A Dumb Question: Explain to Me How You Grew a Company

You want to know how I made a business money? Fine. But don't expect me to hand over somebody else's fucking business intelligence to prove I know what I'm doing.

I get asked some variation of this question in job interviews all the time.

“Tell me about a company you helped grow.”

“How much revenue did you generate?”

“What strategy did you use?”

“What was the budget?”

“What were the results?”

And my personal favorite: “Can you walk me through exactly how you achieved those results?”

No. Not exactly.

And if you're interviewing someone for a senior operational position, you should understand why.

I'm not applying to manage your Instagram account. I'm not interviewing to tell you how I increased followers from 10,000 to 100,000. I'm not here to impress you with a fucking click-through rate.

I'm talking about businesses. Real businesses. Their money. Their operating expenses. Their management decisions. Their financial weaknesses. Their competitive advantages. And the strategies developed around all of those things.

You want to know how I made a company money?

I audited the motherfucker, figured out where it was fucking up, identified what it would take to correct those problems, and presented management with options based on how much financial capital they were willing and able to risk.

That's the short answer.

The longer answer involves information you have absolutely no business asking me to disclose.

First, Prove to Me You Have the Money

Let's establish something.

You hire me because you want your business to make more money.

Fine.

Before we start discussing advertising campaigns, marketing channels, creative strategies, or any of that other shit, I want to understand the business.

And when you tell me you have a million dollars available for marketing, my response isn't going to be, “Fantastic! Let's build a campaign!”

My response is:

No, you don't. Prove it to me.

Where did that million dollars come from?

Is it actually available?

Is it operating capital?

Is it borrowed money?

Is it money the business can afford to lose?

Is it money you've already mentally committed to something else?

Are you pulling that number out of your ass because it sounds like a respectable marketing budget?

How much money is the company generating?

How much is it retaining?

What are its actual obligations?

How much are the owners taking out?

How much working capital does the operation need?

What happens if the investment doesn't produce the intended result?

And what does the business need to earn for that million-dollar commitment to make financial sense?

These aren't questions a Google Ads account can answer.

These are questions about the business.

I need to know what the fuck I'm working with before I tell you what we can realistically accomplish.

Because I don't build strategies around numbers someone invented in a conference room.

I build strategies around the financial and operational circumstances of the company.

I Am Not a Marketing Director. I Make Businesses Money.

Let me explain the distinction.

A conventional marketing director might be given a budget and told to produce more leads.

They'll evaluate channels, allocate spending, manage personnel, coordinate campaigns, and report results.

Nothing wrong with that.

But that's not the level at which I'm approaching the problem.

I'm examining the business that created the budget in the first place.

Why is the budget that amount?

Why does management believe marketing is the solution?

What happens when a lead comes in?

Who answers the phone?

Who qualifies the customer?

Who closes the sale?

Who delivers the service?

What does the company earn from that customer?

What does it cost to serve that customer?

What happens when demand increases?

What is preventing the company from making more money right now?

And here's the question people really don't like:

What is management doing that's contributing to the fucking problem?

Because I have yet to encounter a business that isn't fucking something up.

I don't care how successful it looks from the outside.

I don't care how much revenue it generates.

I don't care how expensive the office furniture is.

Every business has weaknesses.

Some are relatively harmless.

Some are costing the company a fortune.

And some are so deeply embedded in the way the organization operates that the people responsible for them don't even recognize them anymore.

That's why I audit the operation.

I'm not there to admire the business.

I'm there to understand it.

You Can Tell Me Nothing, and I'll Still Start Figuring Shit Out

Here's something people underestimate about experience.

When you've spent enough time studying businesses in a particular industry and market, you start recognizing patterns.

You can look at a company's website, service offerings, market positioning, hiring activity, compensation structure, and public communications and begin forming a picture of how the organization operates.

Sometimes the most revealing thing a company publishes isn't its annual report.

It's a fucking job posting.

What positions are they hiring for?

How many?

What responsibilities are being combined into one role?

What compensation are they offering?

Are they looking for someone to build a department, repair an existing process, replace missing expertise, or perform the work of three people?

Why are they hiring for those positions simultaneously?

What does that suggest about their organizational priorities?

Now, none of those observations proves what's happening inside the company.

A job posting is evidence of a hiring decision, not an audited financial statement.

But if you know the industry, understand the local market, and recognize how different operational functions depend on one another, that information can tell you where to start looking.

I've examined a large Los Angeles personal injury law firm and developed a four-part analytical series around what its publicly observable circumstances suggested about its operating challenges.

The analysis was built around educated hypotheticals, not claims that I possessed its private financial records.

And that's the fucking distinction.

I can examine publicly available information, identify plausible operational problems, and explain what I would investigate.

I don't need to pretend I've seen somebody's books to demonstrate that I know how to read the business environment.

But once I actually have access to the books, the stakeholders, the internal systems, and the operating records?

Now we're having a completely different conversation.

I Want to Know Where the Money Is Going

A business owner tells me revenue is increasing.

Great.

Are you making more money?

Not generating more sales.

Not acquiring more leads.

Not producing more invoices.

Making more fucking money.

Because a company can increase revenue while becoming less profitable.

It can hire more employees without improving productivity.

It can acquire more customers while making less money per customer.

It can spend more on advertising while its intake process fails to convert the opportunities it already receives.

It can have an excellent reputation and still operate with an inefficient cost structure.

It can make millions while leaving substantially more money on the table.

I want to know why.

And I want to know whether the people making the decisions understand why.

My job isn't to accept management's explanation simply because management signs the checks.

If the numbers contradict the explanation, we're going to discuss the numbers.

If the business has a sales problem, we're going to discuss the sales problem.

If it has a staffing problem, we're going to discuss the staffing problem.

If the owners are withdrawing money that the business needs to fund its stated growth objectives, we're going to discuss that too.

I don't give a fuck whether the conversation is comfortable.

You hired me to evaluate the operation.

Not to tell you everything is wonderful.

You Have to Spend Money to Make Money. This Is a Fucking Business.

Now let's address one of the most ridiculous expectations I encounter in business.

Owners who want extraordinary financial results but don't want to risk the capital necessary to pursue them.

You want to make $10 million?

Fantastic.

Suppose I've audited your company, examined the market, identified your operational weaknesses, and developed a strategy that requires a $1 million investment to pursue that objective.

Are you willing to risk the million?

No?

Then what the fuck are we talking about?

You don't get to demand a $10 million outcome while refusing to fund the strategy intended to get you there.

Running a business is a gamble.

It always has been.

You put money into something because you believe the potential return justifies the risk.

Sometimes you win.

Sometimes you lose.

Sometimes you have to change the strategy halfway through.

That's business.

And no, I'm not saying that throwing money at a problem magically produces profit.

I'm saying you have to put money at risk to pursue the financial rewards you want.

The more substantial the objective, the more important it becomes to understand the capital required, the downside exposure, and the organization's capacity to execute.

You cannot build a serious growth strategy out of wishful thinking.

Frugality has its place.

I don't believe in wasting money.

But there's a difference between being financially disciplined and being too fucking afraid to invest in your own company.

You can save yourself into a corner.

You can underfund the people responsible for delivering your services.

You can refuse to modernize systems.

You can decline to expand capacity.

You can keep your marketing budget artificially low while complaining that the company isn't growing.

And you can convince yourself that you're being a brilliant financial steward because you didn't spend the money.

Congratulations.

You also didn't make the investment.

You don't get the upside of a risk you refused to take.

I Give Management Options. They Choose Their Risk.

After I audit a business, I'm not interested in walking into a meeting and announcing that I've discovered one magical solution.

I want management to understand the options.

Here's where the company is losing money.

Here's what's preventing it from generating more.

Here's what can be corrected with existing resources.

Here's what requires additional capital.

Here's what I believe offers the strongest potential return.

Here's what could go wrong.

Here's what happens if you choose the aggressive approach.

Here's what happens if you choose the conservative approach.

And here's what you should expect if you decide not to do a fucking thing.

The business owners and stakeholders get to choose.

It's their company.

It's their capital.

It's their risk.

But don't approve the cheapest option and then hold me accountable for the financial objectives attached to the most aggressive one.

That's not how this works.

If management chooses a smaller investment, the strategy and expectations have to reflect that decision.

If management refuses to correct an operational weakness, the projections have to reflect that constraint.

If management won't expand capacity, don't expect unlimited growth.

And if management wants me to tell them that none of those decisions will affect the outcome, they've hired the wrong motherfucker.

Now You Want Me to Explain Exactly How I Made Another Company Money?

Let's return to the interview.

You want to know how I grew a business.

You want the numbers.

You want the budget.

You want the strategy.

You want to know which operational problems I discovered, how I corrected them, and what financial results followed.

Do you understand what you're asking?

You're asking me to discuss another company's internal financial and operational information.

The kind of information that might include:

• Confidential budgets and financial performance.
• Customer acquisition costs and actual customer profitability.
• Pricing structures and margins.
• Internal staffing and compensation decisions.
• Ownership distributions and capital allocation.
• Sales processes and conversion economics.
• Competitive weaknesses and strategic advantages.
• Nonpublic expansion plans.
• Proprietary marketing and operating strategies.

You think I'm going to sit across from you and disclose that information because you want a compelling interview story?

Are you out of your fucking mind?

That's not my information.

It belongs to the business.

And depending on the information, the circumstances, and the obligations involved, disclosing it can create serious legal consequences.

Let's use the correct terminology.

There's breach of contract, including violations of enforceable confidentiality agreements or nondisclosure agreements.

There's trade secret misappropriation, which can involve improperly disclosing or using protected business information.

There's breach of fiduciary duty or a duty of confidentiality, where such duties legally apply.

And there can be unlawful disclosure or misuse of material nonpublic information in circumstances involving securities.

That last category is where people start talking about insider trading.

To be precise, insider trading isn't simply telling someone how a private business operates. It generally involves securities trading, or certain forms of tipping, connected to material nonpublic information and a breach of a relevant duty. [3]

But the larger point is that confidential business intelligence isn't yours to distribute just because somebody wants to evaluate your résumé.

Under California's Uniform Trade Secrets Act, information can qualify as a trade secret when it derives independent economic value from not being generally known and remains subject to reasonable efforts to preserve its secrecy. Not every private fact meets that standard. [1]

Federal trade secret law can apply as well, including a civil action for qualifying misappropriation connected to interstate or foreign commerce. [2]

And an NDA isn't the only circumstance in which legal duties concerning confidential information may arise.

So no, I'm not going to disclose a company's protected operating information to make myself look impressive.

If I would betray my previous employer's confidence to get hired by you, what the fuck makes you think I wouldn't betray yours when the next opportunity comes along?

Think about that.

High-Ticket Service Businesses Aren't Interchangeable Marketing Templates

I specialize in high-ticket service businesses, particularly businesses operating in competitive local markets.

And those businesses can be radically different from one another.

The customer might be worth thousands, tens of thousands, or considerably more.

The purchasing decision might take minutes, weeks, months, or years.

The business might depend on a combination of reputation, referrals, advertising, specialized personnel, intake procedures, and operational capacity.

The cost of acquiring a customer can be substantial.

The cost of failing to convert a qualified customer can be substantial.

And the difference between generating revenue and realizing profit can depend on details that aren't visible to anyone outside the organization.

Two companies operating in the same industry, in the same city, competing for the same customers, might need completely different strategies.

Why?

Because their businesses are fucking different.

Different management.

Different financial resources.

Different employees.

Different reputations.

Different operational weaknesses.

Different risk tolerances.

Different economics.

You cannot assume that a strategy which worked for one will produce the same outcome for another.

That's why the audit matters.

And that's why asking me to reproduce the exact strategy I developed for another business is such a ridiculous way to evaluate my capabilities.

You're not interviewing me to copy somebody else's operation.

You're interviewing me because you supposedly want someone capable of understanding yours.

Here's a Better Fucking Interview Question

Instead of asking me to disclose how I grew somebody else's company, ask:

“How would you determine what's preventing our company from making more money?”

Now we're talking.

Ask how I would evaluate your financial objectives.

Ask how I'd assess whether your budget supports those objectives.

Ask how I'd identify operational bottlenecks.

Ask how I'd determine whether the problem is marketing, sales, service delivery, management, or the business model itself.

Ask how I'd evaluate the risks of increasing investment.

Ask how I'd communicate competing strategies to ownership.

Ask what information I'd need before making a recommendation.

Ask what I'd do if the owner wanted a result but refused to fund the necessary changes.

Those questions tell you how I think.

They tell you whether I understand business operations.

They tell you whether I can distinguish revenue from profit, a budget from available capital, and a marketing problem from a management problem.

They tell you whether I'm capable of developing a strategy around the actual circumstances of your company.

And they don't require me to violate the confidence of somebody who previously trusted me with theirs.

Of course, you can ask about my professional accomplishments.

You can request references.

You can examine publicly documented results or achievements I'm authorized to discuss.

You can challenge my reasoning.

You should.

But don't confuse refusing to disclose confidential information with an inability to explain my work.

Those are two very different things.

You Want Someone Who Makes You Money? Start Thinking Like a Business Owner.

Here's the reality.

I'm not interested in being handed a marketing budget and told to make the numbers go up.

I'm interested in understanding the entire commercial operation.

I want to know why the business makes money.

Why it loses money.

Where it wastes money.

Where it's leaving money on the table.

What management believes the problems are.

What the evidence suggests the problems actually are.

And what it will cost to pursue a better outcome.

Then I want to present the options.

Not fantasies.

Not guarantees.

Not a pretty PowerPoint full of marketing terminology.

Actual operating decisions with financial consequences.

And if the business owner wants the aggressive growth strategy but isn't willing to put the necessary capital at risk, I'll tell them exactly what I think.

You want to make $10 million? Then be prepared to put some fucking money on the table.

If you don't want to risk the money, that's your decision.

But don't expect me to manufacture the financial outcome you want while refusing to support the strategy required to pursue it.

And don't ask me to reveal somebody else's confidential business information because you can't think of a better way to interview an executive.

You want to know how I made another company money?

I examined the operation.

I identified its weaknesses.

I challenged its financial assumptions.

I developed options based on its actual resources and objectives.

I explained the risks, costs, and potential outcomes.

And I worked within the decisions management was willing to make.

That's how I operate.

The exact numbers, internal decisions, and proprietary strategy?

None of your fucking business.

And if you're considering hiring me to help run yours, you should be glad I understand the difference.

Continue Reading on anuhlest

• There Are No Five Fucking Ways to Improve Your ROI — why diagnosis must come before prescribing a solution.
• The Gamble of Consultants — why expertise does not eliminate management responsibility or commercial uncertainty.
• Everybody Is Responsible. Nobody Is Accountable. — why responsibility without decision authority does not create accountability.
• Branding, Marketing, Advertising, Sales, and Business Development Are Not Five Names for the Same Fucking Job. — the operating manifesto behind the commercial functions discussed here.