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

I'm running two marketing agencies full-time.

These 7 tools generate 20-30 qualified calls every single month:

1/ HeyReach

Sends 30-40 connection requests daily to agency owners.
Acceptance rate: 42%. Reply rate: 14%.
Gets me in front of 200+ decision makers weekly.

2/ Clay

Enriches every lead with company data before I reach out. 
Tells me their employee count, estimated revenue, tech stack. 
I know if they need help before they know it themselves.

3/ Unipile

We run LinkedIn outbound from 7 team member profiles. 
Unipile manages all conversations in one inbox. 
No more account switching.

4/ N8N

My SDR loves n8n.
We automated everything from intent signals to data cleanup to routing warm leads into our CRM.
Zero manual work.

5/ Smartlead

Cold email on steroids.
Warms up 10 email accounts. Sends 300 emails daily.
Gets me in front of agencies not active on LinkedIn.

6/ RapidAPI

Pulls LinkedIn data straight into my CRM.
Shows me who viewed my posts, who engaged, who is quietly checking my profile.
Perfect timing for warm outreach.

7/ Folk CRM

Tracks every prospect from first touch to placement.
One dashboard shows pipeline value, conversion rates, follow-ups needed.
My close rate jumped from 20% to 45% once I could see patterns.

These tools run 24/7. 
All I do is show up to calls.

Total monthly cost: $847/month

What sales tools are actually moving the needle for you?
👇 Share below.

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

7 sales tools

When I started my first agency in 2018, I made a huge mistake.

I hired full-time employees way too early.

At the time, I had only one year of media buying experience and was managing 15 clients as a freelancer.

I decided it was time to build something bigger than myself and start an agency.

Over the next 6 months I hired:

→ 6 full-time media buyers
→ 1 social media manager
→ 1 part-time developer

On the outside, it looked like I made it.

Big team. Cool office. Friday parties.

The reality?

I was maxing out credit cards to pay salaries.

My lead flow was inconsistent, so most media buyers were operating at half capacity.

Our service quality was mediocre because I had no hiring or training process.

Client churn was high.

Then Covid hit and I had to let go most of the team and cut all bonuses for the rest.

It was rough.

Looking back, I made my life much harder than it needed to be.

If I had to do it again, I would:

→ Stay a freelancer longer and save more money
→ Keep raising prices until I had 10 solid clients
→ Outsource some clients to a contractor or a white label partner like Haven
→ Hire a full time media buyer only when their salary is no more than 25% of agency revenue

The lesson?

You don’t need a big team to build a real business.

You need a good offer, a good lead flow, and a fulfillment partner you can rely on.

Agency life is already hard.

Don’t make it harder.

We will hire a vetted offshore media buyer for your agency in under 30 days or you don’t pay.

Over the last 7 years, we’ve hired and trained 50+ media buyers for my two agencies, AdTribe and Haven.

Most of our talent comes from Ukraine and Eastern Europe. They work hard, learn fast, and know the platforms inside out.

It has been my secret weapon.

A few months ago, an agency owner DM’d me asking if we could hire and train a media buyer for his agency.

That one message turned into our Media Buyer Placement Offer. 

Since then, demand exploded.
We even brought on a full-time recruiter to increase our hiring capacity.

Here’s what agencies get when they work with us:

✅ World-class offshore talent with real platform depth
✅ Every candidate is vetted by our Head of Paid Media
✅ 90-day replacement guarantee
✅ Additional support and access to our SOPs

Keep in mind, this is not our main focus. 

We still hire and manage our own internal team of media buyers running ads for 90+ accounts.

So we only take up to 5 placements per month.

If you’re hiring in the next 60 days, DM me.

We've rebuilt our media buyer compensation system 6 times in 7 years.

Here's the full evolution:

↳ 2018: Tiny base, no bonus

Started my first agency with no money. Hired juniors who'd never heard of marketing and taught them Facebook ads.

My current Head of Paid Media started at $500/month.

↳ 2019-2020: Higher base + fixed bonus

Fixed bonus per account managed.

It was simple and easy to calculate, but incentivized the wrong things: quantity over quality.

↳ 2021: Weighted bonus

Paid a consultant $3K to build the "perfect" system.

Weighted by account complexity, niche difficulty, retention metrics.

 Once we hit 50 accounts, payroll took 10 days to calculate.

It was too complex to maintain.

↳ 2022-2024: retention system + CEO bonus

Fixed bonus per account plus extra for 6+ month retention. Added "CEO bonus" for outlier accounts that were unusually demanding.

This system lasted the longest.

↳ 2025: % of rev or fixed bonus

Split the team into AdTribe and Haven. 

Media buyers who worked with direct clients earned % of revenue, media buyers who worked with agencies got fixed bonus per account. 

Couldn't generate enough volume for both. Merged them back after 6 months.

↳ 2026: Revenue share

We're changing compensation again to reflect our new pricing. 

Stay tuned.

***

After 6 iterations, what I learned is that there is no perfect system.

What works depends on your stage and who you want to attract. 

A 25-year-old takes risk for reward. A 35-year-old with a mortgage wants predictable income.

Your compensation structure IS your culture.

Choose wisely.

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." - Charlie Munger

The main thing that kills agency margins is simple:

too many managers who don’t do any billable work.

At Haven, every team lead and even our head of paid media manages at least a few strategic accounts.

Four reasons:

→ it keeps our COGS low
→ they stay sharp and keep practicing their craft
→ they actually understand what good looks like
→ fulfillment doesn’t suffer when a media buyer takes a vacation

At the end of the day, your best managers never stop being practitioners.

Otherwise, you end up building a company where managers manage managers and no one knows how to do the work.

🚀 October 2025 results at Haven

Ad spend: $1.2M
Revenue: $3.1M 
Leads generated: 91,870

Top-performing niches: 

→ Apparel & Accessories ($1.8M in rev) 
→ Home & Lifestyle ($517K in rev) 
→ Food & Beverage ($320K in rev)

Platform breakdown: 

→ Meta: 58% 
→ Google: 41% 
→ LinkedIn, TikTok, Taboola, Email: 1%

Wins this month: 

✅ 71% of accounts hit or exceeded targets
✅ Introduced a new media buyer placement offer ($12,500 in contracts closed)
✅ Onboarded a few new agencies (ecom + B2B)
✅ Team started logging all inputs in Asana
✅ Hired a new media buyer

P.S.

Q4 is almost done. 
Black Friday is around the corner. 
This is when most agencies scramble.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

At Haven, we help marketing agencies scale without the stress of hiring.

Our senior media buyers run Meta and Google ads under your brand so you can take on more clients and protect your margins.

We have one spot left to fill our 2025 capacity.

Your CAC is irrelevant.

Ask yourself:

Would you rather pay $200 to get someone who spends $500?

Or $1,000 to get someone who spends $5,000?

I had this conversation last week with one of our MedSpa clients.

We kept pushing their hangover drip because it had the lowest CAC. On the surface, it looked like the right move.

Then we dug deeper.

Hangover drip customers almost never come back. 
They buy once and disappear.

Wellness drip customers are the opposite.
They turn into long-term clients spending over $5,000 every year.

Yes, the CAC to acquire them is higher.
But the CAC to LTV ratio makes way more sense.

Lesson?

Don't just push ad spend toward the products with the lowest CAC.
Focus on the offers that attract whale customers with the highest LTV instead.

That's how you build a great business.

I used to think my main job as a founder was to hire smart people and let them cook.

Turns out, that’s only part of the equation.

Even the most talented team needs structure. Your business should run like a well-oiled machine, not depend on individual brilliance.

And that comes down to systems.

If your operations are messy, even A-players won’t save you.

From how you onboard new talent to how you define “great work,” everything needs to be documented, clear, and repeatable.

And once you set those standards, your job still isn’t done. You have to make sure everyone actually follows them.

That means meetings, reviews, accountability, and constant communication.

My point is, building an agency is hard. Very hard

It’s a never-ending cycle of winning clients, fulfilling work, hiring, and managing people.

But there’s a way to remove at least half of that stress.

👉 Hire Haven

We handle most of the client fulfillment so you can focus on growth.

And finally take a vacation without your phone blowing up.

Last week, we did an account audit for one of our agency partners.

Here’s the message they sent us after sharing it with their prospect 👇

"We had a great call yesterday evening. The prospect should be signing this week."

And this isn’t an exception.

Our audits convert over 50 percent of prospects into paying clients for our partners.

Here’s what the audit covers:

→ account structure 
→ creative strategy 
→ competitors analysis
→ website & CRO recommendations
→ a clear step by step action plan

It costs only $199.

The best part? Every new partner gets one audit for free.

DM me “audit” and I’ll send you the details.

Every agency has access to the same AI tools.

ChatGPT costs $20. Claude costs $20. Everyone can afford it.

Which means the tools themselves are not an advantage.

Knowing how to write prompts is not advantage either. 
You can literally ask ChatGPT to write the perfect prompt for you.

So what actually gives you an edge?

Data.

Data is the moat.

The more high-quality data you have, the better your AI outputs will be.

Once I realized this, we:

→ Moved all spreadsheets into Airtable 
→ Started logging every action in Asana 
→ Stored 7 years of campaign performance in our database 
→ Updated SOPs so LLMs can actually digest them 
→ Added ChatGPT to all our Slack channels
→ Saved all my LinkedIn posts and newsletters for voice training

Piece by piece, we're building our agency's second brain.

It's not sexy. 
Most people would rather build another ChatGPT wrapper that produces mediocre results.

We're aiming for excellence and willing to do the boring work.

That's what it takes to build a true AI-powered agency.

I was skimming through "Unreasonable Hospitality" the other day, and one line popped up:

"The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”

It's true in restaurants. It's even more true in agencies.

 After hiring 50+ media buyers over 7 years, I've learned the best ones are always detail-oriented and organized.

They:

→ use clean naming conventions
→ show up to meetings on time
→ never miss a deadline
→ document their tests 
→ set up campaigns without mistakes

When hiring at Haven, I look for these small signals first. Not their experience. Not their certifications. The details.

Because if someone can't follow a simple naming convention, they won't follow complex SOPs either. If they're sloppy with campaign structure, they'll be sloppy with your budget.

Excellence starts with the details.

We stopped running Haven like one big team.

Instead, we built it around pods: 
small independent teams that operate like mini agencies inside Haven.

Each pod has a team lead who acts like a CEO.

They hire their own people, manage their own mini P&L, and take full ownership of results.

It changed everything.

Before, I had to review every decision, jump into Slack threads, and fix small fires every day.

Now, team leads make decisions fast, solve problems on their own, and take full accountability for outcomes.

Each pod has its own strengths:

Pod #1 - Meta and Klaviyo 
Pod #2 - Meta and Google 
Pod #3 - Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn 

Team leads are incentivized like founders.

They earn a percentage of their pod’s profit, so when the pod wins, the whole agency wins.

Extreme ownership is how we scale without losing quality.

Each month, our media buyers review what's working across 90+ accounts.  

Here are 6 things that stood out in November:

1/ New case study for CPG

We scaled a beef jerky brand from $5k in ad spend to $25k/month at 3.0 ROAS.

 What worked:

→ BOGO offer 
→ Build your bundle LP
→ Creative diversity
→ ABO < CBO

2/ Smaller radius = higher ROI for local businesses

Wellness client kept expanding radius to get more leads. Cost per lead kept climbing.

Worse: No one drives 10+ miles for IV therapy.

We cut radius to 5 miles. 
Optimized GMB.
ROI has increased from 2.5 to 4.97

His clinic is fully booked now.

3/ Inventory kills momentum

Tableware client: $4-5K daily revenue during peak season.

Ran out of stock. Had to cut ad spend. Revenue crashed to $2K/day.

We had winning ads pulling 3.5 ROAS but nothing to sell.

Another reminder why I don't start my own ecom store 😅

4/ Excluding branded keywords backfired

Client wanted more new customers. We excluded branded keywords from PMax.

→ ROAS tanked
→ New customer rate increased only 2% 
→ Competitors started bidding on their brand

Never leave your branded search unprotected.

5/ Pmax for lead gen clients 

Most lead gen PMax campaigns fail. Google drives tons of volume, but nothing converts.

Why? You're optimizing for cheap calls, not revenue.

Solution: push offline conversion value back to ads manager

We did this for a MedSpa client and increased appointment value by 67%. 

Treat every lead gen account like ecom. 

6/ Friction kills conversions

Client's 25% off sale failed completely.  

The problem: Promo code buried in the creative. Not auto-applied at checkout.  

The fix: Code in headline + Meta's promo extension or Shopify auto-apply URLs.

Small friction = big revenue loss.

P.S.  Managing 90+ accounts means we see patterns before they become trends.  

If your agency needs media buyers who actually know what they're doing (and cost 65% less than US talent), DM me

I posted my first LinkedIn post back in 2020.

It got 6 likes.

I remember spending hours writing it and thinking it was a waste of time when I could be doing something more important.

So I stopped.

But here’s what I realized:
If I had stayed consistent, both of my agencies would probably be 3x bigger by now.

I finally started posting regularly this year.

Here's what happened:

→ my calendar got packed with leads
→ I met amazing people who became close friends
→ hiring talent became 10x easier

The math is simple:
More visibility = more opportunities.

But here's the thing most people miss: it's not about going viral.

It's about showing up consistently so the right people find you when they need you.

If you run a B2B business, LinkedIn is still the best marketing channel to go all in on.

The best time to start was 5 years ago.
The second best time is today.

We used to send 30 to 40 invoices manually every month. Now it's all done automatically in Airtable. 

Before...

...everything lived across spreadsheets and Slack messages

...invoices for small one-time projects were getting missed 

...our accountant had to log in to Stripe and send every invoice by hand

...no one really knew which invoices were already sent or still pending

In short, it was messy. 

Once we moved our entire back end to Airtable, it finally made sense to automate the whole thing.

And we did. Here's how it works now:

→ A script pulls all active accounts with the retainers we charge
→ Head of Paid Media goes through the list and approves everything
→ Agencies confirm their accounts through Airtable Interfaces
→ Airtable pushes invoices straight to Stripe through API

Now, I don’t even think about invoicing anymore (almost 😅). 

The team reviews their part, agencies confirm their active accounts, and Stripe sends everything on its own.

It finally feels like a real system instead of something I had to babysit every month.

Airtable has been our biggest operational win this year.

Super happy we made the switch.

Another week, another round of wins from our agency partners 💪

Love seeing these messages pop up in Slack.  

90+ accounts under management.  
18 agency partners. 
Wins like these every single week.  

This is why we do what we do.

Our $199 audits are closing deals for agency partners.

Here's what one of them just told us: 

"Whoever did the audit, please tell them they did a great job! I like how they incorporated infographics and embedded videos directly in the audit. Overall it was very thorough and helped me close this client."

We've done 30+ audits in the last 3 months.

They convert over 50% of prospects into paying clients.

 Here's what every audit includes:

→ Full account structure analysis 
→ Creative strategy breakdown with examples 
→ Competitor analysis with actual ad screenshots 
→ Website & CRO recommendations 
→ Step-by-step action plan for the first 90 days

After reviewing dozens of accounts, we see the same patterns:  

Most agencies are leaving money on the table with poor campaign structure. 
Creative testing is almost non-existent.
Landing pages don't match ad messaging.  

The audit shows prospects exactly what they're missing. And more importantly, how to fix it.

Price is $199. 
But every new partner gets their first audit free.

We only do 10 audits per month because our Head of Paid Media reviews each one personally.  

If you have a prospect on the fence, DM me "audit" and we'll help you close them.

When I started Haven, I wanted it to be fully productized.

Same deliverables.
Same process.
Same price

But I learned very fast that with agencies, this is not gonna work.

Every agency I talked to had its own workflow, its own reporting style, its own way of communicating with clients.

I couldn’t force them into our system, so we had to change our approach.

Now, for each agency we work with, we create a separate Notion doc:

"How to work with agency X"

Each doc covers: 

→ how they like communication
→ what reports their clients expect
→ what “good” means in their niche
→ what we need from them to do our best work

It does make our ops more complex.

Just think about it:
we are managing more than 90 accounts across 18 agency partners in multiple niches: ecommerce, home improvement, medspa, apps, coaching, and a few others.

Each agency and each niche needs a tailored way of working. There is no one-size-fits-all.

But the deeper we integrate ourselves into those agencies, the longer they stay.

We still have agencies that worked with me 7 years ago when I was a freelancer. 

And in the agency world, retention is the only thing that really matters.

If you can retain clients for years, you can always optimize your processes to improve margins.

But if you lose clients left and right, your agency will always feel like it’s on fire.

One of the most useful things I use AI for has nothing to do with writing or creative work.

Every month, I ask Claude a simple question:

“Which clients are at risk of churning?”

It analyzes our Airtable data: ROAS, retention, % of goals hit, creative performance. 

Then gives us a breakdown like this:

🔴 High-risk clients
🟠 Medium-risk clients
🟢 Stable clients

My head of paid media and I review it together.

We use it to:

→ Spot accounts that need attention
→ Identify patterns across underperforming campaigns
→ And plan cash flow accordingly

Instead of waiting for clients to Slack me “hey, can we hop on a call?”, we reach out first. 

We flag the performance concern and bring solutions before they have to ask.

Most people use AI to write posts or make funny videos with Sora.

But the real unlock is data analysis.

What used to take hours in spreadsheets now takes 30 seconds.

How are you using AI in your agency?

Another week, another round of wins from our agency partners 😊

Strategy & Finance Executive | Scaling Impact-Driven Companies Beyond $10M | Strategic CFO | Certified Scaling Up Advisor

Scaling Founders Beyond $10M with Strategy, Financial Clarity, and Leadership Expansion

Most companies stall not because of lack of effort—
but because the founder has outgrown the systems, strategies, and financial models that once worked.

At Ascend Growth Ventures, we partner with CEOs of $3M–$10M companies to implement Scaling Up, strengthen financial infrastructure, and elevate leadership teams—building businesses that scale profitably and predictably, without burning out the founder.

By integrating Scaling Up, Exponential Organizations, and CFO-level financial insights, we deliver a complete, battle-tested system for sustainable, high-performance growth.

🔹 We Work With CEOs Who Want To:
✔️ Scale revenue and profits without chaos
✔️ Build self-managing leadership teams
✔️ Unlock hidden cash flow and improve financial decision-making
✔️ Sharpen their strategy for exponential growth
✔️ Prepare for capital raises, acquisitions, or exits

🔹 Our Core Focus Areas:
  * Strategic Scaling Up Implementation

  * Financial Strategy & Cash Optimization

  * Leadership Team Development

  * Systems for Predictable Growth

  * Valuation Prep and Exit Strategy

✅ Why Work With Me?
25+ years of experience scaling businesses from the inside out:
➡️ Regional CFO, GE Gas Power (LATAM, +1.5GW record year)
➡️ Strategic finance and underwriting leadership at GE Capital
➡️ Business/project development for 8-figure ventures
➡️ Trusted advisor to founders scaling past $10M and beyond

✅ Industries We Specialize In:
✔️ Clean Energy & Decarbonization
✔️ Industrial Goods & B2B Services
✔️ Impact-Driven Companies
✔️ Scaling Coaching & Consulting Firms

🧠 If You're Ready to Scale Intelligently and Sustainably

Let's have a strategic conversation about where you are—and where you can go.

Easiest way to work with me?

Book a private power hour call and let's create your vision.
https://calendly.com/cruzagamboa/90-min-power-hour

Cruz Gamboa

The market tells stories. Your financials & metrics tell truth.

In 2001, Amazon's stock cratered from $113 to $6.

Wall Street declared it dead.

Let's be clear: that had to be terrifying. Even for Bezos.

Watching 95% of your valuation evaporate. Hearing the whispers. Feeling the pressure from every direction.

But here's what separated him from founders who fold in those moments, he kept coming back to his dashboard:

Customer acquisition costs...improving. 

Fulfillment efficiency...improving. 

Contribution margin per unit...improving. 

Defect rates...declining.

The stock price reflected fear. 

The operating metrics reflected reality.

Confidence isn't the absence of fear. It's choosing to trust what you can measure over what you can't control.

This is Financial Intelligence: knowing which numbers actually predict your future, especially when everything around you is screaming that you're losing.

Watch the video. Bezos is calm. 

Not because he wasn't scared, but because he had clarity.

He knew exactly what was true inside his business.

That's how you survive what looks like a reversal, and come out the other side stronger.

That's how $6 becomes $1.7 trillion.

So here's my question for you:

What would it be worth to have that kind of clarity the next time everything feels like it's falling apart?

To know—not hope, not guess—that you're on the right track?

That's the game worth playing.

Check out comments for details

#founder #growth #ceo #scalingup

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

𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀.

Hamdi Ulukaya didn’t just build a yogurt brand, he redefined an industry.

No investors. No marketing budget. Just purpose, grit, and belief.

In 2005, he saw an ad.
An abandoned Kraft yogurt factory.

Everyone saw a money pit.
He saw possibility.

He didn’t have the money.
So he took a loan.

Bought the factory.
Kept 5 employees who believed when no one else did.

No income.
No sales.
No marketing.
Just faith, and a recipe from home.

Two years later, in 2007, Chobani was born.

No ads. Just bold packaging and pure taste.

Retailers hesitated.
But the people loved it.

Within 5 years, #1 yogurt in America.

Over $1B in sales.
The giants, Dannon, Yoplait, couldn’t catch up.

He stayed private.
Gave 10% of the company to his employees.

Hired refugees.
Put people before profit.

When asked why, he said:

👉 “Business is the strongest force for good, if it puts people first.”

From a shepherd in Turkey…
To a billionaire who still walks the factory floors.

Lesson?
You don’t need investors.
You need integrity.
You don’t need luck.
You need courage.

Because the dream still works, if you do.

Loved this story. Let me know your comments. 

What problem in your business keeps calling for your most creative energy?

#CEO  #FOUNDER #GROWTH #SCALINGUP

Two friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

One dropped out.
One got rejected from med school.
But both wanted to build something.

First idea: bagels.
Too expensive.
So they pivot to ice cream.

No experience. No investors.
Just a $5 correspondence course from Penn State.
$2.50 each.

They find an abandoned gas station in Vermont.
Borrow $12,000.
Do the renovation themselves.

Ben can’t even taste properly, a condition called anosmia.
So he focuses on texture.
Big chunks. Wild swirls. Bold flavours.

What others saw as a weakness became their edge.

Within months, lines formed outside the door.
Free Cone Day became a tradition.
Word spread fast.

Few years later, they launched Cherry Garcia.
The brand took off across the country.
Soon, Ben & Jerry’s was making over $500M a year.

All from $12,000 and a $5 course.

Lesson?
You don’t need the perfect start.
You need creativity, courage, and the guts to turn constraints into leverage.

#scalingup #ceo #founder #growth

They emailed eBay 200 times.
eBay ignored every single one.
Most people would’ve given up.

But Marc, Oliver, and Alexander Samwer weren’t “most people.”

They cloned eBay.
Launched it in Germany.
Executed with speed and perfection.
Within months… eBay bought it back for $43 MILLION.

Then the brothers doubled down.
They built Rocket Internet, the company that turned cloning into a billion-dollar machine.

They copied.
They improved.
They scaled.
And they sold again, and again, and again.

Here’s the truth:

👉 They weren’t chasing approval, they were chasing execution at scale.
👉 They didn’t wait to be discovered, they created their own leverage.
👉 They mastered the one principle most founders overlook:
Doing it better beats doing it first.

Critics called them “copycats.”
But behind the noise, the Samwer brothers built an empire worth billions.

Most people stop when they hear “no.”
The one who succeed?
They push when it’s uncomfortable.
They build when others hesitate.
They turn rejection into momentum.

If you want outsized results, do what most won’t:
Step past comfort.
Step past doubt.
Step past fear.

Because the biggest payoffs live right beyond the point where almost everyone quits.

#scalingup #growth #ceo #bostonfounders

𝗠𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁.

Steve Jobs said it best, the greatest people are self-managing.

They don’t need direction. They are the direction.

When you’re scaling, this is the difference between speed and stagnation.

You can’t build a $10M company micromanaging every move.
You build it by surrounding yourself with people who:

➡️ See the problem before you do.
➡️ Fix it without asking.
➡️ Then tell you how they made it better.

That’s who scales companies.
Not followers.
Not “yes” people.
Builders.

If you have to keep pushing your team to move, 
you don’t have a scaling problem,
you have a people problem.

The truth?
The best teams don’t need managing.
They need mission.

Hire those who act like owners.
Give them the target.
Then get the hell out of their way.

That’s how you scale.
That’s how you win.

#scalingup #ceo #founder #growth

He built a dating site that generated exactly zero activity.
No users. No traction. No revenue.

Most leaders call that a failed model.
I call it an early audit.

Three ex-PayPal employees launched “Tune In Hook Up,” expecting market fit.
What they got was silence.
Operational cost? Rising.
User acquisition? Non-existent.
ROI? Negative from day one.

But here’s what mattered:
They reviewed the data instead of reacting to the emotion.

They noticed users trying to upload videos
Not for dating, but for everyday moments.
Unintended behaviour, but real demand.

So they executed the smartest financial move any early-stage team can make:
A low-cost pivot.

Same infrastructure.
Same upload system.
Zero additional burn.
Just a shift in positioning:
Share any video.

And that decision changed their entire valuation trajectory.

Users scaled exponentially.
Cost per acquisition plummeted.
Engagement skyrocketed.
Suddenly, they weren’t running a dating site…
They were running the internet’s first true video platform.

By 2006, their risk profile had flipped
High growth. High virality.
And high legal exposure.

Enter Google.
They offered $1.65B in stock for a business that still had no established monetisation engine.
From a financial lens?
That’s called derisking the future.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim accepted.
Smart move.
They transferred operational liability…
And secured generational wealth.

Today, YouTube contributes over $40B in yearly ad revenue
and sits at a valuation north of $500B.

All from a product that started as a complete miss 
until the data told a different story.

Lesson:
You don’t scale perfection.
You scale what the market proves it wants.
Listen to the numbers, not the narratives.
And never underestimate the ROI of a well-timed pivot.

#CFOInsights #Leadership #Strategy #Scalingup

She sold her engagement ring for $10,000.
Ten years later, Vicky Tsai built a $500M skincare empire.

Most people call that crazy.
I call it commitment.

She walked away from a six-figure job…
Moved back into her childhood bedroom at 30…
Got rejected for 18 months straight…
And kept going anyway.

1,000 units.
Her last $5,000.
No safety net. No backup plan.

Month one? $2,000 in sales.
Most people quit here.
Vicky didn’t.

She packed every order by hand.
Wrote thank-you notes to strangers.
Built trust one customer at a time.

Then the internet found her.
Demand exploded.
Sephora called.
And the bedroom startup became one of the fastest-growing skincare brands in America.

In 2019, Unilever bought Tatcha for $500 million.
The $10,000 ring she sold?
It turned into 50,000x.

Lesson?
You don’t need permission.
You need conviction.
And the courage to burn Plan B. 

#ceo #founder #growth #scalingup

He got fired.
The company he built said, “We don’t need you anymore.”
Everyone forgot him.

But Steve Jobs didn’t stop.

He poured tens of millions into a failing company called Pixar.
Everyone thought he was crazy.
Most would have quit.

12 years later… that gamble sold for $7.4 BILLION.

Here’s the thing:

👉 He wasn’t chasing money. He was chasing vision.
👉 He embraced risk when others ran from it.
👉 He bet on what he believed in, even when the world said no.

Most people quit right before the payoff.
The real winners? They push through when it’s hardest.
They see opportunity where others see failure.

If you want massive results, you need to do what most won’t.
Step past comfort. Step past doubt. Step past fear.

Because the biggest payoffs live just beyond the point where almost everyone quits.

#scalingup  #growth #ceo

Steve Jobs

He built pole barns to pay for college.

Decades later, John Menard Jr. built Menards, an $18B home improvement empire.

Most people call that luck.

I call it financial discipline.

He opened a small lumber yard in 1964…

Kept prices rock-bottom by building his own factories…

And built every store with cash, not debt.

No investors. No loans. No noise.

While others chased speed and Wall Street, John chose control.

He knew his margins by product line. He tracked cash flow like a pilot tracks altitude. He made the numbers his single source of truth.

Store by store. State by state. Slow, steady, unstoppable.

When 2008 hit, he didn't scramble; he expanded.

Today?

340+ Menards stores. $13B+ revenue. 3rd third-largest home-improvement chain in America. Still 100% private.

The lesson?

You don't need to grow fast. You need to grow right.

That means: 
→ Knowing your profit margins by service line 
→ Tracking cash flow weekly, not just at tax time 
→ Building systems so the business works, not just you

Financial clarity isn't about being a "numbers person."
It's about building simple, repeatable habits that let you scale with confidence.

Have the courage to own every decision, starting with your numbers.
#founder #growth #businessmindset #financialclarity #scalingup

Most people think success comes from working harder, dreaming bigger, or thinking smarter.

Here's the truth: none of that matters if you don't act.

In one simple test, a $50 bill was up for grabs. 

Everyone wanted it. 
Everyone talked about it. 
Everyone wished they had it…

Except Debbie.

She stood up. She walked forward. She took it.

That's it. 

That's the difference between winners and everyone else.

While everyone else burns time and money chasing online strategies that become less effective every day…

The smartest entrepreneurs thriving in 2025 are walking away from their screens and adding an extra 7-figures through live events.

Real humans. In-person communities. High-profit partnerships.

The ultimate advantage in the age of AI isn't replacing humanity with efficiency; it's experiences that are deep, connective, transformative, and profitable.

Getting face-to-face with your ideal clients AND peers is the most consistent solution to the Trust Recession.

I'll be at Event Profit Engine in Austin (December 10-12)...and I still have 4 discounted tickets.

If you're ready to get clarity on the financial blind spots keeping you from scaling, this is your moment.

Don't sit in the room wishing. 

Be Debbie.

P.S. Stop waiting for perfect timing. The money, the deal, the break… it's waiting for the first person who moves. Will it be you? DM me AUSTIN for ticket details.
#scalingup #CEO #founder #growth

He was dropped at an orphanage at seven.
No food. No money. No choice.

By 14, he was on a factory floor, making metal frames.
One wrong move crushed part of his finger. Permanent injury.

Most people would quit. Most people would settle.
He didn’t.

He watched. He learned.
Every machine. Every process. Every decision.
Night classes. Every penny saved. Knowledge accumulation.

At 26, he opened a tiny eyewear shop in the Italian Alps.
Nothing fancy. No connections. Just him, a few employees, and an obsession with understanding the craft end-to-end.

Most competitors sold parts. He had a different idea: make complete frames. Control the product. Own the market.

By the 1980s, he was making designer frames for fashion houses.
By 1995, he bought LensCrafters—suddenly he controlled both the product and the retail.

Then came Ray-Ban.
Everyone said he overpaid $640 million for a dying brand.
He didn’t see risk. He saw opportunity.

Ray-Ban wasn’t just glasses anymore.
Movies. Celebrities. Fashion statements.
Value multiplied. Brand exploded.

He kept buying. Oakley. Sunglass Hut. Prada. Versace. Chanel. Pearle Vision.
Vertical integration? Check. Market dominance? Check. Monopoly? Almost.

When he died in 2022, Leonardo Del Vecchio had $25.8 billion.
One orphan. One factory worker. One relentless learner.

Lesson:
You don’t need luck. You need mastery, observation, and relentless execution.
Start small. Learn everything. Then own the ecosystem.

#ceo #scalingup #growth #founder

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Most founders don't fail because of competition.
 They fail because of the blind spots they never see coming.

Cash looks fine… until it doesn't. Revenue grows… but profit disappears. You hire fast… and spend months fixing mistakes. You work harder… but scale refuses to unlock.

I spent 20+ years at GE Capital navigating these exact challenges at a corporate level.

Closing an $800M+ power plant deal? That taught me cash flow precision. Managing international transactions? That revealed the profit leaks most miss. Building high-performance teams? That showed me the cost of hiring fast vs. hiring right.

Those frameworks didn't just help me lead deals—they gave me the blueprint for scalable growth.

Now I help founders apply these same battle-tested systems to their businesses.

The 7 blind spots in this carousel? They're the ones holding 90% of founders back from predictable, profitable scale.

If you want to go deeper… Download my free ebook in the comments. 

Fix the blind spots. Scale with clarity. Build a business that runs like a pro—because you learned from one.
#scalingup #founder #ceo #growth

7 Blind Spots

𝗛𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿.

Most founders know Pinterest.

Almost no one knows Paul Sciarra, the guy who paid early salaries out of his own pocket, skipped taking income, and carried the company when no one else believed.

He wasn’t a “supporter.”
He was the architecture.

And then the quiet part of startup life happened.
Not a blow-up.
Not a fight.
Just… inches.

One meeting he wasn’t invited to.
One decision he didn’t have visibility into.
One board conversation that happened without him.

By the time Pinterest crossed millions of users and raised over $100M…
Paul was out.

He walked away with ~$15M.
Not nothing.
But painful when your original idea becomes a $25B enterprise.

This isn’t a story about betrayal.
It’s a story about leadership, governance, and identity.

𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗱𝗮𝘆.
They lose it when:
 • they stop owning the financial strategy
 • they delegate governance without understanding it
 • they avoid hard conversations
 • they let investors define the path
 • they disconnect from the role of architect

You can build something extraordinary…
and still get written out of your own success if you don’t stay in the seat you were meant to own.

𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 $𝟯𝗠–$𝟭𝟬𝗠 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻.
The product works.
The company has traction.
Teams are growing.

 But governance, capital strategy, and leadership identity aren’t keeping pace.
That’s the real risk.

𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻:
Your idea can change the world,  but only if you stay in the role of architect as it scales.

Own your equity.
Protect your seat.
Upgrade your thinking.
Build with intention.
The threat isn’t being pushed out.
The threat is drifting out of your power.

𝗤𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
 Are you building like the founder…
 or leading like the architect?

#ceo #founder #scalingup #growth

Passion isn’t happiness.
It’s pain.
It’s grinding when no one is watching.
It’s suffering through every mistake, every rejection, every late night, just to build something nobody thought was possible.

Jensen Huang didn’t follow the market.
He didn’t wait for AI to be big.
He invested 10,000 engineer-years ahead of demand.
He pivoted Nvidia from graphics chips to AI dominance.
That’s vision. That’s first-principles thinking. That’s suffering smarter than everyone else.

Breakthroughs aren’t born in comfort zones.
They’re born when you refuse to quit, when you embrace the grind, and when you’re willing to suffer today for what the world will celebrate tomorrow.

Extraordinary isn’t given.
It’s earned.
Through struggle.
Through relentless work.
Through being willing to do what everyone else won’t.

If you want to be great, get comfortable being uncomfortable.

#scalingup #growth #ceo #founder

Mastermind Scaling Dinner 

This past Wednesday night in Boston, twelve leaders got uncomfortably honest about their real constraints.

No pitch decks. No surface-level networking. 

Just the Hero's Journey framework and one question: 

"What's actually stopping you from scaling?"

Three principles guided the conversation:

🪞 Your Business is a Mirror 

The bottleneck in your business is a reflection of a constraint in your leadership. 

Stop fixing symptoms. Fix the leader, and the business scales.

🐉 Constraints are Your Greatest Leverage

 Your biggest constraint is not a problem—it's the dragon guarding your next treasure. 

The right constraint, once identified and solved, unlocks massive, non-linear growth.

⚖️ Not All Success Has the Same Price

 You can build a company that breaks you, or one that fulfills you. 

Alignment + Clarity = Sustainable Success.

🎯 What showed up:

Estate planning. Cybersecurity. Medical devices. Food distribution. Banking. Fractional sales leadership. IT services. M&A law. Green infrastructure. Urban revitalization. Job search acceleration.

Different industries. Same truth: Every business grows until it hits a constraint, then grows no further.

The magic wasn't in solving everything in one night. 

It was in naming the real constraint out loud - not the sanitized version we tell at networking events, but the 2am version that keeps us up.

Some constraints were about capital. Others about people, partnerships, or positioning. A few were about letting go of what got them here to embrace what gets them there.

🤝 The vulnerability created immediate value: Real partnerships forming. 

Actual introductions being made. Problems being reframed. Resources being shared.

Thank you to Adrian Mendoza and the Mendoza Ventures team for hosting us.

And to everyone who showed up: Marco A. Schiavo , Geoffry Gilton, Joshua Sigsworth, PT, DPT, Dominic Endicott, Jacques Cohen, Maud Dentico, Vasant Narayan, Raffi Yardemian, CSL, Paul Smith, Alex Khalarian, and Sam "Butch" Nigro.

This is what happens when you build community around truth instead of transactions.

The Mastermind dinner happens monthly ( but we are taking a break in December). If you're a founder or executive in Boston or Greater Boston working on something real and willing to get honest about your constraints, let's talk.

We are going to start hosting Metro West dinners as well. More to come.

P.S. - Curious about finding the constraint for your business? Drop a comment or DM.

Most founders don’t fail because they’re lazy.
They fail because their goals are small.

Small goals keep you grinding.
Big goals force you to rebuild the system.

When you raise the target to 10x, everything changes:
your strategy, your thinking, your standards, your circle.

You stop playing in the crowded middle
and start operating where very few people dare to go.

10x isn’t harder.

It’s cleaner. 
It’s clearer. 
It’s smarter.

Stop playing safe. Start playing big.

I learned this lesson the hard way.

I wanted to grow my LinkedIn presence to 100K in a year.
I had 2k followers. 

A few people said that it would take years and that I was unrealistic.

Maybe they would have been right - if I'd believed them

I tried anyway. 
I took a course to learn from others who were ahead of me.
I showed up here every day.
Continuously improved my content (and my mindset)
Hired people to help me.

Did I accomplish my goal?
NO. 

I am still at 72k followers today, a year into that challenge.
But I am still grateful for the results. 

Can you imagine what would have happened if I had played small?
I may be at 15K followers at best. 

And that's the whole point. 

Even if you miss the 10X mark, it beats linear thinking. 

This same principle is why I help founders identify the 7 financial blind spots killing their scale - because small thinking about money keeps you grinding, while 10x financial clarity forces you to rebuild the system.

Want to apply 10x thinking to your finances? 

I've identified the 7 blind spots most founders miss. 

Download the guide; link is in the comments. 

#founder #ceo #growth #scalingup

10X Thinking = 10 X Results

He bought a bankrupt textile factory for $15 million.
Forty years later, Bernard Arnault built a $500B luxury empire.

Most people call that impossible.
I call it vision.

He didn’t invent anything.
He didn’t design a product.
He didn’t chase trends.
He just saw what others couldn’t.

Buried inside that dying company was a forgotten gem: Christian Dior.
Everyone overlooked it.
Arnault didn’t.

He sold everything except Dior.
Bet the house on one iconic brand.
And rebuilt from zero.

Then he made an even crazier move
He went after LVMH.
Louis Vuitton. Moët. Hennessy.
The crown jewels of French luxury.

The elite hated it.
The media mocked it.
It was the most hostile takeover France had ever seen.
Arnault didn’t blink.

He bought the shares quietly.
Took control boldly.
And turned LVMH into a global machine.

One acquisition at a time.
Fendi. Tiffany. Givenchy. Sephora.
Dozens of brands reborn under one ruthless strategy:

Let creators dream.
But keep the business razor sharp.

While tech giants chased disruption…
Arnault chased timelessness.

While others discounted…
He raised value.

In 2023, he became the richest man on Earth.
Quiet. Precise. Unshakeable.
He outplayed every tech titan without writing a single line of code.

Lesson?
You don’t need to invent.
You need to see the hidden gem
And have the courage to bet everything on it.

#entrepreneur #growth #businessstrategy #founder #scalingup

𝗛𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻’𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝘀.
𝗛𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗱𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Back in the early 2000s, Jon Oringer wasn’t building empires, he was just trying to find affordable stock photos for his tiny online business.

But what he found instead… was an opportunity.

Stock images back then cost $300+ per photo, a luxury small creators couldn’t afford.

So Jon did something different:

▶ Bought a camera
▶ Took 100 photos a day
▶ Built his own website
▶ Uploaded 30,000 photos
▶ Charged $49/month for unlimited downloads

That’s how Shutterstock was born.

No fancy investors. No marketing team.

Just a subscription model, executed brilliantly.

He wasn’t selling images,
he was selling convenience, freedom, and access.

And the best part?

Every sale cost him nothing to reproduce.Pure passive income.

By the time Shutterstock went public in 2012,
Jon still owned 55% of it.

His net worth crossed $1 billion,
built from a camera, a simple website, and consistency.

That’s not luck.
That’s vision meeting execution.

Because the smartest entrepreneurs don’t wait for an opportunity,
they create it by solving a problem once
and selling the solution over and over again.

𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐧:

Stop chasing “new.”
Find one problem.

Solve it better than anyone else.
Then systemize, scale, and sleep while your solution works for you.

#Entrepreneurship #ceo #BusinessModel #founder #scalingup

He started with $5,000 and a pizza shop paycheck.
Nobody cared. Nobody believed.

Most people would’ve stayed broke.

Dan Gilbert didn’t.

He looked at a broken mortgage industry slow, complex, full of middlemen and said: “There’s a better way.”

He worked 18 hours a day. Seven days a week.
He studied every inefficiency.
He simplified the impossible.
He moved online when the internet was “just a fad.”
He ignored the naysayers.

It all started with Rock Financial. 
And eventually
Rock Financial became Quicken Loans.
Applications went from weeks to minutes.
Rates went from hidden to transparent.
Customers went from frustrated to obsessed.

Then he didn’t stop.
He bought the Cleveland Cavaliers, poured money into the city, and turned it upside down.
Downtown boomed. 
The team won a championship. 
The city transformed.

Here’s the lesson most people miss:

👉 You don’t need a perfect idea.
👉 You don’t need permission.
👉 You need to see broken systems, fix them better, and move faster than everyone else.
👉 And then, reinvest the wins into something that actually matters.

From pizza shifts to $28.5B, Gilbert’s story isn’t luck.
It’s obsession, timing, and execution.

Most people quit at “too hard.”
The few who succeed? 
They see the gap, go first, and keep building while others sleep.

If you want outsized results, do what most won’t:
Step past the “impossible.”
Step past the doubters.
Step past comfort.

Because fortune isn’t at the starting line, it’s at the point where everyone else stops.

#growth #scalingup #entrepreneurship #CEO #execution

While everyone's fighting over TVs today, I'm fighting for your 2026.

One stage does what 6 months of content can't.

That's why I'm speaking in Austin December 10-12.

Here's what I've learned:

You can spend hundreds of hours posting content, cold DMing event hosts, vetting podcast opportunities, and hoping something sticks...

Or you can walk into one room where the work is already done.

That's Event Profit Engine.

Hosted by Alex Moscow ($130M in client results) and Eben Pagan (built 10 seven-figure companies, 3 over eight figures).

200 founders doing $500K-$2M+ in one room.

The kind of people you'd normally pay $25K to join a mastermind just to meet.

But this isn't networking. It's deal flow.

On Day 3, they run facilitated sessions where they literally pair you with:

→ High-caliber stages for 2026 
→ Aligned promotional partners 
→ Sponsors for your events (I am one of the sponsors for this event)

Not "hope you meet someone cool at the cocktail hour."

Strategic. Intentional. Partnerships that lead to revenue.

The stages you actually want to be on in 2026? They're in this room. The relationships that would take 6 months to build? Done in 3 days.

I'll be speaking on why most founders are operationally excellent but financially blind—and how to fix it.

This is for you if:
→ You're a founder doing $1M-$10M 
→ You want stages and partnerships locked in for 2026 
→ You're tired of cold outreach that goes nowhere 
→ You'd rather be in the right room than grind online for 6 more months

This is NOT for you if:
→ You're just getting started (under $500K) 
→ You're not ready to invest in growth 
→ You think "networking" means collecting business cards

Here's my Black Friday deal for you:

$1K tickets (normally $4K, goes to $5K on Monday).

I only have a few left. First come, first served.

You can fish with a pole for the next 6 months.

Or you can grab a net and walk into this room.

Comment "AUSTIN" or DM me and I'll send you the code before they're gone.
This is the only deal worth buying today.

See you in Texas.
#scalingup #CEO #founder #growth

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