When profit becomes the focus, something deeper starts to break.

In this episode of Beneath the Transaction, I sit down with Brian Belliveau, Chief Growth Officer at Columbia Southern University, to talk about what leaders often miss when they’re trying to grow an organization.

Brian brings over 20 years of experience leading growth at scale—but what stands out most isn’t strategy. It’s how he thinks about purpose.

As a U.S. Navy veteran and former Hospital Corpsman, his leadership is grounded in service, discipline, and people. And in this conversation, he challenges a common pattern in leadership:

We move too fast to solutions…

We talk about how profit can quietly become the driving force behind decisions—and how, over time, that disconnects organizations from their purpose, their people, and their impact.

Because the issue usually isn’t what we’re doing.

It’s that we haven’t gone deep enough to understand why we’re doing it.

This is a conversation for leaders who want to build something that lasts—not just something that performs.

Because profit should never outweigh purpose.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background of the Podcast