Episode index
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30 episodes
Steve on preventing team conflict through clear, specific delegation, and how a company's stated values can help resolve disputes when they happen anyway.
Steve explains how to write a position agreement for every role on your org chart, even ones you haven't filled yet, so hiring and accountability get clearer as the company grows.
Steve's Founder Foundations series covers building coaching and mentoring systems into a company, from quarterly skills conversations to watching for the Peter Principle in promotions.
Part of the Founder Foundations series: why weekly one-on-ones (BDMs) with your team prevent chaos and turnover, and how to structure them around last week, this week, and personal check-ins.
Steve tackles one of the harder Founder Foundations topics: building a functional org chart for the company you are becoming, not just the one you have, so growth does not depend on you.
Steve, who calls himself a terrible manager, explains how he compensates with a simple systemic approach: three direct reports, clear functional buckets, and everything else built as a system.
Steve opens the management module of Founder Foundations with the E-Myth idea that systems should run the business, not people, and why that took him years to learn.
Two-thirds through Founder Foundations, Steve tackles preparing for financial 'lightning bolts' like lawsuits or recalls, tying finance back to a founder's personal why.
Steve breaks down financial control levers, from accounts receivable to supplier payment terms, and the reporting habits that catch problems before they compound.
Steve explains why undercapitalization, not lack of profit, is what actually kills most businesses, and how a real cash flow statement helps you see it coming.
Steve covers building a company budget as a scoreboard for the business, and why handing budget ownership to your team beats being the sole keeper of every number.
Steve breaks down the P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in plain terms, and why cash flow, not profit on paper, is the number that actually keeps a business alive.
Steve's Founder Foundations series turns to accounting systems: cash versus accrual, the surprise of phantom profit, and why founders eventually outgrow spreadsheets and basic bookkeeping tools.
Part of the Founder Foundations series: why your finance system should work like a scoreboard, not an annual dread. A high-level look at statements, budgets, and reporting founders actually use.
Steve closes the marketing chapter of Founder Foundations, showing how to pull audience, budget, and competitor research into one written strategy document your whole team can use.
Steve argues founders waste too much time perfecting a logo early on. His advice: pick something you like, move fast, and put the real effort into what your brand identity actually means.
Steve explains why the usual "best quality, lowest price" pitch isn't a real differentiator, and how to build brand positioning customers actually believe.
Continuing Founder Foundations, Steve digs into the conscious and unconscious biases that drive purchase decisions, and why understanding them matters as much as product features.
Steve walks through how to decide where to expand next, market by market, instead of adding new geographies just because a marketplace program makes it convenient.
Steve breaks down how to define a customer avatar in concrete detail, using an old data project that pulled a company's most profitable customers out of hundreds of thousands.
Steve opens a Founder Foundations lesson on marketing fundamentals: the funnel, Net Promoter Score, and why comparing Amazon conversion to your own site is misleading.
The final entry in Steve's 31-part Founder Foundations series covers turning a time audit into real time blocking, and building SOP checklists so your team doesn't need you for every decision.
In the Founder Foundations series, Steve covers real-world systemic management: building a management hierarchy, hiring for the right role, and why he's still learning to manage people well.
Part of the Founder Foundations series: a systemic approach for spotting which business frustrations are worth building a process to fix, and which are simply not solvable.
Part of Founder Foundations: why KPIs need to tie back to a strategic objective, how to avoid an overwhelming dashboard nobody uses, and the difference between leading and trailing indicators.
Steve makes the case that every company has an origin story worth finding, even a boring one, and explains how to dig past the surface answer to something that actually rallies people.
Steve kicks off the Founder Foundations series with how to define a strategic objective: where you'll operate, what you'll do, and how big you intend to get.
Steve opens his Founder Foundations mini-series with what he considers the most important exercise for any leader: finding a personal why, separate from your company's mission.
Steve opens the Founder Foundations series with systemic thinking — mapping each part of your business as an input and output so decisions stop feeling like chaos.
Steve opens a new mini-series on training the leaders under you, not just yourself, so your business can run without your hands on everything.