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Brad Poulos on Building SMBs That Run Without You
Brad Poulos is an educator and consultant in the small business space. He teaches in the entrepreneurship department at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, where he has been on faculty for about fifteen years. Alongside his teaching, Brad consults to small businesses in Canada and the United States, primarily those in the $5–50 million revenue range. He is the author of three books — Most Problems Solve Themselves, The Small Business Operator's Manual, and From Pitch to Payoff — and operates a business planning and cadence system for small business owners at confidentoperator.com.
What We Cover
Episode Highlights
Brad opens with a story that reframes how most people think about business planning. Early in his career, he raised two million dollars from Bell Canada's board using a thick business plan full of projections — and had never spoken to a single prospective customer before the meeting. That was the old playbook. Today's curriculum is built on lean startup methodology: validate with real customers before you write a single number. The infrastructure shift matters too — what once required custom bank-approval code is now a Shopify checkbox. Entrepreneurship is more democratic, but that cuts both ways.
The episode hits its stride when Brad and Jeremy dig into what it takes to actually own a business versus a high-paying job. Brad's test is clean: "If you can't go to Barbados and sit on the beach and you're making money, you do not have a business. You own your job." The fix isn't hiring more people — it's changing what you hand them. Jeremy's framing lands hard: don't delegate tasks, delegate outcomes. A-players figure out the tasks themselves. B-players need the list. Knowing the difference is what separates a good operator from a frustrated one.
Episode Exerpt:
JEREMY RIVERA
I’m curious what your advice is right now for SMBs in manual services — tree trimming like McAllister Tree Service, installing concrete walls in Florida, doing home repair in Tennessee. If you’re geo-based and doing services, what does that look like from your perspective?
BRAD POULOS
I actually love those kinds of businesses. They’re never gonna go away. A lot of digital tools may come and go, but a tree trimming service will virtually always be here. The thing that’s changed over the past ten years is that the really good players are both good at executing their trade and good at executing digital marketing.
It’s becoming necessary to stand above the crowd and to get the leads first. I’m a member of a group that has a wedding photographer in it, and that wedding photographer is spending two hundred dollars a day on Facebook ads. So you better be good at it when you’re spending six thousand dollars a month.
-----
Brad introduces a framework for thinking about org design that's been around for decades but stays underused: the spectrum from organic organizations (high autonomy, outcomes-focused, multi-directional communication) to mechanistic ones (consistency-first, top-down, execution-driven). His McDonald's example is memorable: the fries are solved. You don't want an entrepreneurial person in the fryer questioning the process. For local service businesses, the same principle applies — knowing which roles need A-players and which need reliable executors is what makes a small business actually scalable.
Brad closes with his most controversial take: the post-pandemic generation of students is significantly weaker at problem-solving than previous cohorts, and he attributes it primarily to bulldozer parenting — parents who remove every obstacle before their child encounters it. His recommended read is Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind, which argues that children are anti-fragile: they get stronger through challenge, not weaker. For business owners hiring from this cohort, the organic vs. mechanistic distinction matters more than it used to.
Connect with Brad Poulos
Website: bradpoulos.com
Planning System: confidentoperator.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradpoulos
Books on Amazon: Most Problems Solve Themselves · The Small Business Operator's Manual · From Pitch to Payoff
About the Show
The Unscripted Small Business Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Rivera and features candid, unscripted conversations with small business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs. New episodes drop weekly at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.
View all episodes
By Abbey CraneBrad Poulos is an educator and consultant in the small business space. He teaches in the entrepreneurship department at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, where he has been on faculty for about fifteen years. Alongside his teaching, Brad consults to small businesses in Canada and the United States, primarily those in the $5–50 million revenue range. He is the author of three books — Most Problems Solve Themselves, The Small Business Operator's Manual, and From Pitch to Payoff — and operates a business planning and cadence system for small business owners at confidentoperator.com.
What We Cover
Episode Highlights
Brad opens with a story that reframes how most people think about business planning. Early in his career, he raised two million dollars from Bell Canada's board using a thick business plan full of projections — and had never spoken to a single prospective customer before the meeting. That was the old playbook. Today's curriculum is built on lean startup methodology: validate with real customers before you write a single number. The infrastructure shift matters too — what once required custom bank-approval code is now a Shopify checkbox. Entrepreneurship is more democratic, but that cuts both ways.
The episode hits its stride when Brad and Jeremy dig into what it takes to actually own a business versus a high-paying job. Brad's test is clean: "If you can't go to Barbados and sit on the beach and you're making money, you do not have a business. You own your job." The fix isn't hiring more people — it's changing what you hand them. Jeremy's framing lands hard: don't delegate tasks, delegate outcomes. A-players figure out the tasks themselves. B-players need the list. Knowing the difference is what separates a good operator from a frustrated one.
Episode Exerpt:
JEREMY RIVERA
I’m curious what your advice is right now for SMBs in manual services — tree trimming like McAllister Tree Service, installing concrete walls in Florida, doing home repair in Tennessee. If you’re geo-based and doing services, what does that look like from your perspective?
BRAD POULOS
I actually love those kinds of businesses. They’re never gonna go away. A lot of digital tools may come and go, but a tree trimming service will virtually always be here. The thing that’s changed over the past ten years is that the really good players are both good at executing their trade and good at executing digital marketing.
It’s becoming necessary to stand above the crowd and to get the leads first. I’m a member of a group that has a wedding photographer in it, and that wedding photographer is spending two hundred dollars a day on Facebook ads. So you better be good at it when you’re spending six thousand dollars a month.
-----
Brad introduces a framework for thinking about org design that's been around for decades but stays underused: the spectrum from organic organizations (high autonomy, outcomes-focused, multi-directional communication) to mechanistic ones (consistency-first, top-down, execution-driven). His McDonald's example is memorable: the fries are solved. You don't want an entrepreneurial person in the fryer questioning the process. For local service businesses, the same principle applies — knowing which roles need A-players and which need reliable executors is what makes a small business actually scalable.
Brad closes with his most controversial take: the post-pandemic generation of students is significantly weaker at problem-solving than previous cohorts, and he attributes it primarily to bulldozer parenting — parents who remove every obstacle before their child encounters it. His recommended read is Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind, which argues that children are anti-fragile: they get stronger through challenge, not weaker. For business owners hiring from this cohort, the organic vs. mechanistic distinction matters more than it used to.
Connect with Brad Poulos
Website: bradpoulos.com
Planning System: confidentoperator.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bradpoulos
Books on Amazon: Most Problems Solve Themselves · The Small Business Operator's Manual · From Pitch to Payoff
About the Show
The Unscripted Small Business Podcast is hosted by Jeremy Rivera and features candid, unscripted conversations with small business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs. New episodes drop weekly at unscriptedsmallbusiness.com.