Business By Design

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If every improvement depends on your next big idea, you’ll never build a business that runs without you. Mena and I explain how to make a hundred things 1% better, with everyone spotting problems and one owner fixing each.

• Small beats big. Dave Brailsford’s “aggregation of marginal gains” took British Cycling from almost no Olympic success to eight cycling gold medals in Beijing, through changes as small as bike seats and hand-washing routines
• Make spotting problems everyone’s job and fixing them one person’s job, so the founder can stop doing everything in the business. Log every idea, triage it by effort and impact, test it on a small slice of the business, then measure the result, the way Booking.com runs a thousand experiments at once
• An idea only becomes part of the business once it’s documented, trained and built into your systems and processes for business growth. McDonald’s tested the Big Mac in one Pittsburgh store for a year before rolling it out nationally
• Check every change at 30, 60 and 90 days: is everyone using it, did it move the number you set out to move, and did it cause a side effect you didn’t test for? Pixar runs a postmortem after every film, hits included

Chapters

00:00 - Recap: the VERT flywheel and the engine series
 01:36 - Meetings find problems, but they don’t fix them
 03:14 - Why small beats big: kaizen
 06:32 - British Cycling and the aggregation of marginal gains
 09:31 - Whose job is it to identify and fix problems?
 10:58 - Jack Welch’s approach at GE
 12:14 - Log, triage, test, measure
 15:00 - Booking.com’s thousand live experiments
 15:59 - When an experiment becomes part of the business
 17:50 - The Big Mac: tested in one store, then systemised
 18:59 - Reviewing changes: the engine room improvement log
 19:54 - Pixar’s postmortems
 21:59 - The 30, 60, 90-day check
 23:14 - Where to start
 24:56 - Next week: how cash flow can break the engine

References

• Ep 202: Systems and processes for growth: Map before you fix https://www.businessbydesignpodcast.com/2006849/episodes/19960187-ep-202-systems-and-processes-for-growth-map-before-you-fix
• Ep 203: Business scaling frameworks: Consistency beats heroics https://www.businessbydesignpodcast.com/2006849/episodes/20011910-ep-203-business-scaling-frameworks-consistency-beats-heroics
• Ep 204: Business meeting rhythm: Stop oiling the squeaky wheel https://www.businessbydesignpodcast.com/2006849/episodes/20054348-ep-204-business-meeting-rhythm-stop-oiling-the-squeaky-wheel

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

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Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Too many businesses run on firefighting, where the squeaky wheel gets the oil. Stuart and Mena set up a weekly, monthly, and quarterly meeting rhythm- part of the systems and processes for business growth that keeps decisions owned and on time.

• Weekly meetings keep delivery on track. They need a set agenda, one person running them, and a short scorecard that mixes lag indicators with lead indicators, the way FedEx replaced a single on-time promise with a 12-part service quality index
• Monthly meetings are for improving the engine, with sales, operations and finance in the room. Domino’s eventually fixed its recipe, but a monthly rhythm with the right leading measures might have caught the drift years earlier
• Quarterly meetings turn strategy into one theme at a time. Ours was “make value visible”, and it only stuck because it was on the scorecard every Monday
• Giving every decision a clear owner is how to build a business that runs without you. When something goes wrong, blame the system, not the person, and celebrate whoever stops the line, as Toyota does

Chapters

00:00 - From firefighting to a meeting rhythm
 00:55 - Four features of a good meeting rhythm
 01:46 - Three layers: weekly, monthly and quarterly
 02:06 - The weekly meeting: keeping delivery on track
 04:25 - Building the scorecard: lead and lag indicators
 05:55 - FedEx’s service quality indicator
 08:41 - The monthly meeting: improving the engine
 09:54 - Domino’s and the recipe fix
 12:04 - The quarterly meeting: one theme at a time
 15:20 - Our quarterly theme: make value visible
 19:24 - How long each meeting should run
 20:51 - Separate sharing information from making decisions
 24:10 - Measurement without micromanagement
 26:32 - Toyota: celebrating whoever stops the line
 28:46 - Where to start

References

• NotebookLM, the tool Mena uses to turn long emails into audio he can listen to before a meeting: https://notebooklm.google.com

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Most businesses don’t break as they scale because of volume. They break because quality depends on a few heroic people. Mena and I share business scaling frameworks built on consistency, systemised judgment, fewer handovers, and real review.

• Clients judge you across many interactions, not one, so define quality in ways you can observe and measure. The Ritz-Carlton boils its service down to three simple steps everyone can follow
• Use checklists and templates for repeatable work, and break expert judgment into decision points, decision trees, and case studies. That’s how to delegate without losing quality control, and AI makes this much faster than it used to be
• Scaling tends to break business operations at handovers and approval chains. Netflix’s five-word expense policy shows how much friction you can remove when you trust the right people
• Make training part of the system: teach, supervise, then release. Review real work regularly, the way Pixar’s Braintrust does, while leaving the final call with the person who owns the work

Chapters

00:00 - From mapping to building an engine that scales
 02:33 - Why consistency matters more than heroics
 06:01 - The Ritz-Carlton’s three steps of service
 08:07 - Checklists and templates for repeatable work
 09:53 - The WHO surgical checklist
 12:56 - How to systemise judgment
 15:07 - Atul Gawande and the Cheesecake Factory
 16:35 - Using AI to map your decision-making
 18:16 - Cutting friction: Netflix’s five-word expense policy
 21:26 - Making it stick: training, ownership and review
 22:47 - Pixar’s Braintrust
 25:38 - Where to start
 28:13 - Free VERT flywheel downloads

References

• Free VERT flywheel downloads: the offer clarity worksheet, pricing power workbook, trust engine guide, and value health check. https://vertflywheel.com
• Ep 198: Trust is the real thing your customer is buying (the trust equation) https://www.businessbydesignpodcast.com/2006849/episodes/19832526-ep-198-trust-is-the-real-thing-your-customer-is-buying
• Ep 196: Pricing strategy: are you a price maker or a price taker? (the basis for the pricing power workbook) https://www.businessbydesignpodcast.com/2006849/episodes/19753474-ep-196-pricing-strategy-are-you-a-price-maker-or-a-price-taker

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Most businesses lose time, margin and customers at the handovers nobody owns. Mena and I map the full customer journey, the backbone of systems and processes for business growth, then show how to assign owners and hunt down hidden waste.

• Every business runs on five stages: reach, sales, delivery, billing and after-sales care. Southwest Airlines’ 2022 meltdown shows what processes nobody can see end up costing
• Give each stage one directly responsible individual (Apple’s DRI idea) and a defined output. “The sales team looks after sales” isn’t an assignment; “sales ends with a signed proposal and deposit in hand” is
• Scaling usually breaks business operations at the handovers, not inside the stages. When one owner is accountable for each handover, the founder can stop doing everything in the business
• Toyota’s seven wastes are a useful lens for finding the steps your processes have outgrown, such as duplicate spreadsheets or chasing information that should arrive automatically

Chapters

00:00 - Zooming out from one process to the whole business
 01:20 - Why you can’t fix a process you can’t see
 03:27 - Southwest Airlines: what invisible processes cost
 05:20 - The five-stage customer journey
 07:09 - Airtasker: a journey designed end to end
 09:06 - One owner and one defined output per stage
 10:56 - Apple’s directly responsible individual
 13:28 - When handovers fail: the bank promotion example
 16:41 - Hunting waste: Toyota’s seven categories
 19:52 - Auditing your core processes
 22:49 - What to do next: four steps

References

• Ep 198: Trust is the real thing your customer is buying 
• Ep 200, the customer advocacy episode 
• Ep 201, the founder-as-hero episode

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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If your business still runs through you, that is an engine problem, not a people problem. Mena and I break down what systems and processes for business growth actually look like, and the four numbers that show whether yours work.

• Most owners start as what Michael Gerber calls the technician: excellent at the work, but stuck working in the business rather than on it. Learning to step off the tools as a business owner starts with building systems from day one
• Try the holiday test. If you couldn't take two to four weeks off at short notice without clients or your P&L suffering, you have an engine problem
• A real system has five parts: a trigger, defined inputs, clear steps, a consistent output, and an owner who keeps it current. Codify the mechanical steps the way McDonald's did, and train for the judgment calls with decision trees and escalation points
• To build a business that runs without you, track four numbers for each core process: cycle time, error rate, rework, and onboarding speed

Chapters

00:00 - From value to engine: the next VERT pillar
 01:56 - Why talented people don't scale: the E-Myth technician
 04:42 - The real cost of a founder-dependent business
 07:26 - The holiday test
 08:17 - What a business system actually is: five parts
 11:15 - The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist
 12:39 - Mechanical steps vs judgment calls
 16:02 - Four numbers that show whether your engine is working
 19:58 - Four questions to reflect on
 22:39 - Next week: map the journey before you fix it

References

• Ep 186: The Holiday Test: Can your business run without you?
• The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber
• Ep 200, last week's episode on customer advocacy

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Your happiest clients are often your best source of new business, yet most owners leave referrals to chance. Mena and I walk through a referral engine framework: earn advocacy first, ask at the right moment, and make the introduction low risk.

• You can buy attention, but you have to earn advocacy. Fyre Festival's influencer spend couldn't cover for a promise it never delivered
• The right time to ask is straight after a client acknowledges the value they've received. Swap "do you know anyone?" for a question tied to the specific problem you just solved
• Referring is risky for the client, so position introductions as a no-obligation second opinion, make the process simple, and commit to treating every referral with the same respect
• If you're working out how to get consistent leads for your business, start with the clients you've already delighted. A pricing strategy for small business that protects margin funds the experience people talk about, while discounting trains clients to wait for a sale

Chapters

00:00 - Why customer advocacy needs a system
 02:10 - Buying attention vs earning advocacy: Fyre Festival
 04:32 - The right moment to ask for a referral
 07:24 - A better question than "do you know anyone?"
 09:46 - Why referrals feel risky, and how to reduce that risk
 14:34 - Pricing power and the advocacy flywheel
 18:10 - Five questions to test your advocacy system
 21:22 - Our 200th episode, and what's next: the Engine pillar

References

• Ep 199: Why are your best customers quietly leaving? 
• Ep 198: Trust is the real thing your customer is buying 
• Ep 197: Pricing is a system, not a sticker 
• Ep 196: Pricing strategy: are you a price maker or a price taker? 

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Here's the uncomfortable truth: by the time a customer tells you they're leaving, you're usually too late to do anything about it. The decision was made months earlier, when they quietly began questioning the value; nobody noticed, and the cancellation email just makes you the last to know. 

In this final episode of the Value series, Stuart and Mena reframe churn as the most honest feedback your business receives, if you're willing to understand what's behind it.

Mena explains why retention starts at onboarding, not the renewal conversation, with the goal being to make value visible as fast as possible, closing the gap where doubt creeps in (Canva as the example). 

Stuart offers four lenses for reading every departure: value, trust, fit, and friction, using MoviePass to show how a single churn number can hide several problems at once. Mena insists each category needs a named owner (with Ritz-Carlton's $2,000 staff discretion showing what real authority looks like).

Stuart then explores when losing customers is healthy: Nike's wholesale pullback and its telling reversal, and Mena covers how to end relationships respectfully, protecting your reputation. 

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

Send us Fan Mail

Every time someone buys from you, they're taking a risk: will you do what you promised? Trust is what gives them the confidence to proceed, and without it, a great product, sensible pricing, and sharp marketing still won't close the sale. This episode unpacks how trust is built, borrowed, and lost.

Mena explains why price and frequency determine how much trust a purchase requires: a $4 coffee versus a $40,000 renovation, and why your sales process must reflect the risk the customer feels (Guzman y Gomez versus a Koala mattress). 

Stuart introduces the trust equation: credibility, reliability, and intimacy, divided by self-interest, with Vanguard's ownership structure as a striking example of how low self-interest can be built into the model rather than merely claimed.

Mena draws the line between borrowed credibility, which opens the door, and earned trust, built through direct experience and the idea of a "trust account" where deposits and withdrawals are never equal. 

Stuart offers four practical ways to make it easier for customers to trust you, and Mena connects consistency back to your systems and why delivering well 80% of the time still leaves customers worrying.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

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Two businesses can charge the same price today and be on opposite margin trajectories five years from now, purely because of the architecture sitting underneath that number. One gets more profitable as it grows; the other gets squeezed with every new customer. This episode is about designing that architecture on purpose.

Mena starts with discounting as a diagnostic: persistent discounting isn't a sales problem but a signal pointing at one of three causes, and J.C. Penney's disastrous 2012 "fair and square" experiment shows why you can't simply switch off years of trained customer behaviour. Stuart then unpacks the traps of unit pricing, the default model most owners fall into without choosing it, from the billable hour that punishes efficiency to the petrol-station race no one wins on quality.

Mena lays out the real choice between fixed, tiered and modular pricing (with Australia Post, Canva and IKEA as clean examples), and Stuart explains why scope is the boundary that makes any of them work. Finally, Mena drives home the cost base as a non-negotiable floor, using Porter Davis Homes' collapse under fixed-price contracts as the cautionary tale. Closes with four steps to build your own pricing system.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.

Send us Fan Mail

Price is the most powerful profit lever most business owners never think about. In this episode, Mena and I break down the pricing strategy question that matters most: are you a price maker or a price taker?

• A modest price rise can lift profit far more than an equivalent cost cut or volume increase, since it drops straight to the bottom line and improves your margin without touching your cost base
• The value map: plot your competitors on price against perceived value to see whether your market is commoditised or genuinely open to premium pricing, and where the white space sits
• If you're a price taker, there are only two real levers, deliver more value than the market expects, or build a leaner engine so you can deliver at a lower cost
• Price is a signal customers read before they've experienced anything. Price too low and the market assumes the quality is low too, price too high without anything to back it up and you're exposed

Chapters
 00:16 - Why pricing is the most powerful lever on profit
 02:29 - Building the value map: price makers versus price takers
 06:21 - What to do if you land in the price taker camp
 10:15 - Price as a signal: what buyers read into it before they buy
 12:43 - When value based pricing tips into unfair pricing
 17:55 - This week's homework: map your own position

Reference links
 Last week's episode on building a brand promise is referenced directly at the open, and next week's episode on pricing models is flagged at the close. Neither title nor link is confirmed in the transcript itself, so whoever publishes this should drop in the actual links rather than me guessing at either title.

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a rating on your favourite podcast platform. It helps us reach more incredible listeners like you. Thank you for being a part of the journey!

Click here to subscribe to our weekly email.

Work with Mena & Stuart's team: At ProSolution Private Clients we encourage clients to adopt a holistic and evidence-based approach when making financial decisions. Visit our website.

Follow us: Stuart: Twitter/X and LinkedIn.  Mena: LinkedIn

IMPORTANT: This podcast provides general information about finance, taxes, and credit. This means that the content does not consider your specific objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is crucial for you to assess whether the information is suitable for your circumstances before taking any actions based on it. If you find yourself uncertain about the relevance or your specific needs, it is advisable to seek advice from a licensed and trustworthy professional.