This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Brent Halfwassen, founder and owner of MKE Business Coach.
Halfwassen shares his approach to business growth consulting, which combines financial analysis with making proactive changes at key points in a company’s development.
“Being a growth business means you can upgrade your current business. You can be amazing at your skill, craft or trade, you can actually grow quite a successful business, have quite a few employees,” he said. “There seem to be these break points, where the business model needs to change if we’re going to be successful.”
He typically works with companies with $1 million and $50 million in revenue, though some have been outside that range.
“That sweet spot is in the middle. Depending on that stage of business, oftentimes they don’t have very much of an established executive team, or a very early on executive team,” he said. “And again, they’re great at what they do, and they’ve built a great following around them … what happens is, just being good enough isn’t going to get us to the next level.”
According to Halfwassen, making data-informed changes and establishing new processes can unlock potential for more growth “that doesn’t introduce as much risk as people think.”
The discussion highlights the importance of leveraging financial metrics in this approach, and understanding how business decisions can influence performance.
“Don’t just look at it and go, huh, those numbers look good. They’re up, they’re down, they’re left, they’re right — that’s not helpful,” he said. “Be willing to take some action.”
Halfwassen also discusses what he’s hoping to accomplish in 2025, building on efforts to establish referral partnerships and other relationships in the business community.
“We’re feeling the demand for more of that fractional, do-it-for-us service, in part because the owners are maxed,” he said. “They grew it to $25 million not by having a lot of idle capacity.”
Listen to the podcast below, sponsored by UW-Madison:
