That’s the Power of One.

What is the one thing in your business that is calling for your full dedicated attention?

What are the things you are willing to pause so that you can fix it and remove the constraint?

#scaling #founders #growth #ceo

This is Why Companies Fail

Most founders do not have a growth problem.

They have a strategy stacking problem.

That is what the 7 Strata of Strategy solves.

It is a framework created by Verne Harnish to force clarity on the 7 layers that actually drive scale, profitability, and differentiation.

Not vision statements.
 Not buzzwords.
 Real strategic leverage.

What is the 7 Strata?

A practical checklist for building a strategy that compounds.

It answers one question:

“Why should the right customer choose you, pay you more, and stay longer?”

When to use it

Use the 7 Strata when:
• Revenue has stalled between $3M to $10M
 • Sales feels harder than it should
 • Margins are thin
 • Marketing sounds generic
 • The team cannot clearly explain why you win
 • You are scaling but complexity is rising faster than profit

It is especially powerful during:
• Annual planning
 • Strategy resets
 • Go-to-market changes
 • Repositioning
 • Pre-scale phase

What each Stratum means

Words You Own
 The category in the customer’s mind.
 If you do not define it, the market will.

Sandbox
 Who you serve and where you win.
 Focus creates power.

Brand Promise
 The measurable result customers can expect.

Brand Promise Guarantee
 How you reduce risk and increase trust.

Differentiating Activities (3 to 5)
 What you do differently that competitors cannot easily copy.

X-Factor
 Your 10x to 100x structural advantage.
 Process, data, network, cost, or ecosystem.

Profit per X + BHAG
 Your economic engine and long-term target.

This is where strategy meets money.

Why 7 Strata?

Because advantage is layered.

Most companies operate with 2 or 3 layers.

Strong companies stack all 7.

Each layer multiplies the others:

Positioning
 → Focus
 → Trust
 → Differentiation
 → Structural advantage
 → Profit engine
 → Long-term dominance

Miss one, and growth leaks.

The founder truth

If your strategy cannot be explained on one page, it cannot scale.

Clarity is not a branding exercise.
 It is a profit lever.

If you are operating between $3M to $10M and growth feels heavier every year, your next breakthrough is probably not more hustle.

It is a sharper stack.

If you want, I can share the worksheet I use with founders to map this in under 60 minutes.

Just DM SEVEN

#scaling #growth #CEO #founder

Cash flow isn’t optional—it’s the #1 rule behind sustainable business growth 💸
In this episode, Devin Sizemore breaks down how smart cash strategy fuels scale, stability, and long-term success.

Full podcast episode premiering 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗝𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝟮𝟯𝗿𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝟳𝗔𝗠 𝗘𝗦𝗧 🚀

🔔 Turn on notifications so you don’t miss the next reels and the full episode.

👉 Set your reminder & watch the premiere here:
https://lnkd.in/eBnXhnie

#CashIsKing #DevinSizemore #BusinessPodcast #PodcastReels
#CashFlow #EntrepreneurMindset #ScalingBusiness #FounderTalk
#SustainableGrowth #WealthStrategy #StartupGrowth

Most founders brag about revenue.

That’s a mistake.

I’ve seen companies doing millions a year…
and the owner is still stressed, still stuck, still one bad month away from panic.

Why?

Because revenue doesn’t buy freedom.
Profit does.

More revenue without profit just gives you:

• More people
• More complexity
• More risk
• Same lifestyle

That’s not growth.
That’s leverage working against you.

Here’s the truth:

Growth does not start with selling more.
It starts with a profitable system.

There are only 3 levers that matter:

1. Price – Are you charging what it’s worth?

2. Volume – Are these the right customers?

3. Cost – Are you efficient without breaking delivery?

Everything else is noise.

Fix those three, and profit shows up.

Profit gives you:

➡️ Margin for mistakes
➡️ Proof the model works
➡️ Room to breathe

Profit turns into cash.

Cash pays the team.
Cash pays you.
Cash funds growth without stress.

Then you reinvest:
Better people.
Better systems.
Better clients.

That feeds the engine.

The engine creates more profit.

And now growth funds itself.

Stop asking:
❌ “How do we get more revenue?”

Start asking:
✅ “How do we make this system more profitable?”

Revenue is movement.
Profit is power.

If your business feels fragile, it’s because it is.

Fix the system.
The money follows.

Are you focused on more revenues or more profit in your business?  What would your business look like if you had more profit with the same amount of revenue?

#scalingup #growth #Ceo #founder

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