I help international schools fix teacher training, recruitment, and leadership.

With 25+ years in education across Asia, I know what schools, teachers, and unis really need. I connect the dots between policy, strategy, and people — and get things moving.

Let's talk if you want to grow your teacher pipeline, build smarter CPD, or expand in Asia
.
My passion is to drive educational innovation, harnessing technology to enhance online and offline learning experiences. I hold an NPQH, a PGCE, and an M.Ed in Educational Leadership and Administration.

We also provide academic support to students planning to attend boarding schools in the UK, US, and Australia and help UK schools enter and succeed in the Chinese market.

John Woodberry

The best international schools don’t obsess over results. They obsess over teachers.

Because when teachers thrive,
students do too.

But too many schools get this backwards.
They focus on:
• Inspection reports
• IB scores
• Marketing brochures
• Campus upgrades
Important?
Yes.

But none of those create a great school.

Great schools are built when leaders:
Pay great teachers properly. Talent retention beats constant recruitment.
Protect culture fiercely. One toxic adult can damage an entire staff.
Create psychological safety. Teachers innovate when they feel safe.
Cut unnecessary meetings. Time is a teacher’s most valuable resource.
Promote leaders, not managers. Schools grow when leadership spreads.
Listen to the quiet voices. Some of the best ideas come from introverts.
Be kind to people. Tough on problems. Relationships sustain schools.

Because in the end:
Students don’t experience strategy.

They experience teachers.

And teachers experience leadership.

Founder @ Red Dragon Education | International Teacher Training

It’s not about being in more meetings.
It’s about deciding which rooms genuinely need you.
The moment that clicks, the workload drops — and your impact rises.

In international schools, it’s easy to default to being the Doer.

Stepping into behaviour issues.
Solving timetable conflicts.
Responding to parent emails.
Jumping into operational detail.

Then you move into Manager mode.

Driving accountability.
Running meetings.
Monitoring performance.
Translating strategy into action.

But the real shift is becoming the Leader.

Setting direction for the whole school.
Building systems that outlast you.
Developing middle leaders.
Protecting time for strategic thinking.

If your calendar is full of updates and operational check-ins...

You’re probably operating below your level.

The hardest transition in school leadership isn’t capability.

It’s restraint.

Choosing not to be in every room —
Only the ones where your presence changes the outcome.

Look at next week’s calendar.

Are you leading the school...

Or managing the day?

Curious — where are you operating right now?

undefined undefined

Need to make a move?
Get in touch: https://linktr.ee/pgce

Not sure about your next move in 2026? 
Get in touch: https://linktr.ee/pgce

Want to lead others and get a great job? 
Get in touch: https://linktr.ee/pgce

Unsure where 2026 is heading for your teaching career? Internationally recognised teacher training might be the leverage you’re missing. https://linktr.ee/pgce

If 2026 feels vague, that's a signal, not a problem. 
Upskilling through international teacher training creates that. https://linktr.ee/pgce

Still seeking clarity on your next teaching move in 2026? 
QTS gives you control, not hope. https://linktr.ee/pgce

2026 won’t magically sort itself out. 
International teacher training is how smart teachers open doors globally. https://linktr.ee/pgce

Many teachers drift into 2026. The smart ones prepare. The International PGCE and QTS pathways matter. https://linktr.ee/pgce

Uncertain about your next step? 
Teacher training isn’t a detour; it’s a multiplier. https://linktr.ee/pgce

2026 rewards qualified, mobile teachers, not wishful thinking. 

International training changes the game. https://linktr.ee/pgce

If career momentum matters to you in 2026, invest in training that schools actually respect. https://linktr.ee/pgce

The question isn’t where you’ll be teaching in 2026. It’s whether you’ll be qualified to choose. https://linktr.ee/pgce

2026 rewards qualified, mobile teachers, not wishful thinking. International training changes the game. https://linktr.ee/pgce

PHASE Conference Presenter

TAE40116 Certificate IV in Training and Assessment

We offer a range of online courses designed to enhance the qualifications of aspiring teachers and leaders. In partnership with leading universities, we provide pathways for careers in international education.
IPGCE / IQTS / QTS / PGCE / MA Leadership / MA Education / NPQs

Helping teachers get qualified through the partner universities: IPGCE, IQTS, MA, QTS Assessment Only and IQTS. We've worked with over 1000 teachers to realise their dreams of finding a great job.

Co-Founder

Set up the company and worked with a range of local and international schools in providing education solutions including:

- Tutoring
- Academic support 
- Revision courses
- A-level lessons and examinations 
- Professional teacher placement 
- School tours
- Boarding school advice
- Entrance exam preparation

Founder

Director

My main focus was to help with the students' academic achievements across the secondary school. I was helping grow the school from 200 to 1200 students in 5 years of service. After joining the school I quickly assumed more responsibility and helped lead a tutor group team of 15 staff. 

Worked in both the secondary and primary section of the school in the following disciplines as a classroom teacher:
- Geography
- PE
- Science 
- Economics

Deputy Head of School

Working across the high school in Geography and PE

Head of Geography

Most leaders don’t need another framework.
They need emotional control.
Every time there’s pressure, we rush to:
• OODA Loop
• DMAIC
• 5 Whys
• First Principles
• Decision Trees
• Six Thinking Hats

We collect frameworks like trophies.

Meanwhile...

Under pressure, you don’t rise to your frameworks.

You fall to your emotional maturity.

I’ve seen principals with every model memorized...

…who still snapped in meetings.

I’ve seen leaders trained in Six Sigma…

…who still made fear-based decisions.

Pressure doesn’t test your knowledge.

It tests your nervous system.

Frameworks are useful.

They only work after you regulate yourself.

Before you pull out a decision tree, ask:

→ Are you calm?
→ Are you reacting… or responding?
→ Are you protecting your ego or solving the problem?

No model fixes a triggered leader.

Emotional discipline does.

What has pressure revealed about your leadership?
👇

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International teachers don’t grow from theory.
They grow from their mistakes.
Yet we design PD like this:

📚 Theory
📚 More theory
📚 Even more theory

Workshops.
Frameworks.
Models.

All safe.

All tidy.

But the real progress?

It happens when:

• A lesson bombs.
• A classroom strategy flops.
• A parent's email goes wrong.
• A cultural misunderstanding forces reflection.

International schools say we value growth.

But do we actually create space for failure?

Or do we just celebrate polished success?

If we want stronger teachers, we need fewer perfect slides...

And more honest conversations about mistakes.

What's one teaching mistake that made you better?

Your 1:1 isn’t supportive.
It’s surveillance.

If it starts with:
“What’s the update?”

If you’re checking your phone.

If you cancel it the moment things get busy.

That’s not mentoring.

That’s monitoring.

And your staff can feel the difference.

In international schools we talk about:
Wellbeing.
Coaching.
Professional growth.

But then we turn the one protected space for trust
into a performance audit.

Try this instead:

Start with wins.
Protect the slot.
Name one blocker.
End with one clear next step.

If your 1:1 feels tense,
it’s not the workload.

It’s the way you’re leading it.

Over the past 3 days, I had the pleasure of meeting many incredible leaders. What sets #LYIS apart is its inclusivity and openness — not just words, but lived values.

Happy International Women’s Day.

Terri Pham, M.Ed. Tammy Lewis Bui, Andrea Stanberg, Maria Knox, Haena Seongsin Kim, Rowena Minney 🚀,  Donnah Ciempka, Lisa Thorpe, Amulya Malaki, Shaina Neal M.Ed, Martina Meneghetti, Grainne O'Reilly O'Reilly, Sophie Brandsar M.EdLead  M.Ed Lead, Christine Carey

I once sat in the public gallery at Parliament.
And listened to Tony Benn speak.
He commanded the floor.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this speech would stay with me for years.

Not because it was loud.
Not because it was political theatre.

But because it was principled.

Tony Benn spoke about power — and who it truly belongs to.

He asked questions that still echo today:

• What power have you got?
• Where did you get it from?
• In whose interests do you use it?
• To whom are you accountable?
• And how can we get rid of you?

Sitting there, I realised something:

Leadership isn’t about authority.

It’s about accountability.

Years later, those questions still guide how I think about business, public service, and responsibility.

Some speeches fade.

Some shape you.

This one did both.

What’s a speech or moment that has stayed with you?

“Just be kind.”
That’s the advice given to school leaders.
But kindness, on its own, is not leadership.

In international schools, kindness without standards creates:

• Confusion
• Inconsistency
• Culture drift
• Quiet resentment

Real leadership isn’t soft.

It’s clear.

It’s holding people accountable — fairly.
It’s making tough calls — transparently.
It’s protecting students — unapologetically.

The best school leaders I’ve seen aren’t “nice.”

They’re kind and courageous.

And courage is what makes kindness credible.

If you lead a school:

Are you protecting harmony...

Or protecting standards?

Everyone talks about the cost of hiring teachers.
Hardly anyone talks about the cost of losing them.
Yes, recruitment is expensive.

Ads.
Interviews.
Onboarding.

But the real cost is invisible.

When teacher turnover is high:

Students lose continuity.
Teams never fully come together.
Leaders spend months recruiting instead of improving learning.

And something deeper slowly disappears.

The culture.

Because great schools aren’t just systems.

They’re communities.

And communities are built on relationships.

Relationships take time.

Some staff turnover is healthy.

But when it becomes constant, schools stop growing — they start resetting.

Again and again.

Retention isn’t just an HR issue.
It’s a lesson not learnt issue.

Leading Reason a teacher/leader leaves an international school?

Add others below in comments

Excellent session with Donnah Ciempka on the role of trust in school communities. Trust remains one of the most underestimated drivers of school culture. 

When it is strong, everything moves faster. 

When it is weak, every decision becomes harder.

Always valuable to learn from the experience of others.

#LYIS #ISPHanoi

Yesterday, a mechanic fixed my car... and didn’t charge me.
No invoice...No payment request...Just a note.

It said:
"I knew you had to take your kids to school early tomorrow.
I didn’t want you to be without a car.
Message me when you see this."

That’s it.

No pressure.
No demand for payment.

Just trust.

It made me think about something bigger.

Economists talk about “high-trust societies.”

Places where people assume others will do the right thing —
even when no one is watching.

Where deals move faster,
communities feel safer,
and businesses grow stronger.

But those societies don’t appear magically.

They’re built through small acts of trust, repeated thousands of times.

Like a mechanic fixing a car before asking for payment.

He didn’t just repair a vehicle.

He invested in trust.

And trust compounds faster than any marketing strategy.

To that mechanic in KL — thank you.

You reminded me that the strongest businesses
are built on something simple:

Trust first. Money second.

Ambition is a problem in international schools.
Not because it’s bad.
Because it makes many people uncomfortable.

I’ve noticed a pattern.

The more ambitious you are in an international school...
the more you get “managed.”

You’re told to:
“slow down”
“be realistic”
“fit the culture”

But let’s call it what it is:

👉 A system that rewards stability over excellence.

7 frameworks every international school leader should know in 2026.
Not from education.
From leadership and organizational psychology.

Yet they can transform how schools lead, collaborate, and grow.

Here are a few that I keep coming back to:

1️⃣ Start With Why (Simon Sinek)
If your team can't explain why your school exists, alignment becomes impossible.

2️⃣ The 70–20–10 Learning Rule
70% learning from experience
20% from coaching
10% from training

Most schools still invest almost entirely in the 10%.

3️⃣ The Trust Triangle
Trust is built through:
• Authenticity
• Logic
• Empathy

Remove one, and leadership credibility disappears.

4️⃣ Tuckman’s Team Development Model
Forming → Storming → Norming → Performing → Adjourning

Many leaders panic during storming.
But conflict is often the gateway to high performance.

5️⃣ The Johari Window
Great teams surface blind spots through feedback and openness.

6️⃣ Energy vs Impact Matrix
Not every struggling staff member needs support.
Sometimes the issue is fit, not effort.

7️⃣ The RAPID Decision Model
Clear decisions require clear roles:
Recommend • Agree • Perform • Input • Decide

Without this, schools drift into endless meetings and unclear ownership.

International schools are complex organizations.

Sometimes the best leadership tools come from outside education.

𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗰𝗵 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁?

Stop leading your school like a farmer.
International schools aren’t corn.
They’re complex ecosystems.

The farmer's mindset sounds wise:

Be patient.
Nurture quietly.
Accept the seasons.

But here’s the problem.

Schools don’t have the luxury of waiting for “next season.”

Parents won’t wait.
Boards won’t wait.
Enrollment won’t wait.

In international education, you don’t just water and hope.

You design the climate.

You remove toxic soil fast.
You change what isn’t growing.
You act before the storm hits.

Patience is important.

But passive leadership is expensive.

The best international school leaders don’t just nurture.

They build.

They intervene.

They decide.

And sometimes?

They replant the entire field.

What kind of leader do you aspire to be?

1100 educators in one place.
All focused on one thing in Bangkok:
better outcomes for students.

Delighted to be at EARCOS in Bangkok — easily one of the best teaching and learning conferences in the world.

Educators from across Asia are here sharing ideas, challenges, and best practices.

This is what great professional learning looks like:

• open conversations
• practical strategies
• global perspectives

If you're here too, come say hello.

And if you want a free mug,
you’ll find us at Booth 10 ☕

Always great to connect with fellow educators.

Most schools think teachers leave for better pay. They don’t.
Salary gets them in the door.
Leadership and culture decide if they stay.

You can offer:

• Professional growth
• Work-life balance
• Competitive packages

But if leadership is inconsistent, unclear, or political...

None of it matters.

Teachers don’t quit countries.

They don’t quit students.

They quit leadership.

And here’s the uncomfortable part:

Schools that blame “market conditions” often have an internal culture problem.

Strong leaders create stability in unstable regions.

Weak leaders create turnover in perfect markets.

Vote in the poll.

But I’m more interested in this:

What’s the real reason teachers leave your school?

Let’s talk honestly.

Most aren’t burned out because of teaching.
They’re burned out because of all the distractions.
I am the world's worst at faffing about doing everything except work. 

Data.
Emails.
Admin.
Reports.
Meetings.
Meetings about meetings.

Some days it feels like there’s no time left for actual teaching.

So here are 8 ways international school teachers can stop “faffing about” and focus on what really matters:

1️⃣ Deep Focus
Block 30–90 minutes daily for uninterrupted planning or grading.

2️⃣ Self-Motivation
Reconnect with why you became a teacher in the first place.

3️⃣ Prioritization
Do the highest-impact task first, not the easiest one.

4️⃣ Proactive Communication
Clarify expectations early with colleagues and leadership.

5️⃣ Adaptability
International schools change fast — flexibility wins.

6️⃣ Collaboration
Share resources instead of reinventing the wheel.

7️⃣ Continuous Growth
Read, observe colleagues, try new strategies.

8️⃣ Emotional Intelligence
Your relationships with students matter more than perfect lessons.

Teaching internationally is one of the most rewarding jobs in the world.

But only if you protect your time and focus.

📌 Which one do you think teachers struggle with the most?

Are you the leader nobody respects?
Some of the behaviours we criticise...
Are sometimes exactly what schools need.

The “Gatekeeper”?
Standards require friction.

The “Process Police”?
Clear systems prevent chaos.

The “Status Stalker”?
In high-stakes environments, silence isn’t reassurance.

We say: “Choose trust.”

Yes.

But trust without clarity is Lord of the Flies.

In international schools:

Safeguarding matters.
Compliance matters.
Standards matter.

Respect doesn’t come from being hands-off.

It comes from being intentional.

The question isn’t control vs trust.

It’s fear vs clarity.

Where do you draw the line?

A primary school parent once asked me a question I’ll never forget.
“Will my child get into Cambridge?”
Fair question.

But it wasn’t the one that mattered most.

The better question is this:

Will your child become more curious?
More compassionate?
More courageous?

In international schools, it’s easy to chase:

📊 Results
🏆 League tables
📈 Growth metrics

But the real mission isn’t performance.

It’s a transformation.

Leadership in international education isn’t about producing perfect transcripts.

It’s about shaping globally-minded humans.

And the things that matter most?

They’re often invisible.

Years later.

If you lead a school, ask yourself:

Are we optimising for impact...

Or for legacy?

A strong school leader has a low ego and is therefore not afraid to seek team members' opinions. Diversity of thought makes for strong team performance. Nobody knows it all. 

What can we learn from high-performance sport?

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.
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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
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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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The Battle

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Cruz Gamboa

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