Q: You’ve been streamlining operations for nearly two decades. Why do you use “operational velocity” instead of “scaling”?
Scaling assumes growth happens by adding more. More people, more tools, more budget.
Operational velocity assumes growth happens by removing friction.
I realized this early in my career working with teams that kept hiring but still felt like they were running in molasses. They weren’t under-resourced. They were under-aligned.
Their real problem was drag: slow decision cycles, siloed communication, unclear ownership. No amount of hiring fixed that. But improving velocity did.
Q: Can you give a specific example where the problem was alignment, not capacity?
A mid-size SaaS company insisted they were maxed out and needed to hire more project managers, engineers, and marketing support.
When I stepped into their workflow, the real issue became clear immediately.
Every major decision required signoff from one of two executives. Teams were constantly waiting. Marketing would prep launch materials for features that engineering had quietly deprioritized weeks earlier. People kept redoing each other’s work because they didn’t know someone else was already tackling the same problem.
Meetings produced information but never decisions.
Instead of hiring, we realigned. We created a single source of truth for priorities, established decision owners for each workstream, and shifted approvals downward so teams could move without waiting for executives.
Within six weeks, the same team was shipping faster than they had in the previous six months.
Q: What does a real “single source of truth” actually look like?
Most companies point to a quarterly OKR doc in Google Drive or a Notion page nobody looks at after kickoff.
Those artifacts describe priorities but don’t govern them.
A real single source of truth has four characteristics. It creates shared reality, not just shared information. It becomes the arbiter when there’s conflict. It gets updated weekly, not quarterly. And it connects strategy directly to execution.
In practice, it’s a single shared place where everyone can see top-level priorities, a ranked list of active initiatives, an explicit “not doing” list, decision rights, and real-time status updates.
This becomes the heartbeat of the company. It replaces opinions and personal priority lists with a shared operating system.
Q: Most agencies have a dozen tools but still feel slow. What’s the difference between having tools and having a technology stack that creates velocity?
Tools don’t create velocity. Systems create velocity.
Most companies confuse having tools with having an actual technology stack. A tool is an isolated artifact. A stack is an integrated ecosystem where information flows automatically.
High-velocity companies choose tools to do less manually. If it doesn’t reduce steps, reduce time, or reduce decisions, it doesn’t belong.
The difference is architectural discipline: one source of truth, minimal tool count, deep integrations, automated handoffs, and standardized processes.
That’s why a team with five well-integrated tools can outrun a team with 25 disconnected ones.
Q: You’ve run HUSL Digital as fully remote since 2008. How has that shaped your approach to operational velocity?
When you build a company as fully remote before Zoom, before Slack, before “async” was a buzzword, you’re forced to solve problems that on-site teams don’t even realize they have.
We couldn’t rely on walking over to someone’s desk. We had to define expectations explicitly, document decisions, clarify requirements, and state ownership in writing.
That constraint became our competitive advantage. Remote workers can be significantly more productive than office workers because remote operations expose every operational weakness instantly.
Unclear roles show up as duplicated work. Incomplete briefs show up as rework. Poor tooling shows up as context switching.
On-site teams can hide these issues with in-person hustle. Remote cannot.
Being remote since 2008 meant we had to build a company that runs cleanly, predictably, and transparently. That is operational velocity.
Q: You’re aiming for 2-3x growth at HUSL Digital. What’s the actual operational shift required to hit that without proportionally scaling headcount?
The lever isn’t more humans. It’s eliminating operational drag so the same humans produce 2-3x the output with less stress.
This means moving from people-powered delivery to systems-powered delivery. Every hour you standardize is an hour you don’t need to hire for.
We reduce the operational surface area by standardizing service lines, building packaged outcomes, and narrowing the menu. When you reduce what you do, you multiply how fast you do it.
We replace unnecessary human decision points with automation and rules. Humans should make creative decisions, not administrative ones.
We shift from project management to pipeline management, where every project moves through the same stages with minimal variation.
You don’t hit 2-3x growth by scaling your team. You hit 2-3x growth by scaling your system.
People amplify the system. But they cannot be the system.