Marcus Hamaker, CEO of [bu:st] USA, is driven by a passion for helping small businesses find their pursuit of value by simplifying projects, optimizing processes, and streamlining operations for sustainable growth.

We learn about Marcus’s journey from growing up in a family business to leading [bu:st] USA, where he applies lean principles to help organizations improve alignment, communication, and execution. He explains the 5 Steps to Finding Value framework—Organizational Alignment, Communication, SOPs, Change Management, and Project Controls—guiding businesses to remove inefficiencies and drive sustainable growth. He also shares how the Boost Method ensures teams operate with clarity and purpose, emphasizing fastest time to value as a key metric for success. He highlights key leadership lessons and the mindset shifts entrepreneurs need to scale effectively.

Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Marcus Hamaker, the CEO of [bu:st] USA, a consulting firm that helps you simplify your projects, optimize your processes and streamline your organization. He is also the host of The Pursuit of Value Podcast. Marcus, welcome to the show. 

Hey, Steve, how are you? Thanks for having me. 

Yeah, I am super pumped to have you. It’s going to be a great episode and we are going to start as usual with the ‘Why’, because that’s what powers great entrepreneurs. They have a strong ‘Why’. So what is your personal ‘Why’, Marcus, and what are you doing to manifest it in [bu:st] or any of your businesses?

Yeah. So, my personal ‘Why’ is just to make companies better. Ever since I was younger, growing up in the family business, watching my dad work hard. I’m very intrigued by business and it’s really interesting to me why one business can succeed exponentially and another business really struggles to get off the ground. And so what we do at [bu:st] USA, what my podcast is about,

The Pursuit of Value, is really helping small businesses be better.
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Yeah. And small businesses are always exposed to market forces and there’s no way to take it easy and you always have to strive to be competitive and make a profit and definitely is a powerful force for reducing waste. And I’m making this point because one of the things that [bu:st] does is to apply Lean principles. Tell me a little bit about the [bu:st] method that your company, your group developed, and how do you bring in Lean? 

Yeah, so when we talk about Lean, it really has to do with value and it has to do with defining what is valuable to the company. So what’s valuable to a manufacturer might be very different to what’s valuable to a service company, right? So in our [bu:st] method, we always want to start with defining the future picture. What is success to that company? Or more simply, what is the solution to the problem that they’re running into? So you define the future picture, you define the targets, you build the roadmap. 

And through that whole process of defining the value, you also want to throw out what’s not valuable. And that’s where it lines up with Lean. And we always really try to focus on making every step, every process as efficient as possible. And that’s what’s really important. And that’s what we do really well at [bu:st] USA. 

So what’s the process for improving the process? 

Well, again, it really depends on each person’s issue. Oftentimes we’re brought in to solve a problem and that usually happens at the project level. Sometimes we’re brought in just for strategic planning and so on, but it really depends on what specifically is going on and oftentimes, and just full disclosure, the problem is really just a lack of alignment or communication within a team. It’s not necessarily this big, glaring thing. It’s the fact that not everybody’s on the same page, not everybody has the same motivation, roles and responsibilities aren’t defined and they’re not clear. And then the communication platform is not efficient. So, really, it’s just getting everybody on the same page and saying, okay, are we all tracking the right way? Are we all heading in the right direction? If not, let’s stop. Let’s make some adjustments and move forward. So it’s very problem specific. It’s very organizational specific. What we’ve learned over the years is organizational alignment and communication are two of the biggest issues. It’s not necessarily the project. That’s not necessarily the thing that they’re working on. 

So how is the [bu:st] method different from EOS and Scaling Up and I don’t know, McKinsey & Company for management consulting. So, what’s the unique attribute of the [bu:st] process? 

Again, personal opinion. I’m not familiar with all of them, but what I’ve seen in my consulting career is that what we do with the [bu:st] method is we approach everything at the project management level. We approach everything as project managers, and it’s very much that we view everything through a project management lens—PMP, Lean, and CAPM. Our project managers, our consultants are certified, so we look at it differently. We’re not just stepping into it going, okay, we’re going to fix this. We’re very specific on the roadmap, what’s valuable, what’s lean, what’s necessary, what’s not necessary. So it’s very methodical on how we approach it. And then each and every week, we have a session with all the stakeholders where we’re aligning everybody.

It’s never just a report that we send out. We come together and we are talking strategic alignment with every single stakeholder. And then we’re allowing the people, the stakeholders that we’re talking to, we enable them to report up to their executives, to the people that they report to. So it’s very methodical and how we do it. It’s not just a, hey, we’re doing this, throwing it out at you. There’s always a purpose behind what we do. Again, because

we're always focused on what's going to bring value.
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What is the fastest time to value when we step into a corporation? And oftentimes, just no need to hide the secret sauce here. It’s just helping people communicate better. 

Fastest time to add value. So how do you figure that out? Is this that you have multiple problems that could potentially solve and then the low hanging fruit that you’re going to start with or how does that work?

Logically, going after the low hanging fruit is the easy part, and we see that in the discovery sessions. We see that relatively quickly. But what we really want to quantify is can we see a difference in how the team, the stakeholders are behaving? And I’ll use an example. We had one project recently where we went into a large project, multiple stakeholders over. It’s going to end up being roughly a 2-3 year project. And right from the beginning, we saw that nobody was aligned. I mean, this guy didn’t know what this person was doing. She didn’t understand what was going on there. Then there’s people over there going, who is this? Who’s this company [bu:st]? What are they doing here? It’s like, hold on a second, bring them all together. And one of the simplest things we did is we developed a template for them to run a meeting. Simple. It was that simple.

So when they were to start a meeting, we gave them a very specific set of protocols to go through, laying out the agenda, touching on what happened the last meeting, any calls to action that needed to get done. And so we were able to see that they came to value quickly because the next meeting that we observed, they went right through it. Then the next one, they went right through it. And so all of this chaos that was going on really subsided just in a very simple, you know what, let’s give them a methodology, let’s show them how to use it, why it’s important. And so that was one of our fastest time to values is because everybody went from chaos mode to like, oh, okay, this meeting is going to actually make a difference. We’re having it for a specific purpose and what we want to get out of it, we will get out of it as opposed to most readings where they just kind of show up, people come together, they waste time, they walk away, like, what just happened there? And that’s not what we want. 

That’s great. So, Marcus, the way you approach clients, you told me about the 60 minute discovery session that you run, and you said that it had a very specific structure, I think there were 5 steps to it? Can you share this with our audience what it looks like and how it’s powerful? 

Yeah, well, it’s really 5 areas that we focus on, and I touched on two of them already. The first one is organizational alignment. And that’s typically a company at the end of the year, they’ll establish their next year goals, strategic plan. And who does that go out to, if you’re not in the company, let’s say the CEO puts it together and maybe the executive team gets it, but maybe the people in manufacturing or wherever, not everybody sees the executive plan, or if everybody does see it, they don’t know how it applies to them each and every day. So,

super important that we establish what is the goal of the company, what is the future picture and what is happening in that organizational alignment.
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And real simple, it’s looking at the org chart, is it updated? Does it make sense for today’s company? What is that future org chart look like when we’re at the end of this plan that we’re on? And then looking at the roles and responsibilities. As a consultant, one of the first things you learn to do is just to talk to the employees, just get a feel for the culture, find out how everybody’s jiving. And you’d be surprised that most employees don’t understand how their day-to-day tasks impact the goals and the vision of the organization. And that’s pretty common. And so organizational alignments, number 1. Communication, always number 2. Operational procedures, standard operating procedures, that’s where we kind of dig into the processes, that’s number 3. Number 4 is change management. This is something that I think a lot of people don’t understand is that in today’s business environment,

there is always some component of change that is happening inside of an organization.
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There’s always some component of change, new employee, right? You name it. There’s a change going on. Change affects people more than what most realize. They may not be able to put their finger on it, but change disrupts a comfort level in most people, whether they realize it or not. And that affects the culture of the organization. So we always want to address the change. And then lastly, and this is more specific, but it’s project controls and project support. So any sort of internal company project that’s going on, if they’re having issues with that, we want to address that. And so when we look at those 5 categories, we can, within an hour, determine what needs to happen, especially if the company doesn’t know. And we’ve had that situation where, like, I don’t even know where to start. So we’re like, okay, let’s start at org alignment. Let’s look at your org chart, and usually we can camp there for a good 30 minutes. And then the next 30 minutes is on communication. And then we got enough out of those 2, to put a scope of work together, to help them get out of their pickle.

And then after, let’s say you run a project, you fix the communication issue or the alignment issue, whatever it is, then do you go back and do another 60 minute audit to see what the biggest lever becomes after the first one or two cleared? 

Yeah, it really depends. I mean, oftentimes we’re brought in for something very specific, whether that’s a UL certification, ISO certification, or it’s a new plant industrialization, new product line, whatever. So we come in very specific. If it’s more strategic in nature, we have the discovery session and we’re able to pull out what they need help on. And another simple example, we were helping a construction company just understand that if he wants to grow to X million dollars beyond what he is today, his current infrastructure won’t be able to sustain that. And so we had to do today’s org chart and say, okay, if you want to 10X your revenue, can this current org chart sustain that? Well, the answer to that is no, you’re going to have to add project managers, engineers, you’re going to have to add salesmen, more administrators. And so we were able to help him see what he needs to do in order to scale in revenue to a certain point. And honestly, a lot of people don’t understand that, you know what? If I want to add $5 million to my top line, that’s a lot of money. What does that take? If you’re only at $3 million today, how can you really justify doing that if you don’t have a strategic plan in place to grow and scale, step, right?

It can’t just be, hey, I’m going to hire a sales guy. Let’s go. It doesn’t work like that, especially in small businesses. So we try to take on everything very methodically, very strategically. Again, I always want to add value. And if we’re not adding value. We’re out. It’s like, well, I don’t want to be a burden to you. I don’t want to cause more issues with us being around.

So we're always very specific and very strategic on how we approach our customers.
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Okay. So I’d like to switch gears here and talk a little bit about [bu:st] and maybe your other businesses that you’ve worked for. What was the hardest decision that you ever had to make in business? 

Yeah, well, there’ve been a few. I think the hardest decision to make is a couple of, well, there’s two, really primary. One is letting somebody go, I think is always a hard decision, because

the way I approach leadership and management is very, again, value driven. I want to add value to my people.
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Yeah, I mean, letting people go is really tough. Yeah, it’s not a fun part. And you always feel like you should have done something different so they didn’t get to this point. And it’s a self examination. So, what about the other side? What are the important questions that entrepreneurs should ask themselves? 

Yeah, I think it goes back to your first question, what is your ‘Why’? And again, I love business. I have done a lot of study on it. 30% of all businesses fail within the first 2 years, 50% by 5 years, 70% of businesses fail by 10 years. That’s just the U.S. metric, I imagine when you get overseas, it’s roughly the same. There’s roughly 33 million small businesses in the U.S. There’s about 400 million worldwide. So the numbers are huge. And then there’s 3 to 4 million that start every year. So those numbers are pretty massive. So when you look at the number of businesses, the numbers that start and then the numbers that fail. My experience, when I dig into this, I see that there’s a mindset issue with the entrepreneurs, and that’s knowing the difference between a lifestyle business and a growth business, understanding that if they don’t have a firm direction when they start a company, it’s going to be a challenge, understanding what’s valuable, what we talked about previously. And I’ll give you an example of that. When I started my construction company, when I started it, what was valuable was very different from what it was a year into the business. And then it became me doing everything, pouring concrete at 5:00 AM, getting off work for doing estimates, paying bills, invoicing, wearing every hat.

And then I came to the realization how stupid that was. I needed to hire somebody to help me. Well, that was hard because I did it all. I had to train them. Then I had to trust them. And so there’s this whole dynamic and small business that I got to just dig in and do it myself bootstrap mentality, and that’s great, but eventually that becomes pretty stupid.

And you have to understand that you have to learn to duplicate yourself in a way to scale your business.
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So Why, What, and How.

Yeah.

love it. Yeah. So why is, you know, the purpose. What is, what is the core business that we are trying to build here? And how is, maybe, how different from everyone else? 

Yeah. And so it’s really vision, mission, and then execution. Like how am I going to execute? And part of that, how, and part of that why, and what is really saying, okay what’s different about me? What can I bring to the table? When I started my concrete company, I wanted to be really professional. I grew up in it and I saw all the subcontractors that my dad was around and all the builders. And the one thing I picked up on is that there weren’t very many people that handled themselves very professionally. It was construction. You could show up dirty. You could yell and scream at people. It was all just kind of, that was the culture of construction. When I started my business, I was like, no way, I’m going to build a portfolio. I can hand it out to potential customers. My truck’s going to be clean, I’m going to dress nice. I mean, I had this thought in my head that I was going to be professional. And I did it. And it worked for me, but I think back and there’s probably 25 other things I probably should have focused on, but you know, you learn and it works. So I think that you  got to find what  that is that sets you apart, what makes you special? 

Yeah. I mean, there’s a certain clientele that wants to deal with professional contractors and they are willing to pay a premium. So it’s probably not a bad differentiator. I had a client who was a fire and water remediation company. And for them, one of the core values are professionalism because it was a table stakes thing.

They were looking for people who could present themselves, who could talk to the owner, who would clean up after themselves and that’s a huge differentiator for them.

Yeah, really, that’s the low hanging fruit in construction nowadays, unfortunately, but very true. 

Yeah. So, tell me a little bit about the POV podcast.

Yeah, so it’s The Pursuit of Value Podcast, and this is something that was sparked in me back in 2020, 2021, the Covid days, and really just wanted to take everything that I’ve learned, what I learned growing up, what I learned in business, and I just wanted to share it. And so to me, the thing that always rings in my head is, how do you pursue value? And there’s a fundamental, first question to that is defined value. What is that? And in the context of business, what’s valuable to you, Steve, it could be very different to what’s valuable to me because it is subjective, but what I really want business owners specifically to focus on and understand is for them to sit down and ask themselves that question, like what is valuable to me today in my company? Is it growth? Is it a lifestyle? Is it my employees? What service is it? What is it? And then if they can focus on that, and then come up with a strategic plan to execute on that each and every day, man, there’s no reason why businesses should fail at the rate that they do. And that’s my heart. I really don’t like looking at those statistics and seeing that 30% fail in two years and 50% because I’ve lived through that. I remember my dad going through some hard times during the recession of the ’80’s. I went through hard times in 2008 when that happened and there’s nothing harder or worse for a person to have to go through a business that is not succeeding. It’s very challenging, very difficult.

And so The Pursuit of Value Podcast is just my way of sharing that. And so season one was all about the business owner mindset. Season two, we were for sessions in, and that’s about company culture, the next season, we’ll be talking about strategy, strategic execution. So we’re talking about things that most don’t think about, because I know company culture is kind of a buzzword, but do you really understand what creates a company culture like personal character, integrity? There’s these things that are these intangible things that a lot of people don’t necessarily think about when they’re thinking about their culture. And then

the business owner mindset in season one, that was a fun one because how you view yourself and your business is critical to success.
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Well, definitely, and I resonate with this whole idea of eliminating these business failures. I call it Business Covid. And according to my math, it’s 180,000 businesses that fail, that disappear each year. Businesses between 10 and 250 people, it’s about 17 million of such businesses. And I believe that with the right approach of coaching and advising, all those companies could be saved and that would create 2 million jobs a year, and a 4% boost to the GDP. 

Yeah, right.

That’s awesome. So if people would like to learn about your podcast, about learning about your your company, [bu:st] ,or yourself, or want to reach out, where should they go and where can they find you?

Yeah. So for the POV podcast, it’s just www.thepovpodcast.com. Go to the website. We’ve got the episodes there. We got blogs there, all the resources. We have a free eBook that’s on the website. For [bu:st], it’s www.bu-st.com. And they can reach out to us there. And then obviously, Marcus Hamaker on LinkedIn.

Well, definitely check out Marcus. He has got great concepts around growing businesses and the 5 areas of alignment, communication, SOPs, processing, change management and project controls. I love this. I have not thought about number 4 and number 5, and they are super important. It really is true that people hate change. And it’s an effort to get them to embrace it, it’s a whole project in itself. So I love the message. So if you’re listening to this and you want to learn more, then go and check out bu-st.com, spelled in a unique way. And Marcus Hamaker, CEO of [bu:st]. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. And those of you listening out there, if you enjoyed it, please follow us on YouTube, review us on Apple podcast and stay tuned because every week we come with a new episode and with an exciting entrepreneur talking to us. So thank you, Marcus, for coming and thanks for listening.