Poor Bob w/ Brian Waldman | Ep. 175

What happens when a strategic growth consultant helps you stop spinning your wheels and start scaling with purpose?

You get Brian Waldman, Boston-based growth strategist, on the Biz/Dev podcast with David and Gary, breaking down how to spot bottlenecks and build strategy that actually works.

They get into what slows teams down, how to lead through complexity, and why the best growth plans are the ones you can act on right away.

This one’s about clear strategy, grounded leadership, and real momentum.

LINKS:

Brian on LinkedIn

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Brian: Everything you're doing, no matter who you are on the team, has something to do with strategy and operations. Again it's what are we going to do, why are we going to do it, and then how are we going to do it?


[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined Per Usual by Gary Voight, who I just learned does not know where buttons live, is hard considering the fact that you make them for a living. He couldn't figure out how to turn on the podcast, and so that's, we're delayed.

I don't know. We don't do it live, so you don't know we're delayed. But it took Gary A. Good five, 10 minutes to find

[00:00:37] Gary: this. This is

[00:00:38] David: It's true.

[00:00:39] Brian: I feel like I'm witnessing some deep-seated family dysfunction here,

[00:00:42] David: It is not very deep seated. It's right there on the

[00:00:44] Brian: right on the surface.

[00:00:46] David: he's a UX designer who has no idea what a button is. It's a real problem. It's a real problem.

[00:00:50] Brian: You should change the color and make it larger. That's whatever UX designer I've ever worked with does.

[00:00:54] Gary: In my defense I'm pretty good at, I don't know, just making it pop.

[00:00:57] Brian: Not this shade of orange, this shade of orange.

[00:01:00] David: Make it pop, and make my logo bigger. That is, that's how we do our job, everybody. All right. More importantly, that other voice you hear is Brian Waldman, who is a strategy and operations consultant. Welcome Brian.

[00:01:13] Brian: Hey, thanks so much for having me, David. Hey Gary. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:17] David: Alright, so the first question it just speaks for itself. What the heck is a strategy and operations consultant?

[00:01:23] Brian: Yeah in some companies they have formal strategy and operations departments. Most big companies do. But I think strategy and operations as a combination is what operational leaders do, right? There's a component of being an operations leader, which is leading day-to-day, making sure that trains are arriving on time.

And to me, the maybe more fun part of that job is figuring out what the Hecker trains. Why do we have 'em and what are they supposed to do? So if you are a real deep operations person, like I hope to consider myself, then strategy and operations go hand in hand and to me, you can't really have one without the other.

[00:02:01] David: So if I were, so obviously there's a bigger company problem. We have a director of operations, his name is Carl.

but we don't. It's just him and me.

[00:02:11] Brian: Sure.

[00:02:12] David: Gary, if, if it's off of a bender or something 

[00:02:14] Brian: Sure. 

[00:02:15] David: that, that look on his face is priceless. You can't see it. If you don't watch the video, you should watch the video just for his face anyway. We're, it's really low key, right? 'cause we're a small company. 

[00:02:25] Brian: Right? 

[00:02:26] David: what does that mean? What does strategy and operations consulting do for that big, you mentioned the trains and whatever.

of widgets and doodads that you build.

I'm trying to figure out what is the difference between our casual conversations when we're talking about leading our company pretty, low stakes as it were, and you're running Amazon, like 

[00:02:43] Brian: Sure.

[00:02:43] David: consultant do in that case?

[00:02:45] Brian: Yeah, so you know, putting the consultant part of it aside, 'cause it doesn't necessarily have to be a consultant that, many of the internal people, that companies are strategy and operation on strategy and operations teams. But I think at startups, the distinction between strategy and operations.

Doesn't exist because they are all encompassing. When you are at a startup and you're in especially early stages. Everything you're doing, no matter who you are on the team, has something to do with strategy and operations. Again it's what are we going to do, why are we going to do it, and then how are we going to do it?

Is that combination of strategy and operations. So to me, anything that has anything to do with product development, go to market strategy, project management, it's all strategy and operations. I use that for shorthand to say, general manager, COO strategy and operations. To me, those are all the same thing.

And I think while startups don't have those as formal teams, it's because everybody at a startup is doing some form of strategy and operations.

[00:03:44] David: So giving your ideal client, you wake up, get two weeks with them.

[00:03:51] Brian: Yeah.

[00:03:51] David: that mean? What does that, what are you doing for them?

[00:03:54] Brian: I would hope the engagement wouldn't be two weeks 'cause not a lot's gonna happen. So when

Yeah,

[00:03:59] David: what is a typical engagement if you were brought in by a, let's say, not obviously Amazon. That's a little

[00:04:03] Brian: sure.

[00:04:04] David: Normal sized, small, medium sized business.

[00:04:06] Brian: So typically the beginning of the engagement is, why the heck do you guys need me? Why am I here? What do you need done? What are the problems that you think are holding your business back from whatever the goal, right? So there's usually some event, some sort of challenge they're facing or.

Goal that they have, that they're, they want to meet or are not meeting that causes them to say, we don't have the skills internally that we need in order to achieve whatever it is we're trying to achieve. So to me, the beginning part is all about trying to understand what is that goal and why is it important to you, and why are you feeling like you can achieve it?

And then eventually, over the course of. A conversation or a couple days, that leads to a deep dive into the organization, how they're running things, where their bottlenecks are, who's being empowered, who's not being empowered. And then sometimes it turns out that the goal that they had originally isn't really the problem, right?

Sometimes the problem is. Somewhere else. So the beginning of any engagement, whether it's a week or two weeks or three weeks or a month, is about understanding the lay of the land, the root cause analysis on the problems and understanding, okay, now that we've identified what we wanna impact, how are we going to impact it?

And does the organization have the skills, people budget in place to do that? Because a lot of the times, the answers to those questions are. Yes and no. So then that leads to a set of recommendations and, leave once the recommendations are made. I'm a practical person. I grew up in startup land, so there's no sense of dropping off a white paper of what should be done. To me, it's like these things now need to be executed and I'm here to help with that execution. Whether that's at a high level with setting KPIs and goals and you're managing to those KPIs and goals, helping the management team do that or doing whatever areas of work in the organization are not.

Skillset sets that they already have in place.

[00:06:03] David: So practically speaking, do you find, when you go into organization, you find the issue a knowledge issue or is it more of a people issue? I.

[00:06:16] Brian: I, I think it's hard to separate those things because it's usually both right there. There's usually really good, well-intended people who may have a knowledge gap or an experience gap. That is impacting the organization's ability to hit a goal. Sometimes they don't even have the right people in place to be able to do that, right?

So there's always an examination of do we have the right people? And then, do we have the budget? Do we have the technology? Do we have the willingness to make the commitment necessary to do all the things that are necessary? So it's usually not one thing or the other. It's usually a combination of a bunch of things.

[00:06:54] Gary: Do

[00:06:55] David: Do you.

[00:06:56] Gary: maybe a set of two or three common areas that, that you're finding with like smaller, medium sized businesses?

[00:07:02] Brian: Yeah, so a lot of times there, so there's usually two sorts of issues that I tend to deal with, right? One is a go to market, customer acquisition, product, price, place, promotion sort of thing, right? Marketing, sales. And in a lot of cases the companies have. Struggled to achieve their goals in those areas.

And a lot of times that's because of either unrealistic expectations, unrealistic budget allocations, or like you were mentioning, maybe not the right people in the right positions. So there's that stuff, and then there's the, we feel like we've got the right. Product, price, place, promotion, and the right people in place, but it's not working.

And so there it turns into more of an operational exploration of why isn't it working? We have bottlenecks. Are there things that we're doing that just, could processes, could be improved, efficiencies could be gained. And so you start at the top and work your way down until you run into where you believe the real problems are.

And it's usually not, like I said, not just one place.

[00:08:03] Gary: it sounds a lot like what we got from that book Traction.

[00:08:07] David: Sure. Yeah. There's definitely gonna be a lot of overlap here. Yeah. He's gonna implement, maybe not the on-brand traction, but I imagine you're bringing in a lot of those same principles. Do you find the main value that most companies have? Is simply that you're a third party observer, right? You can say, Bob here sucks, and Bob here needs to go away.

Now obviously you're gonna be way, way more tact than that,

[00:08:30] Brian: Sure.

[00:08:31] David: Everyone know Bob sucks and everyone knows he's the problem, he's someone's uncle or whatever

[00:08:36] Brian: sure.

[00:08:37] David: get rid of him. 'cause of human. And you come in there and you're like, yeah, we're just gonna, the elephant in the room is, Bob sucks.

Is

[00:08:43] Brian: Yeah.

[00:08:44] David: a value you often bring?

[00:08:46] Brian: I think if I. Yeah, it's not a value to Bob. I think if I do bring that, it's accidental, right? Because that's certainly not the intention is, to go in and find problems that are people related and, provide cover, if you will, for a CEO to make a decision that's been obvious that maybe he or she and everybody else in the organization all along, right?

If I'm coming in and that's what you're hoping to get from me. Then, there probably are easier ways for you to do that, and you should be looking in a mirror and, deciding if you're a leader or not, if you can't make those decisions yourself. So I would say like, when those things happen, it's accidental.

More often than not, it's a, skillset gap that exists that the company would acknowledge exists or just, Hey, we don't know how to take the next step. And I think it takes a lot of courage for. Organizations to do that and to admit that they need help and to reach out to someone like me who has a very broad background in multiple disciplines.

And, in business I've led marketing, sales, operations, huge tech projects, product management hr, very highly focused on organizational design and hiring. So like when you bring someone on who's a. Generalist who has done a lot of different things, I can dig in and understand a lot of different areas very quickly, and I think that's why organizations hire me.

It's more practical. It's more based on being able to bring tangible and reasonable guidance that can be well executed and will lead to good outcomes rather than some sort of either high level strategy or to do the dirty work for, because they're scared of firing Bob.

[00:10:31] David: So do you follow like a curriculum or a, a favorite book or process that you have? Or maybe it's a secret sauce of amalgamation of several of these books.

What are your faves on this

[00:10:41] Brian: Yeah, so I, I am a big book listener, so whenever I, if anyone asks me to have I read this book or that book I am always a little bit queasy about answering, 'cause the answer's no. But I've listened to it probably, maybe. But also I think I've done so many different things and been involved in so many different situations in my career, different organizations, different.

That, I, it's this combination in a cloud of things I've read and learned through listening, learning, formally, I have two master's degrees also that hope those taught me some things. But the larger portion of, I hope what I bring to an organization is the experiences that I've gained directly.

I know a lot of the. I couldn't formally list off all these different consulting formulas, but I know there are some, right? But for me, it's more like I've been there and I've done that. So I don't really need or want to necessarily work within a framework. What I have is the ability to get to root cause, the ability to understand the reasons behind things, and therefore, the ability to go to whoever's hired me, the CEO.

Whoever, president or whatever it is, and say, Hey look, I, I've been listening and here's what I've learned. And typically I get a lot of nods and then I say, and here's how I think we can fix it. And I'll usually present some sort of formal writeup, including a plan. And I get a lot of nods.

And those don't necessarily follow a framework or structure 'cause they're gonna change from client to client. But I'm sure that they were all informed by formal frameworks and structures that I've either seen or listened to in the past.

[00:12:20] David: It reminds me early on, so we've been, we focus really heavily on ux. That's our thing

[00:12:24] Brian: Sure.

[00:12:25] David: I've been doing that for longer than it was. Cool.

[00:12:32] Brian: Right?

[00:12:32] David: what was funny is early on is like you, you talk to a UX firm and they talk about process this and process that and this degree and that degree and our stuff has all been experiential, right?

this so many times that we know what works and not. Now Gary does have some of the formal fancy stuff, but we don't give that any credit. 

[00:12:49] Gary: You just don't give Gary any credit.

[00:12:51] David: Oh yeah, that's right. Sorry. Thanks for the correction. 

[00:12:53] Gary: That

[00:12:53] David: but it is interesting 'cause it's like sometimes you get, when you're old like Gary, you have lots of experience that's even pre some of these things

and it's like there was no books when we were doing it originally.

We

doing, and flow and it made sense to us to a point now. We follow that stuff off and on now, but it is just interesting. It's like, where did you do this, that, and the other? And I'm like, I don't know. I wasn't in school at that point. I'd 

[00:13:19] Brian: Right.

[00:13:20] David: for 10 years, but no, I totally get that.

[00:13:22] Brian: Yeah. And it's hard right in, in your case, I'm sure if you have a client who wants to engage in a very formal way and they're expecting like. A long presentation that you've spent hours and hours writing up and justifying your recommendations. Like to me, when you hire a big consulting firm, you're spending a lot of money on that and lot, not a lot of money on.

Someone who really, truly understands your business and can lead and, help you to lead with impact and make a difference like quickly. So I think, there's, I'm a startup person at heart, and startup people typically don't use frameworks and rubrics to say, Hey, this is what I think we should do.

[00:14:06] David: So you've worked with a lot of leaders. Oh, were you gonna say something, Gary? Sorry, I didn't wanna jump in there.

[00:14:11] Gary: gonna say coming from a design perspective in the same token, the experience is really the value that you're bringing, especially in your case, the experience of having been able to not just console, but work in these several different facets of the company or large companies. So regardless of how polished the presentation is or how many, different kind of classes or philosophies you cite, like in our case with ux there's 15 to 16 different kind of just stalled and every, all kinds of philosophies that you could just go wax poetic forever. But at the end of the day, none of that's really important the client is paying for your, i your experience and your knowledge over, 

[00:14:53] Brian: Yeah,

[00:14:54] Gary: the fancy structure of delivery.

[00:14:56] Brian: I feel like you said that way better than I did Gary, so thank you.

[00:14:59] David: Don't give him compliments, just go

[00:15:01] Gary: practices formula in order to say that. No, I'm just kidding.

[00:15:04] David: straight to his

[00:15:05] Brian: needs support, so I'm gonna make sure to throw him some props.

[00:15:08] Gary: Thanks,

[00:15:09] David: gonna hear the end of

[00:15:09] Brian: You bet. 

[00:15:10] David: He's gonna, you're gonna be his favorite guest of all time. 




[00:15:21] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 


[00:15:48] David: So when you're talking about leaders, and I know that was a big part of working with them.

do you see them as a business scales and changes?

How do you see a leader's role changing?

[00:16:00] Brian: Yeah, that's tough, right? Because in the startup world, if you look specifically at, startup founders, on day one you're mopping the floor, creating a business model, trying to hire people who believe in your vision, begging for investors, right? And that's a skillset that is very unique to startup founders.

And then on your one, your. Hopefully hiring a leadership team and, refining your strategy and starting to delegate responsibilities. And then on year three, you're dealing with, quarterly business updates to your investors and board meetings and, leading managers who are leading teams.

And all of those different stages require, a real shift in priority and focus. And I. I, I said before that I don't often quote like things I've read, but I've read recently a Harvard Business Review article that said something to the effect of by year three 50% of startup CEOs are out of their roles.

50%, right? So I think this speaks to the point that you're talking about. Your role as in a startup as a founder or an, co-founder in any level changes dramatically. And in the startup world, you just don't have time to fail to make the transition. If you fail to make the transition from like scrappy startup founder who's willing to do whatever it takes every day to a leader of people and, strategic.

View on the company and goal setting and things like that, then you're gonna be out and the, it's tough because on the one hand, that's the right thing to have happen, right? You should have the right people at the right time in the right leadership roles. And at the other time, like. That really stinks for the founder, right?

Because they wanted to be the CEO ringing the bell at the NASDAQ saying, Hey, we made it right. We went public. And the truth is that rarely happens. What usually happens is either the startup founder is asked to leave, or whoever the first person leading the marketing department is. You.

They end up in a, position reporting to someone who was brought.

Compare, and sorry to make one more point, but compare that to a big company. If you get promoted at a big company, it's not expected that a year later or six months later, you're gonna get promoted again. What's expected is that you're gonna take a year or two or three to learn the skills that you need in this new role now to lead a bigger team, to be more strategic, and you.

Talking, leading through other leaders than directly online level employees. So like at a big company, that's part of the business model that's expected. At a startup there's none of that. So at some point, pretty much every startup founder reaches a point where they just don't have those skills to, to lead at that level.

And they're, it's either they're gonna learn how to do it very quickly 'cause they're naturally gifted in that way, or they're gonna be replaced one way or another.

[00:18:59] David: It reminds me of, I heard someone say, and I wish, I don't think it was somebody famous Gary's gonna make fun of me here 'cause I'm horrible at attribution. But it was, someone just was quoting someone else. So I, it's not even that, but it was basically people are promoted the max level of their competency and so it's like when you reach it. That, that's as far as you're gonna go because this is all you can do. And that's one of the reasons why large companies have a bunch of bad middle managers, because that's as good as they can possibly get, and they're just stuck there. And I think CEOs, me and my son had an argument the other day, speaking of CEOs, he in his mind now, he's 19. In his mind, a CEO is just. Plays golf all day. That's what he's like, they're making these millions of dollars and all they do is, they, everyone else is doing the real hard work. And I tried to explain to him, I was like, someone like Tim Cook. Now that's the highest of the high, but there's only maybe 10 people in the world who could do his job

[00:20:03] Brian: Sure.

[00:20:04] David: he's gonna go talk to the president and convince him to change his tariffs.

Right? That is something very few people on this planet can do,

and explaining that to a 19-year-old does not go over well, by the way. But I just find that interesting. It's like that skillset is so amorphous at some point when you get to those levels, even at my level, I'm leading a small company, but I would say two people in my company have any idea what I do on a day-to-day basis.

They have no

[00:20:29] Brian: Sure.

[00:20:30] David: that it's something magic, it's just it doesn't affect them as long as the lights stay on. 

only thing that, that actually affects it. But it is interesting. How people change throughout, and some people don't have those skills. I'm not sure I would ever be able to lead a billion dollar company.

I don't think I have those skills. I certainly would upset someone at that point, but it, but I've been able to morph as my company has needed me. but I do wanna ask those. You were saying that often the CEO has to, or the founder has to leave, you. Think that company suffers because of a loss of that founder charisma.

You know the, there's a concept that founders have that you just know you're a founder, that there's something in you and you have that passion, that love that it's your baby, that whole thing.

[00:21:13] Brian: Sure.

[00:21:13] David: Do you discount that? Do you think that actually has value? And when that person steps aside, whether it's to a lower level or

completely, do you think that company suffers as a result?

[00:21:22] Brian: Yeah, and that's a good question. So my instinct here is. It takes that passion, right? All. I like to say that all founders are delusional, right? At some level, they're all delusional because the majority of them are gonna fail. And that's just, the data just proves that to be true, right? So in order to be a founder, you have to have this delusion.

That your business is going to be one of those that does not fail. And I don't think you can get a startup off the ground without that delusion. So that delusion is a great thing when you're in year one and year two, and hopefully you're building that same level of. Delusional belief into your employees at that stage, right?

Because they've taken a job that pays them less money probably. And in exchange you're giving them more responsibility, which is gonna turn around and slap them in the face often because now they're gonna think they're a VP when you know they're really not. And you know they're gonna work for equity that they think someday is gonna be worth a million dollars, which probably it isn't.

But so at the beginning there's this sort of, we're all in this together. We're doing this crazy thing. Nobody believes in us mentality. And at some point the company, like in your scenario, gets to this inflection where, okay, but there's actual things that need to be getting done that aren't getting done, or skills that need to be brought to the table from a leadership perspective that we don't have.

And so the question of does the company suffer for that, I think is, reflective of a couple things. Did the founder. Establish and build a culture that is sustainable without them. And if you've done that, then I think kudos to you, because that's really hard to do. But more likely, I think like at that stage in a startup, everybody knows is this the CEO that's gonna lead us to the promised land or not?

And people aren't dumb, maybe not. And I think then it's about who do they bring in and does the person that they bring in respect and understand why we're all here and what our values are that we've established. And hopefully those are good values, right? People feel enthusiastic and the person who they bring in shares that enthusiasm and respects the people that got it to this point and treats them well.

And then I think it's. Easier anyway to have a transition and to keep that culture and keep that spirit. But if you know the new person comes in and it's like all of you people over here stink, you're all out. I'm bringing in my people like, now what do you have left? You have the product and whatever success you've had, but you have.

None of the sort of camaraderie and ethic and

values that the CEO helped to create. That would be all culture. So I think it really is highly dependent on the situation and whether or not the CEO can be part of that transition, because just because you're not gonna be CEO anymore, I.

I've seen a lot of CEOs who are like technical or product oriented founders. They lead product or they lead technology and they're happy to do that because that's what they're really good at and they don't wanna be dealing with the investors and, setting, KPIs and goals.

They just want to make product and so it really depends right on the situation and on the, whether the founder stays.

[00:24:38] Gary: Now speaking of founders and startups through your experience, what would you give as your top three pieces of advice to any new founder or startup when they

[00:24:49] Brian: Yeah.

[00:24:50] Gary: to start growing their business?

[00:24:51] Brian: Yeah. I'm sure you get a lot of an interesting answers to these questions. So I'll, let me think through my three. So the first one is. Despite the fact that you have to be delusional to be a startup founder, there has to be a piece of you that is honest about the probability of success, right?

You have to understand in the back of your mind, at least, that you're probably not gonna be successful doing this. So you need to be honest about what it is you're trying to get out of this. And hopefully it isn't to become a multimillionaire 'cause that's not likely to happen. But a lot of other really great things can happen.

So be honest with yourself about the probability of success as the first one. I would say. The second one is understanding, I would say the lifestyle that being a startup founder is going to force on you and understanding. How to create boundaries and how to keep those boundaries because if you don't it'll kill you.

I wasn't. I had a startup for, five or six years, and we had, by any measure, a lot of success. And, from a lifestyle perspective, it was extremely difficult. By the end of it, I was physically ill from the stress over the course of those years. And so I think from a lifestyle perspective, you and your loved ones and your friends, need to know what you're getting yourselves into.

And then the third one I would say is you have to do a lot of upfront work to make sure that you are in alignment with your co-founder and or early team members. A lot of people go into this with, Hey, let's make this work. Do you want to be a part of this? Great, let's go. And they don't spend time.

On having difficult conversations about how decisions are gonna be made and ultimately at the end of the day who's in charge and what are your values? What are you looking to get out of this? And those conversations typically don't happen at startups. And so I think. My third one is to choose your co-founders and early team very carefully, and to make sure that you are having early open, candid conversations about why are we here?

What are we hoping to get out of this, and how are we gonna treat each other?


[00:27:20] David: good. Versions of that. We've also heard the comparison that like you have a startup, you and your co-founder is like a marriage

[00:27:27] Brian: Yeah.

[00:27:28] Gary: you need to be able to have that kind of open, candid conversation in order move on

Now Brian, if anybody wants to reach out and get ahold of you and maybe find out what other services and skills you can offer, where can they get ahold of you?

[00:27:39] Brian: Yeah, for sure. Obviously I'm on LinkedIn. I have a book time with me button on my LinkedIn profile that I'm, honestly, I say this seriously, always happy to have conversations with people. My contact information is also there. You can message me directly on LinkedIn as well. I think that's the best way, since I don't have a formal company website or anything like that.

[00:27:58] Gary: We will put the link to your LinkedIn in the show notes for

[00:28:01] Brian: Yeah. Thanks Gary. Appreciate that.

[00:28:03] David: Thank you so much, Brian for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

[00:28:06] Brian: Yeah. Thanks David. Really nice to meet both of you. It's been a fun conversation. I appreciate you having me.

[00:28:11] David: On that note, we are out. We will be back next week. Thanks everybody.