Summit OS® Blog
Business Growth and Strategy Insights
Can you guess the biggest obstacle to sustainable business growth? No, it’s not the lack of money, people, technology, or systems. Sure, all of these matter eventually. But even without them, you can still make progress some of the time. What you absolutely must have, though, are practical, actionable plans....
If you know me, you’ve likely heard about my obsession: to inoculate immortality into small businesses. I call this mission “Eradicating Business Covid.” What is Business Covid™? It’s a pandemic quietly killing 180,000 small to medium-sized businesses every year. This silent epidemic takes 2 million jobs and 4% of U.S....
Years ago, I worked as an M&A advisor with Laszlo, the owner of an HVAC business. Over time, he became one of our best customers, snapping up every service we offered—valuation, acquisition advisory, capital raising—you name it. Laszlo was a mix of challenging and entertaining to work with. His curiosity...
In my last blog, we talked about the difference between Lifestyle Businesses and Growth Businesses. To recap: If you want to own a Growth Business, you need to: Sounds exciting, right? Here’s the catch: growth is painful. Why Growth is Always Painful Both spotting opportunities and building a scalable business...
Do you feel like younger generations just aren’t as motivated as we used to be? They want remote work, “Bare Minimum Mondays,” and “Flexible Fridays.” They don’t care about your company’s mission or your endless meetings. They just want to check off tasks and live their lives outside of your...
I’ve always struggled with the idea of the “Integrator”—a person who runs your business while you focus on being the “Visionary.” In 2015, Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters published Rocket Fuel, promoting the concept of hiring an Integrator to free visionary entrepreneurs from the burden of managing their businesses....
Setting priorities is one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur… Wait—scratch that. Setting priorities is easy. Sticking to them is hard. Actually, both are hard. Let me explain why and what you can do about it. First, let’s talk about why setting quarterly priorities (Rocks or OKRs) is so...
As a young investment banker, I grew up inspired by the legendary leverage buyout (LBO) stories of the 1980s. One of my favorites was Barbarians at the Gate, which chronicled the 1989 bidding war for RJR Nabisco. The deal ended when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) “won” with a...
A practical framework that helps leaders organize their businesses around core functions — Get Work, Do Work, and Get Paid — to achieve clarity, accountability, and sustainable growth. The Function Finder Chart™ is a structured approach to designing and managing a business by defining its essential functions. It provides a...
Build a strategy your competitors can’t easily copy—by compiling your company’s Unique Activities™ into a single, interconnected Strategy Stack™. What is a Strategy Stack™? The Strategy Stack™ is an educational, facilitator-led strategy exercise that teaches leaders how to make strategic positioning sustainable by delivering it through a system of interconnected,...
Identify the real behaviors your founders and A-players demonstrate—so you can curate core values that perpetuate your company’s success. What is the Core Value Curator™? The Core Value Curator™ is a guided leadership exercise that helps teams identify and define the specific behaviors exhibited by their founders and top performers...
Design a “win-the-week” dashboard for your team with 1-3 Metrics that drive the most important Function-Outcomes for each of your Function Owners™. Track weekly repeating, measurable input activities. What Is the WTW Scoreboard™? The WTW (Win-the-Week) Scoreboard™ is a leadership execution tool that uses weekly metrics to help Function Owners...
