“Hey, can you come help me fix this?” 

A year and a half ago, my friend Dan called me — and he was in pain. He was running an eight figure company that does incredible work, but it was navigating some rough seas.

They’d been through two COOs in under a year, and had a few other leaders step off the bus as well. They’d tripled the size of the company in a short amount of time (awesome!!) — but as a result, they were really struggling to “grow up” as a business. 

Lots of the classic symptoms of an under-built operations function were there. The team was super talented and working incredibly hard, but they felt like no matter what they tried, there was always something that stopped them from moving the needle.

More specifically:

There was a perpetual state of change and the team didn’t feel the process was being well-managed.

The data in the business wasn’t clear — it was like they were standing in a dark room and couldn’t find the light switch.

Recruiting was a slow process, and didn’t always produce the top tier candidates the business deserved.

Finance was functioning more like a report card and less like a strategic partner to help drive the right changes.

He called me because he needed someone to bring calm to the chaos.

So why me? And why the heck did I say yes?

I took it on because I had two unfair advantages.

Although I’m an entrepreneur myself, I’m also a natural systems builder. After spending a decade in the fire department, I founded my first company UpLaunch in 2016 and CEO’d it through rapid growth and a successful exit in 2020.

Advantage #1: I’m personally familiar with the pure, unbridled intensity it takes to create a company from nothing, which means I know how to deal with it, harness it, and rein it in when necessary.

The thing about me is that although I’m comfortable in chaos, I always feel driven to create order. 

As a kid, my Matchbox cars were always in a perfect line. When I was a firefighter, I insisted on putting the hose on the fire engine perfectly. If it wasn’t right, I’d dump it all on the ground and get it right. And man, when it was dialed in, it was a thing of beauty.

The behaviors that make an entrepreneur successful — disrupting industries, creating something out of nothing, persevering and maintaining intensity – only work up to a point. Without the right systems in place, you’ll eventually crash into your complexity ceiling, and you’ll stop growing until you figure out how to get past it.

(If you want to read more about this, grab a copy of No Man’s Land: Where Growing Companies Fail by Doug Tatum.)

Advantage #2: I had an operating system that only focuses on the “neglected” parts of scaling a business. The parts most people think aren’t fun or sexy, which are also the parts people will typically ignore until they’re causing the business incredible pain.

When I stepped into the fray a year and a half ago, this O.S. is what I leaned on.

Now, I look at our business and I’m incredibly proud. eNPS is at an all-time high, our culture is thriving, our change management is tight (never perfect), the talent density on our team is incredible, and our finance team is DIALED — they’re driving decisions, not following behind them.

This is what I love, and it’s the intersection of three key elements:

1. Strategy & Leadership that doesn’t suck 😂 and that prepares the leaders and team members to move the business forward at an extremely rapid pace.

2. Finance Teams that are leading from the front, empowering leaders to charge hard and make great decisions, and providing the data that true accountability is built upon.

3. People Teams that can recruit top talent whenever it’s needed, quickly make hiring decisions, and build a culture that makes them want to stick around forever.

Real talk: not having the right skills in these three areas will cripple you at scale, and making sure that doesn’t happen to YOU is what this newsletter is all about.

I’m doing this work for COOs and operations teams who want to execute at a world class level. I’m doing it for founders and CEOs who want to “skip the bad parts” and grow smoothly from seven to eight figures and beyond. I’m doing it for anyone who wants to smoothly conquer the complexity ceiling in their business and install the right rhythms, at the right times, with the right plans. 

It’s for people who want to build an Unbreakable Business.

So how does this work? Glad you asked 🙂 

I’ll be running my YouTube channel and this newsletter in coordination with one another.

Every week, I’ll have a new video that walks through a part of my Operating System, and a newsletter to do a deep dive on the same topic.

Video on Wednesdays, newsletter on Thursdays.

It’s a high standard. I’m asking for space in your inbox and time and attention in your busy life, but I know that I can hold up my end of the bargain and help equip you with the tools you need to build an Unbreakable Business.

I’m crazy grateful to everyone reading this - thanks for coming on the journey with me.

Here to serve,

MV

Question Of The Week

Are you leading through principles or through proximity?

Do your teams REALLY know why they exist and why you ask them to do the things that you do? Is it written down anywhere?

If you feel like your team starts slipping when you take time off or when you “manage them a little less” it’s likely a systems problem — you’re keeping too much living in your brain instead of written down in playbooks.

Use this as a “self-audit” of sorts. If you rolled out for two weeks on a vacation, what would break? Make a list, rank order it according to business impact, and start building some redundancy in your world.

Overheard on the Interwebs

MidJourney

If you haven’t been messing with MidJourney, it’s time to get familiar. I did a keynote in Canada last year for my SaaS Academy clients about how to use AI in business — and 100% of the images were AI-generated via MidJourney.

Plus, this post made me laugh 🤣 

Clear Communication

Being able to communicate clearly is a superpower — and is table stakes for a COO / Operations Leader.

One of my favorites is this collection of writing wisdom from Amazon. Give the thread a look!

Spit Some Fire