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 used to stare at a blank page for hours.

No idea what to write on LinkedIn.

Now? I have enough content ideas for the next 3 months.

One shift changed everything: I stopped trying to create and started reflecting.

Here's what I mean.

Writing content is just thinking out loud. You reflect on things you said, things you did, things you thought about.

That's it. No magic formula.

I'm not a LinkedIn guru. Most of my posts get less than 1,000 impressions. But I show up every day because eventually the right people will see it.

Here's where I get my content ideas:

→ Client calls (I record everything with Fathom)
→ Team meetings
→ Our Notion docs
→ Content I consume (like Alex Hormozi)
→ Things I build (like our Airtable backend)
→ Random thoughts throughout the day

I review my day and turn it into 5-10 content ideas.

Some hit. Most don't. But I'm never staring at a blank page anymore.

Stop trying to be creative. Just document what you're already doing.

Where do you get your content ideas?

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

AI can do most of my job. I'm not worried.

Just got back from Bangkok. Met up with a few clients and partners while I was there.

One conversation stuck with me.

If AI gets so good at doing our jobs, what edge will service businesses have?

We agreed on one thing: in-person relationships are the real moat for B2B.

AI can optimize your campaigns. It can write your copy. It can analyze your data faster than any human.

But it can't grab dinner with your client. It can't build trust over a round of golf. It can't shake hands and look someone in the eye.

I'll take that trade every day.

Honestly? It's the best part of my job anyway.

So while AI handles more and more of the execution, I'll keep building relationships with the people I like.

Playing golf with clients. Having conversations like this one in Bangkok.

That's a future I'm excited about.

What's your moat?

(Mine might involve a negroni or two 😁)

We have 400+ Slack channels.

It's a nightmare.

2 hours every morning just to get through messages. And even then, client questions slip through the cracks. One missed message can cost you a six-figure contract.

So our developer built something cool.

A custom tool that scrapes all Slack messages every 30 minutes and creates a dashboard with:

→ All unanswered client messages
→ Response time per media buyer
→ Accounts with the most communication (for unit economics)
→ Working hours when media buyers are most active

But here's the best part.

AI analyzes every message to determine urgency. If a client waits more than 2 hours for an answer, the media buyer gets a DM notification. If it hits 3 hours, the team lead gets pinged too.

We just launched this but initial results look promising.

Slack has always been our biggest energy drain. This is our first step to making it efficient while still keeping human relationships with our clients.

AI is awesome.

Happy Friday 🍺

Our media buyers manage $30M+ in ad spend every year.

Here are the AI tools they actually use daily:

For thinking & strategy:

→ ChatGPT: Reports, analysis, strategy drafts, brainstorming, client comms. The workhorse.
→ Gemini: Research, structuring ideas, operational tasks.
→ Claude: Deeper analytical work. Audits, data analysis, strategic recommendations.

For creatives:

→ Sora: Video concepts and short-form ads.
→ Symphony: UGC-style ad videos.
→ Veo 3: High-quality video creatives (usually paired with our designers).
→ NanoBanana: Static visuals and ad creatives.

For workflow & data:

→ Adnova: Speeds up campaign setup and simplifies creative workflows.
→ GoMarble: Pulls data directly from ad accounts. Compares performance across periods. Syncs with Asana & Slack so we can track team workload.

Two years ago, none of these tools existed.

Now they're part of our daily workflow.

The role of a media buyer is changing fast. The ones who adapt will thrive. The ones who don't will get replaced by someone who did.

What AI tools is your team using?

AI tools media buyers

Our team was checking Slack on weekends "just in case."

And they'd end up working 2-3 hours on stuff that could've waited until Monday.

That's not sustainable. And it's not even efficient.

The real problem: we're spread across timezones. Media buyers in Europe. Me in Canada. Clients in the US and Australia. There's always going to be friction when someone sends a message outside working hours.

So we're building something simple: Urgent Forms.

Every white-label partner will get a dedicated link. When something is genuinely urgent and the team has checked off for the day, they submit the form.

The moment it's submitted, our team lead, the media buyer, and I all get a ping on Telegram or WhatsApp.

Since we're spread across timezones, someone will always see it.

The goal: media buyers can actually disconnect on weekends. No more opening Slack "just to check." If it's truly urgent, it comes through the form. If it's not, it waits until Monday.

Clients get peace of mind knowing urgent issues will be handled. Instead of sending a Slack message into the void and hoping for the best.

It's not fancy. Just a short form connected to a few notifications.

We discussed this with our team leads yesterday and rolling it out soon.

If you run a distributed team and struggle with after-hours communication, might be worth trying something similar.

Happy Friday ya'll 🍻

$1.36M in managed ad spend
$4.08M in ecom revenue
20,353 leads generated

That's February at Haven.

The breakdown:
→ 91 active accounts
→ Avg ROAS (ecom): 4.04x
→ Avg CPL: $44

Performance:
→ 63% of accounts overachieved (100%+ of target)
→ 11% on track (80-99%)
→ 26% underperforming

Platform split by spend:
→ Meta: 58%
→ Google: 41%
→ Pinterest, Taboola: 1%

Wins this month:

✅ Best financial month ever (32% EBITDA)
✅ Found two rockstar media buyers for multi-million dollar apps
✅ Hired new head of paid media
✅ Hired new COO 

That's what I love about the agency business.

One month you feel like all stars are aligned against you and you want to quit. The next month you're firing on all cylinders.

The key is not to get too excited when things are good, and not get too sad when things are bad.

You just gotta love the game.

Onto March 💪

We just placed a senior media buyer into an app spending $500K/month on ads.

Here's how it happened.

Doug is Head of Growth at a women's health company. Their founder built a massive audience and decided it was time to launch a product.

It blew up.

They scaled to $500K in monthly ad spend within a year. But Doug had too much on his plate. He needed someone great to take over Meta, Google, and TikTok ads.

We've placed a ton of talent into high-growth apps, so he reached out.

From signing the contract to the candidate accepting the offer: less than 6 weeks.

Probably one of the smoothest placements we've done.

P.S. If you're running a high-growth app and need a killer user acquisition talent, we have a few great candidates ready to go. DM me.

This is what winning looks like.

Scrolled through our Slack and had to screenshot these:

👉 "Team work because they are so happy with Meta performance!"

👉 "The client is so excited and had minimal revisions for us."

👉 "You're killing it over there. Super happy to have you as part of the team."

👉 "Excellent news on spending much more on NFL this year, good work."

This is what happens when you pair agencies with media buyers who actually care.

We're not just filling seats. We're placing people who treat your clients like their own.

That's the difference between a contractor and a partner.

White-label media buying now makes almost 70% of our revenue.

What started as me selling extra capacity of my media buyers to other agencies became the biggest revenue driver in the business.

Why I love this model:

→ Retention: most of our agency partners stay with us for years
→ I'm barely involved in fulfillment. My team leads handle most of it
→ Agencies basically become my sales reps, so i can just focus on hiring great talent
→ Most of our partners become close friends (same vibe)

But this is not all rainbows and sunshine.

This is probably the worst agency model for most founders. Here's why:

→ High volume, low ticket. To hit $100K MRR, we need to manage 130+ accounts
→ Heavy ops. We have over 20 full-time team members
→ Every agency owner needs different things. We personalize our offer for each partner
→ Timezone differences are still tricky. It doesn't work for everyone

Despite all that, we're still pushing hard. Signing new agency partners almost every week.

The relationships make it worth it.

I'm still having a ton of fun building this.

If you need a trusted media buying partner, reach out. We're bringing on 5 new agencies in Q2 💪

Everyone's chasing the latest Claude update.

They're missing the point.

Here's what no one wants to talk about: the boring stuff. The data.

Everyone will have access to the same LLM models. The only way to differentiate yourself is to have a unique dataset you can train your models on.

We started building this with our developer. A database that will eventually become the brain of our AI agent.

Here's what we're feeding it:

→ All accounts data and creatives
→ Every public Slack message
→ Notion SOPs
→ Asana tasks
→ Team call recordings
→ Stripe invoices

Literally every piece of information we use to operate our agencies.

Now here comes the boring part.

It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to organize your data properly.

It means rewriting all your SOPs and only keeping the ones you actually use. Otherwise you train your AI on the wrong processes.

It means connecting all 90+ accounts and making sure every data piece is being collected.

It means constantly giving feedback on the quality of outputs. Which, by default, no one wants to do.

Only then can you build a truly AI-native agency.

Otherwise you have no edge 🤖

I was 100% sure this person didn't exist.

We needed a new Head of Paid Media.

But I wasn't actively searching. I figured I'd have to grow one internally. Finding someone great from the outside felt impossible.

Then Diana, our new team lead, recommended her previous Head of Paid Media.

She said he was as good as our last one who stayed with us for 8 years.

I hopped on a call with zero expectations.

Diana was right.

Illya had done everything we were lacking:

→ Built processes media buyers actually follow
→ Ran a dedicated creative department
→ Understands that media buyers need to become growth strategists to stay relevant

We sent the offer the next day.

The lesson? Your team is your best recruitment channel.

They know who's great. They've worked alongside these people. They can vouch for culture fit in ways a resume never will.

Before you post another job ad, ask your team who they'd want to work with again.

Do you ask your team for referrals?

undefined undefined

adtribe

aceleads-agency

haven-ca

I run two agencies. Here's my entire tech stack.

9 tools I actually use every day:

1/ Fathom

Records every call and pushes notes straight into CRM.
I use call transcripts to write most of my LinkedIn content.

2/ Claude

I asked it 50 questions about me, my goals, and my businesses.
Connected our Notion, Gmail, and financial data.
Added people I admire.
Now it's my go-to for business and life advice.

3/ Stanley

My new favorite writing tool.
I always struggled to make Claude write in my voice.
Stanley makes LinkedIn content way easier.

4/ Superwhisper

New tool I just started using.
Saves a ton of time on typing. Now I can brain dump ideas in 30 seconds instead of writing for 5 minutes.

5/ GoMarble

I use it to ask Claude what's going on across our entire client portfolio.
My team loves it too.

6/ Folk CRM

By far the easiest CRM for social selling.
Perfect if you're living on LinkedIn like me.

7/ Veed.io

I have zero video editing skills.
With Veed, I get 10 to 20 short-form clips from client calls in minutes.

8/ AuthoredUp

My go-to for writing and scheduling LinkedIn posts.
Simple UI. Useful analytics.

9/ HeyReach

Automatically sends 25 to 40 connection requests a day to my ICP.
First DM is also automated.

What are the tools you can't live without?

👇 Drop them in the comments.

1 (1)

I started my first business 10 years ago.

It was a disaster.

Back in 2016 I quit my job as a customs officer and was trying to figure out what to do with my life.

I read Richard Branson's book "Screw It, Let's Do It" and was ready to make millions 😅

A long-time friend and I went through a few ideas and decided to export wood pellets to Europe.

Our market research was based on:

→ Ukraine has a lot of forests
→ Wood scraps must be cheap to get
→ European companies would line up for our product

We formed an LLC called "B&F Trading" (what an awesome name).

Our GTM strategy was to cold call importers and undercut competitors on pricing.

(we paid someone under the table to get the database of all wood pellet importers)

Here's what went wrong:

→ Wood leftovers aren't easy to find, even in Ukraine
→ The quality was poor. Most wood companies just throw it away. And Europe is very particular about quality
→ Margins were brutal. 20 tons of product cost $2,000
→ European importers valued long-term partnerships. They didn't want to work with two 20-somethings trying to undercut everyone.

Needless to say, we made zero dollars.

But it taught me lessons I still use today:

→ How to evaluate demand before spending money
→ How to do basic GTM: website, cold email, outreach
→ How legal stuff works: contracts, taxes, LLCs
→ How to sell. I cold-called hundreds of people. Terrifying for a nerd like me.

Every business is hard. There are always things you don't know until you start.

But each failure makes the next one easier.

What was your first business flop?

Got this email from an agency owner we used to work with years ago.

"Been reading your emails. Thank you!"

"We should meet up and shoot the shit. Maybe BKK or Chiang Mai or Hua Hin."

Scott used to be one of our white-label partners. We worked together but never met in person. After the project ended, we lost touch.

Then my newsletter brought him back.

Starting my newsletter was probably the best investment I've made in my business.

I started with zero strategy. Just shared everything I was working on.

→ New tools I'm testing
→ How I structure my agencies for efficiency
→ Problems we face when scaling
→ Personal stuff (like me doing a health checkup in Bangkok)

I didn't want to treat it like a sales funnel. I just wanted to stay connected with people I like.

Then something interesting happened.

People I hadn't spoken to in years started reaching out. Some of them referred us new business. Others wanted to meet up and talk shop.

If you've been sitting on the idea of starting a newsletter, just start.  

Don't overthink it. Just write like you're updating a friend.

Thank me later.

Brand positioning explained in 30 seconds.

I'm currently in Asia. Anyone who's been here knows 7-Eleven is the spot.

I walked into the protein milk section and counted at least 10 different brands.

Same flavors.
Same price.
All with exactly 30 grams of protein.

Except one.

This brand has 33 grams.

I'm a simple consumer. I see more protein for the same price, I buy it. Every single time.

That's the power of brand positioning.

You don't need to reinvent the product. 
You don't need a massive rebrand. 
You don't need to slash your prices.

Sometimes you just need one small difference that matters to your customer.

It could be 10% more of what they actually care about.
One feature your competitors don't have.
A single reason to pick you over everyone else.

When everyone zigs, you zag.

Had coffee with a developer in Thailand last week.

He taught himself to code 10 years ago so he could become a digital nomad.

And it worked.

He traveled the world. UpWork gave him all his clients. Life was good.

Until it wasn't.

Over the last 3 months, he got zero jobs. The market got more competitive. But more importantly, businesses just need fewer developers now.

Here's the irony.

Just a few years ago, being a developer was considered the highest career pursuit. Learn to code and you're set for life.

Now they're the first ones being replaced by the machines they built.

Things change fast.

But I don't think knowing how to code is worthless. I don't think it ever will be.

It's just not enough to be a pure tech engineer anymore.

The people who will succeed most are those who are technically skilled AND understand the business side:

→ Why are we building this feature?
→ Do our customers even need it?
→ What's the best distribution channel for this?

Being able to coordinate AI agents and engineers to get results for the business will be invaluable.

Generalists are back in demand.

What skills are you doubling down on?

The best engineers won't build the best companies anymore.

Evan Spiegel said it in a recent interview:

"Before, so many resources were dedicated to engineering. Now people are gonna be much more focused on marketing and distribution."

He's not the only one. OpenAI's Greg Brockman says taste is now a core skill. The pattern is clear.

Building is getting cheaper. AI can spin up a product, an app, a landing page in hours. The barrier to create is basically gone.

So what becomes the most valuable skill?

Creating content that gets attention from the right people.

Sure, Claude can write your LinkedIn posts. But that's not an edge when everyone has the same tools.

The edge? Knowing what to say. Understanding your audience so well that your content actually lands. That takes taste. That takes you.

And as AI floods every channel with generic content, trust becomes the scarcest resource. People buy from people they trust.

The companies that win in the next 10 years won't be the ones with the best engineers.

They'll be the ones with the best marketers.

Good time to be running a marketing agency 😅

Former GE Capital Executive | I help founders and executives see what their financials aren’t telling them.

I spent 25 years inside the machine.

GE Capital. GE Vernova. NBCUniversal. Unilever. Structured finance, capital markets, project finance across Latin America. I was the CFO who sat across from banks, governments, and Fortune 500 boards and made the numbers make sense. I closed an $800 million power plant deal. I managed capital market teams and hundred-million-dollar sales budgets. I built financial models that moved real money in real markets.

I was good at it. For a long time, that was enough.

Then it wasn't.

I stayed almost eight years past the moment I knew I was done. Eight years of golden handcuffs, institutional momentum, and not having a single person in my corner who could help me think through what leaving actually looked like -- financially, strategically, personally.

When I finally left, I made mistakes. I jumped into a startup that looked great on paper and had no financial foundation underneath it. I learned the hard way that passion without financial intelligence is just expensive optimism. Then I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars learning the things corporate never taught me -- how to sell, how to communicate with conviction, how to walk into a room and make people feel what I knew to be true about their business.

That education nearly broke me. And it turned me into something rare: a former Fortune 500 CFO who can read your financials like a surgeon reads an MRI and sit across from you like a partner who actually gives a damn.

That's what I do now.

I work with a small number of founders and executives -- people who've already built something substantial and want a strategic partner with real financial depth. Not a coach. Not a consultant recycling frameworks. Not a bookkeeper calling themselves a fractional CFO. Someone who's been in the rooms, closed the deals, read the balance sheets, and came out the other side with a clear point of view about what actually matters.

If you're a founder past $1M who can feel that the way you got here won't get you to the next level, I can show you exactly where the growth is hiding and where the model breaks.

If you're an executive who knows you're meant for something bigger than the title on your business card, I've been where you are. I made the leap. I can help you think through yours.

I don't work with everyone. I'm selective about who I take on because the work only works when both sides are all in.

One conversation is all it takes to know if we're the right fit.

Cruz Gamboa

Most founders don’t go bankrupt overnight.

They bleed slowly.
From numbers they refused to look at.

Revenue looks good.
Growth feels exciting.
Ego feels validated.

But:

➡️ Cash flow is tight
➡️ Margins are thin
➡️ One client controls everything
➡️ Burn rate is “we’ll figure it out”

That’s how businesses die.

Not from lack of ambition.
From lack of financial discipline.

Here’s the cheat sheet I wish every founder read earlier.

Ignore red flags early → pay the price later.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Your P&L Is Hiding the Real Problem.

Most founders check 3 things:

Revenue.
Profit.
Growth rate.

Then they relax.

That’s the mistake.

Because your P&L is a scoreboard.

Not a diagnosis.

And scoreboards don’t tell you why you’re winning,
or why you’re about to lose.

Here’s what it’s not showing you 👇

If revenue is growing but cash is tight…

You don’t have a profit problem.
You have a cash flow problem.

If sales are strong but margins are shrinking…

You don’t have a demand problem.
You have a pricing or delivery problem.

If profit exists but stress keeps increasing…

You don’t have a money problem.
You have an operational problem.

Most businesses don’t collapse overnight.

They erode slowly:

➡️ Slightly rising CAC
➡️ Slightly lower margins
➡️ Slightly higher payroll
➡️ Slightly longer collections

Small leaks.

Compounded monthly.

And because the P&L still “looks fine,”
no one panics.

Until they should have.

Here’s what real operators track:

✓ Gross margin trends
✓ Cash runway (in months) 
✓ Revenue per employee
✓ CAC payback period
✓ Churn rate

Those numbers tell you where the fire is starting.

Revenue is vanity.
Profit is sanity.
Cash flow is survival.

Read your P&L.

But interrogate it harder.

Because the businesses that scale aren’t the ones with the best revenue.

They’re the ones who catch problems before they show up on the bottom line.

Your financial reports are perfect.

Clean P&L.
Accurate balance sheet.
Cash flow that ties out.

Yet decisions still feel slow, reactive, or unclear.

That’s because reports don’t create leverage.
Interpretation does.

Most founders read numbers like history.
High-performing operators read them like instructions.

Every metric should force a decision:
→ double down
→ fix fast
→ kill it

If nothing changes after reviewing your numbers,
you didn’t review them, you admired them.

This cheat sheet breaks down:

➡️ The questions that actually matter
➡️ The metrics that lie
➡️ And how to spot 1% changes that unlock outsized results

Save this before your next finance review.

cruzgamboadrive

patagonia-solar-llc

This guy bought one random car dealership.
Turned it into a $5B empire.

No fancy startup.
No venture capital.

Just one smart business move.

Terry Taylor started like most people in the auto industry:

Working inside dealerships.

Climbing the ladder.

But he realized something important:

No matter how hard you work…
You’re still building someone else’s business.

So in 1982, he bought his first dealership in Daytona Beach.

Most people would stop there.

He didn’t.

But the real genius wasn’t buying more dealerships.

It was how he structured them.

Instead of hiring managers, he:

• Gave them 20–25% equity
• Helped finance their buy-in
• Let them run the store

Now managers weren’t employees.

They were owners.

And owners think differently.

They protect profits.
They grow the business.
They care about reputation.

So scaling became easy.

1 dealership → 10 → 50 → 120+ dealerships

Today the network does $5B+ in revenue.

Simple lesson:

People work harder for ownership than salaries.

Build partners.
Not employees

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Terry Taylor

He spent 31 years running Trader Joe’s.
Mastered pricing. Supply chains. Consumer psychology.
But one thing bothered him more than anything else: food waste.

Every year, the U.S. throws away 120 billion pounds of perfectly good food.
Not unsafe. Just didn’t fit profit models.

Millions of families struggle to afford groceries.
Most CEOs see this as “business as usual.”
Doug saw it as broken design.

After retiring, he didn’t join a board. He didn’t consult.
He asked a different question:

💡 What if food waste became the foundation, not a byproduct?
What if access mattered more than margin?

✅ Daily Table is born.
✅ Grocery store built on surplus food.
✅ Affordable meals. Nutritious produce. Dignity first.
✅ No charity branding. No eligibility checks.
✅ Nonprofit by design. Every surplus reinvested in lowering prices.

Critics say it can’t scale. Doug agrees.
It wasn’t meant to dominate. It was meant to fix a failure everyone ignored.

From grocery CEO → noticing waste everywhere → building a store that feeds people, not profits.

If you want to rethink how systems work, look at incentives, not supply.
This is the anti-profit grocery model.

Daily Table

He was a waiter at Red Lobster.

He had $40.

Most people would complain. He built a $6B brand.

Here’s how:

✅ Saw a problem: kids in his neighborhood paying too much for hats.

✅ Took action: taught himself to sew, made hats at home.

✅ Scaled smart: sold locally → hip-hop stars wore FUBU → national attention.

✅ Got creative: turned his living room into a factory, raised money when banks said NO.

✅ Played the long game: built FUBU → became Shark Tank investor → mentors hundreds of startups.

Most people chase attention.
He chased problems that matter.

Critics said it wouldn’t work. He did it anyway.

You don’t need permission. You don’t need hype.
You need clarity, hustle, and persistence.

From $40 → living room hustle → global empire → Shark Tank.
That’s how legends are built

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Daymond John

Most people think billion-dollar companies start with experts.

Crumbl Cookies started with two tech guys who had never baked a cookie.

In 2017, they noticed something simple:
Cookies were America’s favorite dessert, but the category hadn’t evolved.
So they focused on a few key moves:

▶ Perfected one cookie first
▶ Kept the menu simple (1 classic + 4 rotating flavors)
▶ Turned weekly flavor drops into social media events

That simple strategy turned a 900 sq ft store and $10K into

✅ 800+ locations
✅ 1M cookies sold daily
✅ $1B+ valuation

They didn’t win by doing more.
They won by focusing on the few decisions that drive everything.

That’s true in finance too.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, go to scalingcfo.io
Take the free assessments and see exactly where to focus first.

Crumbl Cookies

Some people launch snacks.
Some create global empires from leftovers.

Arch West did the second.

➡️ 1960s. Disneyland.

Casa de Fritos. Tons of stale tortillas. Wasted daily.
A small vendor saw opportunity.
“Cut them into triangles. Fry them. Add some seasoning.”

No PR. No hype. No flashy launch.

Just execution.
Just obsession.
Just seeing value where others saw trash.

1966 → Plain Doritos, national launch.
1972 → Nacho Cheese.
From leftover tortillas → multibillion-dollar snack empire.

Scaling lesson:

Opportunities are everywhere. Most ignore them.
Those who see the leverage, execute relentlessly, and scale turn accidents into legends.

Some people chase attention.
Some quietly turn scraps into billions.

#scalingup #ceo #founder #businesslessons

Doritos

$30,000 → $7 BILLION.
No hype. No fluff. Just strategy.

Dennis Washington was 30, broke, and borrowing $30k from a Caterpillar dealer.

He bought one bulldozer and started doing construction in Montana.

Within 5 years? He was the largest contractor in the state.

But he didn’t stop there.

He asked a simple question:
"Where is everyone running from?"

Then he built a formula:

✅ Buy failing businesses that everyone else ignores.
✅ Fix the basics cut costs, improve management, unlock cash flow.
✅ Use the profits to buy the next one.
✅ Repeat.

First test: a worthless copper mine.
Bought for $15M → $100M profits in 3 years.

Next: a struggling global construction firm, merged it → Washington Group International → sold for $2.6B.

Now? Real estate, aviation, railroads, marine services… a $7B empire all from turning broken things into cash.

Most people run from broken businesses. Dennis Washington built a $7B empire fixing them.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Dennis Washington

He had nothing.
No friends. Barely spoke English. ADHD made school unbearable.

At 16, he dropped out. Taught himself to code. Became obsessed with modifying video games.

At 22, he moved to Canada. New country. No network. Just a laptop and a love for snowboarding.

Started an online snowboard store → it failed.

But the software he built to run it? People wanted it.

💡 Lightbulb moment: Forget snowboards. Sell the software.

✅ Shopify is born.
✅ Made e-commerce simple.
✅ Millions of stores. 175 countries. Even Amazon switched.

From high school dropout → coding every week → building the internet’s mall worth $147B.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io
Free assessment.
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TOBIAS LÜTKE

Most “profitable” companies are one bad month away from dying.

Here’s why.

Profit is an opinion.
Cash is oxygen.

You can look profitable on paper and still miss payroll.
I’ve seen businesses doing 7 figures collapse because one client paid late.

Revenue doesn’t matter if:

• It’s delayed
• It’s unpredictable
• It’s already spent in your head

Growth makes this worse.

You hire early.
Lock in fixed costs.
Sign long-term tools.
Upgrade lifestyle.

Now your burn is permanent…
…but your income isn’t.

That’s the trap.

Another hard truth:
If the founder steps away and sales stop, you don’t have a business.
You have a high-stress job with employees.

Margins won’t save you.
Busy won’t save you.
Brand won’t save you.

Only cash flow will.

Simple rules that keep companies alive:

• Collect faster than you spend
• Keep fixed costs boring
• Build 3–6 months of runway
• Systems before scaling
• Liquidity before vanity growth

The strongest businesses aren’t the loudest.

They’re the ones that can survive a bad month without panicking.

That’s real leverage.

Peter Steinberger could have built “cool” software.

He didn’t.

He built useful software.

PDFs were everywhere. Developers were stuck with messy workflows. Peter asked:

What if developers had tools that just worked? That solved real problems, not just looked good on a portfolio?

✅ PSPDFKit → powers PDF apps across mobile & web.
✅ Open-source projects → simplify workflows, save engineers hours.
✅ OpenClaw → personal AI agent that actually helps you code.

Most people chase attention. Peter chases problems.

Critics say niche tools won’t scale. Peter doesn’t care.
He’s not in it for hype. He’s in it for impact.

From engineer → spotting friction everywhere → building tools that make developers’ lives better.

If you want to build something meaningful, solve real problems.
The market rewards results, not ideas.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.

Peter Steinberger

LVMH is worth $292.9 billion.

You're worth $10M and stressed about payroll.

Same industry. Completely different money game. Here's why.

I've sat inside dozens of $5M–$50M businesses as a fractional CFO.

The pattern never changes.

Founders confuse 3 separate problems:

❌ "We have a cash flow problem."

No. You have a timing problem. Revenue is fine. Your money is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's fixable in 90 days.

❌ "We have a scaling problem."

No. You tried to grow before your operations could hold the weight. Every single time. Growth didn't break you, the lack of systems did.

❌ "We have a fundraising problem."

No. Investors don't fund vision. They fund numbers that prove the vision is real. You don't have a pitch problem. You have a financial story problem.

Now look at the billion-dollar brands:

Inditex built Zara to $193B by selling inventory before the bill came due.

Hermès built $235B by turning scarcity into a balance sheet strategy.

Fast Retailing scaled Uniqlo globally because they built finance infrastructure first.

None of that is luck.
All of it is decisions, financial decisions dressed up as brand decisions.

The difference between them and you isn't capital.

It's that they stopped running on gut feel and built a machine that tells them exactly where every dollar is going, and why.

You don't need a $500K CFO on payroll.

You need 10 hours a month of the right financial brain in the room.

That's the actual arbitrage most $5M–$50M founders are sleeping on.

If your finances are running you instead of the other way around,

Comment "CFO" below and I'll show you exactly where to start.

Most founders don’t fail overnight.

They bleed slowly.
From decisions they ignored.
From processes they never set.
From metrics they refused to measure.

Revenue looks fine. Growth feels exciting. Ego feels validated.

But underneath:

➡️ Decisions get delayed → chaos spreads
➡️ Processes depend on you → hero culture burns out
➡️ Metrics are “nice to have” → guesswork rules
➡️ Accountability is optional → everyone points fingers

That’s how scaling dies.

Not from lack of ambition.
From lack of rules.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.
If this helped, save it.
#scalingup #founders #ceo

Most people saw a ping pong table.

Max Koehler saw a business.

In 2019, he noticed something strange:

Table tennis is one of the most played sports in the world,
but in U.S. cities there were very few places to play regularly.

Most founders would open a traditional club.

Max built PingPod instead.

Small glass studios.
Open 24/7.
Booked entirely through an app.
No staff. No front desk.

But the real genius?

A camera above every table.

Every rally gets recorded.
One tap → instant replay → share on social.

Players created the content.
The content created the marketing.

Clips went viral.
Bookings exploded.

Today PingPod is valued around $40–60M.

All from one simple observation.

The best founders don’t just build products.
They build systems that grow themselves. 🚀

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities, go to
scalingcfo.io

Take the free assessments and see exactly where to focus first.

#scalingup #founders #CEO

Max Koehler

The trillion-dollar scoreboard isn’t just impressive.

It’s a warning. ⚠️

AI is no longer a feature.
It’s infrastructure.

Distribution beats product.
Platforms compress margins.
Specialisation scales faster than breadth.

And the giants NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Apple aren’t just companies anymore.

They’re rails.

If you’re a $1M–$10M founder, here’s the real play:

➡️ Build on top of giants, don’t compete with them.
➡️ Own your audience, don’t rent it.
➡️ Go narrow, dominate a micro-niche.
➡️ Push recurring revenue.
➡️ Move faster than anyone with a board meeting.

The economy is consolidating at the top.

But execution speed is still decentralised.

That’s your edge.

If you're building between $1–$10M and want to scale intelligently, not just aggressively

Come to the workshop → https://lnkd.in/efBiFQRg

I keep having the same conversation.

Founder calls me. Revenue is up -- sometimes way up. 

But they're taking home less than when the business was half the size. 

They hired the consultants. They wrote the plan. They pushed harder on sales. And somehow the business keeps snapping back to the same number like a rubber band.

After sitting across from enough of these founders, I started seeing the pattern. It comes down to three things nobody wants to talk about -- and none of them have anything to do with selling more.

I broke it all down in this week's newsletter.
#scalingup #founders #growth #CEO

I talk to a lot of founders. Like, a LOT. And something keeps coming up that I can't ignore anymore. Almost every conversation -- doesn't matter what 

Open article: The 3 things nobody tells you about getting stuck by Cruz Gamboa • 5 min read

The 3 things nobody tells you about getting stuck

Samsung wasn’t always a tech giant.

It was a tiny grocery store in 1938.

Lee Byung-Chull had $0. Just noodles, dried fish, and ambition.

Most people would stay small. He built a $720B empire.

Here’s how:

✅ Saw a need. Korea needed industry after the war.

✅ Took action. Trading → textiles → heavy industry.

✅ Bet on the future. Electronics in 1969. First black-and-white TV. Then semiconductors. Then global domination.

✅ Built a culture. Quality over quantity. Meritocracy. Vision.

✅ Played the long game. Critics doubted. Scandals happened. Growth didn’t stop.

From noodles → TVs → semiconductors → Galaxy phones → global tech leader.

Most people chase attention. Samsung chased leverage.

Legends aren’t born. They’re built.

SAMSUNG

99% of founders do this backwards.

They try to scale a business
that no one has proven they want.

Then they try to sell a business
that only works because they exist.

Here’s the real order:

1. Start
Don’t build the product.
Sell it first.

If no one pays, it’s not a business.
It’s a fantasy.

2. Scale
Do less. Better.
One offer. One audience. One channel.

Systemize everything.
If it needs you to survive, it’s not scalable.

3. Sell
Buyers don’t pay for hype.
They pay for predictable cash flow.

Clean books.
Recurring revenue.
Low founder dependency.

Start with proof.
Scale with systems.
Exit with leverage.

That’s how you build something that prints money, not something that prints stress.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

Most founders don’t have a growth problem.
They have a focus problem.

Their dashboards are full.
Their results are not.

Tracking more KPIs doesn’t make you smarter.

It just gives you more ways to avoid the hard decision.

Here’s how serious founders think about metrics:

If a number doesn’t change what you do this week,
it doesn’t belong on your dashboard.

That’s why the only startup metrics that actually matter answer 4 questions:

1. Is demand growing?
2. Are customers staying?
3. Are they paying more over time?
4. Are we running out of cash before we figure it out?

Everything else is noise.

The best operators I’ve seen track 5–7 metrics max.
They review them weekly.
And they tie each metric to a clear action.

Everyone tracks KPIs.
Very few track the right ones.

If you want to find your biggest 1% opportunities,
check out scalingcfo.io.

Free assessment.

If this helped, save it.

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Dmitry Fesenko

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The Battle

Dmitry Fesenko

Cruz Gamboa

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