Growth Without Breaking: Scaling Smarter With AI And People with Adnan Eddie Bin-mahfouz

Growth doesn’t stall because you need “more sales.” It stalls because your systems are fuzzy, your budget isn’t built for a ramp, and your hires are sized for the wrong game. We sit down with Adnan Eddie Bin Mahfouz—former CEO of a five‑company group and author of The Art of Business Development in the Age of AI—to map a cleaner path from chaos to compounding growth, especially for small and mid-sized teams.

We start by drawing a clear line between small and medium businesses so expectations match reality. Eddie’s core premise lands fast: hire to grow, not to maintain. We unpack why overhiring from Fortune 500 environments backfires without the tools and budgets those leaders expect, and how underhiring managers while demanding VP outcomes breeds failure. Then we get practical with growth budgeting: carve profit ahead of time, plan multi-quarter investments, and pace for your industry’s sales cycle so new roles have runway to deliver. You’ll hear how onboarding—both for employees and customers—becomes the quiet engine of retention, time to value, and expansion when it’s documented, owned, and measured.

From there we get tactical with AI. Keep the human edge where it matters—qualification, discovery, trust, negotiation—and let AI take the grind: cadence messaging, social touches, first-draft personalization, and follow-ups. Eddie shows how teams can win back six to eight hours a week and redirect that time toward live conversations and revenue moments. We close with the mindset shift founders need: step out of the weeds, read the P&L, coach through KPIs, and model growth by staying close to customers. Subcontract specialists when full-time hires are premature, and build a culture that values ownership over control and systems over heroics.

If this conversation gives you a new lens on scale, subscribe, share it with a builder who needs it, and leave a quick review. Want people strategy and AI systems that keep up with your growth? Visit guidetohr.com and let’s talk.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Skilling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operational finance, and people, plus product and leadership, to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR, human expertise, AI-powered impact. Welcome everyone to today's Skilling with People podcast. I'm Gwynbury Aquarium, your host and founder and CEO to Guide to HR. If you think scaling a small or mid-sized business is just about more sales, think again. On this episode, we're joined by Adnan, Nonazani, Ben Mahous, who's a business consultant, previously a CEO of a five company group, author of the Art of Business Development in the Age of AI, who also climbed from straight commission to the corner office and learned where growth really breaks. We're diving into the visible traps, founders list, that foundation that actually holds at scale, and how AI is reshaping business development faster than most leaders are ready for. If you want to grow without blowing up your culture, cash flow, or credibility, this conversation is your new operating manual. We're going to get started right now. Thank you so much, Eddie, for joining me today. I would love for you to just give the audience a little bit more about who you are and the flavor of what you do.

Defining Small And Medium Businesses

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. My journey, my professional journey, started as you mentioned from a straight commission in retail, working for a company, if you still remember it called Sears. And I used to work for Sears in their furniture and flooring department. As my journey in college was continually going, moved up, went from retail to wholesale to manufacturing to consultancy at that time. As I grew my skills and continue developing my skills, as my position and the opportunity opened more to me, not only in the United States, but at a global level. We at TBS Pro 1, which is my company, we have clients from Australia all the way to the United States. Small to medium sized companies who're looking to scale their businesses or looking to scale their sales department or the sales representative himself from a sales approach to a business development approach.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Awesome. And I always like to ask what is your definition of small and medium size? Because every time I ask someone this, it seems to be a different answer. So for our audience, so they understand what you're referencing, what is small, what is medium sized businesses?

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Very good question. So it's mainly defined by the income and the size of the company. So if you're looking for anything below$1 million in sales, and it's less than five employees, that consider small size company. Once you cross the 1 million to 5 million minimum per year sales, and your team expand from five to 15 people, you start fitting in that medium-sized company.

Hire To Grow, Not Maintain

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Okay, great. Thank you for that definition. I appreciate it. Okay, so let's dive in. I want to get some fun questions with you. Well, actually, before we do, put you on the hot seat. Would you mind sharing a lesson learned? You've built a business, then you built another one, you've overseen five different businesses prior to both of your own personal businesses you've grown. As a founder, as a leader, would you mind sharing a lesson learned for the audience?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

100%. Um, we always preach teamwork and we're one company, one culture. But one of the things I learned, hire people to grow your business. Don't hire people to maintain your business. Now, there's some position you might be in manufacturing, you need somebody in the line of production, they still can contribute. You'll be surprised how many of those people will come up with a shortcut of making that product or production or benefit and feature of that product. But when you hire people, be sure that you're hiring people to grow your business. Listen to them, give them the chance to express their ideas and understand the value of their ideas. You know, set the expectation from the beginning with them that I love to listen to you, I do have an open door policy, but please, whatever you're gonna bring to the table, be sure that it does add value to your business.

Avoiding Overhiring And Underhiring

SPEAKER_01 4:50

I love that. So I gotta want to ask a deep dive question for you here because I have experienced haters who don't do that. I have experienced haters that do that, but in during the execution piece, where they or have seen them struggle, is that they overhire. So they might go out and find someone that's been there and done that who can help them build it, but it's someone who you you talked about a mid-sized company being you know one to ten, let's say one to ten million, they go out and hire someone who's who's working at a hundred million dollar revenue company. And that person is not just not gonna really fit, not fit in, but like they're just not gonna be able to execute at the level that the founder needs. So, where is that like point of like how do you get someone that's been there and done that can help you grow it, can help you push the needle there and innovation, but not be so above where you're at. What's kind of like your takeaway of your experience in executing that?

SPEAKER_00 5:48

No, that's that's a very common challenge actually happen, and I appreciate you addressing that. So we heard the term overqualified more than one time. Uh, the simple example, you don't bring a doctor, a general practitioner, and you hire them to be the nurse or the administrator. They're gonna get bored, number one, because now their skills are way above that and they're knowledge. Yes, they can solve that, but that's only gonna be a temporary solution. So when you recruit, you have to be sure that their vision, their mission of their own personal development is aligned with the company culture and job KPI. That's one of the biggest challenges you see out there. We hire people who are all qualified, Fortune 500. I'm gonna bring it to a small to a medium-sized company and they're gonna make me big. Probably not, because the tools that provided and support provided at a Fortune 500 level, it's not gonna be the same at that. And I face that right now with one of my clients who wanted the director of business development to come in and handle sales and marketing. They wanted to come from a big company, and I told them, you do not have the tools to support that person.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Exactly. Or maybe even the budget sometimes, right? Like I've I've seen it where they've hired, they've said, hey, marketing, or salesperson, come in. I want you to do XYZ, and that person's coming in from a larger org that has the budget, and then it's like they come in and they have a fraction, a third of that budget. And it just makes both parties unsuccessful. I've also seen the opposite too. I've I've seen it more on the operation side, ironically, I've seen the where they've underhired, where they bring in someone at a manager director level. That person gets in as, you know, maybe the head of that function, but it's at a manager director level, and then they start treating them like they're a VP or chief level person, and it's like, and then they're failing and they're wondering, like, this person doesn't know anything. No, no, they just don't know how to handle you at a VP chief level because you have them at a manager director level. And I see those, those happen all the time. So I appreciate you bringing that up. And by the way, for our listeners, we did not, I didn't know what he was gonna say when I asked him. So that was a perfect uh turnaround to what we offer at kind of HR. But jumping back into growing a business, what um when a company hits a revenue plateau, what do you see as being, like maybe from your customers and your own experience, being the real problem that's hiding underneath that plateau?

Why Revenue Plateaus Happen

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Very good. So one of the biggest things is investments. If you don't have a financial study and visibility study conducted in every year for the upcoming growth target, you're gonna have a problem. You have to be willing to invest. So, for example, uh, the person who founded Alibaba.com, everybody knows his story, applied at KFC, nobody accepted him, McDonald's, whatever the thing is. But part of his growth strategy, when he reached, let's say, ten dollars per year in profit, he understood that he knows some of everything. I know some finance, some marketing, some recruiting. But for me to get better, I have to invest from my existing profit that I planned already in my financial planning in 2025. I plan I'm gonna save five, six dollars that I'm gonna invest in new positions that are gonna support the growth. So, one of the things he did, he said, let's say he was making ten dollars. He said, For this particular year and the following year, I'm only gonna keep six dollars. I'm gonna take four dollars, and each dollar I'm gonna invest in a new position to help me grow. So he brought somebody who's better than him in marketing, a person better than him in finance, better in sales, better in logistics. So those four dollars that he took from an existing uh budget invested in two years. This four dollars in two years came back as$14 or zero. Yeah, so you gotta understand when you're planning to grow, you will have to go back again, like you starting the business again. You have to dedicate capital for growth. We budget a lot of people budget for marketing activities, sales, equipment, what have you. But a lot of people do not budget for growth budgeting. You gotta build that within the prior year. It's how much I need to generate this year in dollar amount to support the expansion of production, new employee, new position, whatever it is. It has to be pre-planned and budgeted for the following year to be able to execute that and feel comfortable. Because a lot of these people are not gonna come in and wave a magic wand and show you an effect immediately. It will take them a minimum six months to understand okay, this is what's going on. Now, for the following six months, here's my game plan how we can expand this business. Bad planning, bad financial planning for growth, always have a challenge for it. You gotta have the planning for the investments.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

That makes so much sense. And also, too, probably considering different industries have different lead times for their sales. So also understanding how you can, you know, maybe you don't need as much, or maybe you need even more because your lead times are you know, your sales times are longer. So I've worked with companies where it's six months. I was actually talking to a CEO the other day, and he said six months, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's so many people I would know that would love a six-month sales time frame, right? Because there are these are companies I'm working with that are 24-month sales cycle. Uh so obviously there's a bit of a difference depending on industry there, but that's such a smart way of looking at it. Um, you kind of like you don't have to spend money to make money concept, but in a more detailed version. So as you're scaling up, what do you see founders obsessing over that don't actually move the needle? And and maybe want to think about, okay, if you you're hearing whatever you're saying here, Eddie, maybe think about getting it off your plate or stop doing it altogether, right?

Budgeting For Growth And Lead Times

SPEAKER_00 12:11

For sure. I was a victim of one of both. One of the first things that you gotta take away from them is the macro management. I worked very hard starting this business. I did not sleep all night, I slept in my car, all the stuff there. They want to be sure that every single thing is fine, and they overburn themselves and they overload task and stress on that new employee where they end letting them go, but you are the reason, not them, or they're overwhelmed. So when we talk about scaling a business, any business has two parts, right? We got operation, we got business development. Does your operation have policy and procedures in place? Does your business development sales and marketing activity have system and processes in place? A lot of these people start a business and year, two, three, year, four years, they become a mechanic. They're living the operation versus a business owner. You gotta take yourself out and manage your business, not the operation. You gotta look at your PL, you gotta look at your return of investment of marketing activities, pull yourself out. And going back to that investment of new position, now with people like you and like me, who specialize in particular activities, you probably do not have to hire a full-time employee. For less cost, less headache, no sick days, no vacation, all the expenses coming with it. You can have hire a subcontract like you or me who come come in, and instead of the six months to one year turning of investment, it's actually 90 days. And now you hit the ground running to get it done. There's a lot of positions actually in the growth. You do not need a full-time employee.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Subcontractor who knows what they're doing, they have the expertise, they have the credibility and authority. You're much better to bring those people in to customize their services based on your industry, company culture, job KPI. And you will have a better, fast effect in it. But you have to pull yourself out from an operation person to a business owner.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I call that the working on the business instead of working in the business. And I think that's where founders really do struggle. I see that because they do this is their baby, they want to hold on to it, they can't let go. And that actually is going to be the death sentence of your growth and maybe ultimately long short and long term of your business too, right? You have to let that go. And no one is my husband says, you know, you want it done right, you do it yourself. And I think a lot of founders have that mindset, right? And so I think about that as like, okay, but can 80% of your level of quality be acceptable enough to move the needle for your business? And likely the answer is yes. And so that's where you need to start letting go. And it's not going to be your way 100%, but the way that that person executes is going to move the needle. Let them do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

You know where the majority of people make the decision that they made the wrong decision of joining a company? What time frame?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Oh, within their first 30 to 60 days.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

And if the biggest indicator is the onboarding.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

100%.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

A lot of companies think come over, here's a PowerPoint. This is why we're the best thing since slice of bread. Here's the product benefit and feature. Now go out there and do your job.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I just say there are companies that aren't even that good at their onboarding either, which is really sad too. Like, here's your computer. Why are you not producing?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

There's different people from different team members joining that onboarding. They're in there, they will talk to each other, and they will discuss a lot of things they should not be discussing, but they will look at it like, if this is my onboarding, then how the rest of my career is going to be with these people?

Onboarding Done Right

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah, exactly. Now, in a smaller startup where you're bringing on people, maybe they're the fifth person or whatever. Hopefully, I think the key there is understanding you don't have everything figured out, you don't have that all belt out, and that's okay. It's communicating that and setting proper expectations to those people earlier on so they know what they're getting into before they sign that offer and start and leave whatever other job they may have to come join you. I think it's really important that it's during the interview process, it's not just about you interviewing them, it's about you allowing them to interview you and making sure you're setting the proper expectations of what you need from them. What does good look like? What do you expect out of the first 30 to 90 days from them or beyond? And really help make sure that you're setting up both parties for success. And I say what I have seen the majority of the time when someone leaves a company after the 30, 60, 90 days, or even within the first six months, it's typically the majority of that comes from the lack of proper communication and setting expectations from the employer to the candidate so that everyone's setting themselves up for success.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

What do you think the main reason a lot of small and medium-sized company hire an HR personnel for?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Oh gosh. Well, a gamut of, you know, just the compliance factor stuff. Um, I did have a CEO hire us for um to because of the onboarding. And I remember talking to him before I started. It was, I was like, how many people do you have? Oh, I think we're about maybe like in the high 70s. Well, where do you want to grow? Well, we want to hit probably around the low 90s. I start for them, they were like at 88, 89. He had no idea how many employees he had. And he was also the one data entering new hires into their HR system. On top of it, he goes, but I don't know what happens after that because I just move on to my next thing. So they really had like zero onboarding, right? So we we we were hired to kind of fix that whole problem. But uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Most most small and medium-sized companies when they hired their first HR personnel, most of the time is for payroll purposes, employee benefit. Yeah, that person who came in has zero background in two of the most important things recruiting and onboarding.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Oh, you have you have 20 years' experience running payroll or X Factory who's bigger than me. Once you come over instead of only payroll, run my HR department. Yeah, no experience. How to interview a salesperson is different than how to interview a finance or an accountant.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

It's so true. You know, it's so different.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Onboarding itself, and these are investments you only do one time, and you adjust it as you grow. So if you're planning to have an onboarding program for all of your team, then break it down by positions, you got the Bible in your hand. As you grow, as you add more product or you expand, then you adjust it. But it's one-time investment to get it done correctly. You gotta be willing to budget for that for the following year and understand why my turnover is so high. Well, the onboarding, you don't have an onboarding, you think you have an onboarding, but it's not truly onboarding.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Yeah, yeah. So I'd like to flip over foundation. We talked about, you know, teasing um the foundation. I think uh onboarding is a good portion of that too. But if you could only fix three foundational systems before you scale, what would they be?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

That's a very good question. It's literally hard to tell because every industry is different.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

That's fair.

HR Roles And Missed Priorities

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Every company size is different, every management style is different, every culture is different, you know. But I'll tell you one of my three questions that usually come immediately and ask, and they are the problem, is the same thing I said earlier. What is your policy and procedures for operation? What is your system and processes for your sales and marketing department? Immediately you find out that none of them exist. We have payroll, vacation, no onboarding, nothing for operation production, delivery, collection. None of them have uh ISO 9001, if you want to call it, for that part of the business. And you go to their sales, what do you got? Well, we buy a bunch of product, or we have uh we produce a bunch of it. Here's a list of a bunch of customers, we train them why we're the best things since slice bread out there. Um they go out there and their job is to generate sales. But what is the delivery look like? What collection, what onboarding of a new customer? That's one of the biggest things. Unboarding a new customer, how does it look like?

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Yeah, you can't because just as an employee, it is even more critical. You onboard your new customer in a way where they're gonna be committed and excited to want to stay and grow with you.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Because you build all that momentum through the salesperson, we will do this, we will do that, and everything. They said, Okay, here's my application, here's my first order, okay. We'll deliver next Wednesday. That's not onboarding. Yeah, you really gotta take the time and make it part of your sales process is onboarding new customers. When you have CRM customer relationship management, I like to call it customer revenue management. You know, you turn around and make onboarding a new customer part of your system and project. For the sales apartment.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah. You are the working of the AI and you're all in the sales and development side of things. And obviously, I hear a lot of founders and investors and business you know owners say, well, sales cures all, right? Um, in the age of AI, what parts of business development should be automated and what should must stay human from your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 22:24

100%. So with the last four or five years, I've been drinking, breathing, showering, dreaming AI. Name majority of the major AI platform. I've been in it, I attended their orientation or listened to them or whatever the thing is. So there's two parts in sales training I was focusing on and challenges I tried to fix and contribute to since 2009. One was the fundamental skills needed for people to be successful in the sales profession. Oh, second was the administrative work. AI can help you in the administrative work by taking 20% of the administrative work and enhance it by 80%. So, for example, in the old days when we went prospecting, we went in through LinkedIn sales navigator, you went inside there, you wrote the industry, you're going after the job title, you generated a list. But then physically, you had to sit down and connect with everybody. Physically, you have to go and be sure if one of anybody in your contact list posted something, you gotta hit like, you gotta put an engagement uh comment inside there. So the first part was always gonna stay as human. You gotta build your own prospect, but you gotta qualify. The AI part will come in in the engaging part of it, sending and being persistent about six or seven different AI messages that will help you by using AI in that part of the prospecting. A salesperson, and this is a study we did across the planet, will save an average six to eight hours per week.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Think about that. I got all this list of people, I gotta customize an email or a connection request, I gotta follow up with them. If they put a post, I gotta hit like, I gotta get an engagement post. That by itself is really crazy. In the old days, I had the rule in my workshop called the 1010. Every day you engage with 10 new contacts on your LinkedIn. Every day you reconnect with 10 existing people.

unknown 24:41

Wow.

Customer Onboarding As A System

SPEAKER_00 24:41

And that took six to eight hours per week from me. Now there's a lot of different AI platforms. Once you generate your prospect list, you go through it, you take the ones you're really not going to be able to help them or add value to, and have a target list and let the AI generate the messages, review your messages, be sure your messages are customized to that individual connection, and let the AI work by itself. Where you have now more time for face-to-face meeting, cold calling, working on something and presentation skills or some other skills you need. AI is still limited to what they can do. They still can do a lot of things, but the human touch is way far from being close to it.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yeah, we remind the audience A stands for artificial.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

And it still definitely has a very human interaction, relationship building. So that makes so much sense. I appreciate that. So uh one last question before we wrap up here. What mindset shift does a founder need to make to stop being the bottleneck for their business growth and scaling it?

What AI Should Automate

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Look, everybody in any company should be selling. I learned that from one of my uh good mentors named David Rothberg. David Rothberg is the chairman of the board of a company named Later Creek. Uh, they're international. This person was so impressive that even when he was the CEO, he still was in the field two to three times with his sales team, calling on architect, general contractor, installer, distributor, whatever. That's what truly you contribute to growth to. You gotta understand what is my biggest assets as a business owner to my business, and focus on that to grow your business. Stop getting involved in stuff that you know nothing about. Stop getting involved and telling people how to do their job because that's not what you hire them for. Focus in growing your business, not maintaining your business. You get other people, their job, the accountant, the subcontract accounting, the CFO. That's their job. Your job is to maintain a healthy culture for your team to be part of, that they go out and brag and tell people you need to come and work with us, man. Look how happy I am. Look the hands-on we got in. The CEO himself was out with me in the field, contributing to my growth and helping me and helping our customer to perform a higher level. Focus on the growth. Growth is one of the things that they defined in different activities, different name. But as a CEO, grow your business organically and not organically to enhance your business.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Awesome. Well, thank you, Edie. Um, as we wrap up here, one last question I have. I know I just said that, but are there any last thoughts, tips, tricks, or tools you'd like to share with the audience today before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Take the time to take yourself out of your business. Take the time to take yourself out of your business and actually diagnose your business. Look at your PL, look at your marketing activity, network. I tell you, I send a lot of invitations on a daily basis, you know, for people out there in LinkedIn. And people so misusing LinkedIn now that they're only using it to look for a job or to brand themselves. LinkedIn was built for networking.

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Accept people invitation. Take that 10-15-minute call, dedicate twice a week for 10-15-minute call to network with others to understand other industry to bring knowledge to yourself. You'll be surprised in 10-15 minutes conversation you and I can have can beat six, eight hours of me Googling something. Put that part of your business that twice a week for 15 minutes. I'm gonna network with somebody. I'm gonna have a dedicated question that hopefully we can help each other grow our business.

Saving Time With AI Prospecting

SPEAKER_01 29:00

I love that. That's great advice. Thank you, Edie, so much for joining us and for the audience. I hope you got a couple of nuggets out of it. I know I certainly did. And until the next time, have a wonderful day, evening, or week wherever you're at. Thank you for having me. That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor. Start with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, share with me a message, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold, unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Winnipeg Curry, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high growth companies build smart with people for strategies and AI powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.