Brad Poulos is a small business professor, entrepreneur, and advisor with more than 30 years of experience building, scaling, fixing, and occasionally shutting down companies. He’s grown businesses from startup to over $75 million in revenue, led publicly traded firms, negotiated major financings and contracts, and guided companies through restructurings, turnarounds, and acquisitions. Alongside his operating career, he has taught entrepreneurship and finance at Toronto Metropolitan University for over 15 years, working closely with founders who are past the idea stage and deep into the realities of running a business.

What makes Brad’s perspective different is the range of situations he’s lived through. He’s built fast-growing companies that landed on the Profit 100 list, launched new technologies and markets, integrated acquisitions, advised boards in regulated industries like telecom and cannabis, and helped owners make hard calls such as closing unprofitable divisions, renegotiating with creditors, or redesigning how their business actually works. His thinking is grounded in strategy, financial discipline, and systems, not slogans.

Brad is the author of The Small Business Operator’s Manual and Most Problems Solve Themselves, where he focuses on the overlooked phase of entrepreneurship: the long stretch between startup excitement and exit headlines. Listeners should tune in if they want calm, experience-based insight on growth, cash flow, decision-making, and how to build a business that doesn’t consume its owner. His work is about clarity, durability, and making fewer unforced errors over time.