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.
Brad Poulos is a small business professor, entrepreneur, and author who helps owners cut through noise and make better decisions. With over 15 years teaching entrepreneurship and finance, and decades in the trenches building and advising companies, he brings real-world perspective to the challenges of growth. He’s the author of The Small Business Operator’s Manual and Most Problems Solve Themselves, a practical guide to running a business without losing your mind.
Outside of teaching and consulting, I’m a semi-professional musician, which means I spend my weekends thinking about setlists, gear, and why systems matter just as much on stage as they do in business.
- Entrepreneurship
- Small Business Strategy
- Startups
- Venture Finance
- Leadership
- Contrary Thinking
Small business owners and operators, Entrepreneurs past the startup phase, founder-CEOs running owner-managed firms, consultants and advisors working with SMEs, executives in growing, privately held companies, professionals considering entrepreneurship or ownership
Listeners will gain practical, experience-based insights into how decisions compound over time in business and in life. They’ll learn how to simplify choices, design better systems, and avoid many of the self-inflicted pressures that make work harder than it needs to be. Most importantly, they’ll come away with a clearer way of thinking about growth, responsibility, and building a career or business that’s sustainable rather than draining.
- What are the most common mistakes you see experienced business owners make once their company starts to grow?
- How can entrepreneurs tell the difference between a problem that needs immediate action and one that will resolve itself if they stop interfering?
- Why do so many growing businesses feel constantly short of cash even when revenues are going up?
- How should owners think about tradeoffs between growth, stability, and personal quality of life?
- What lessons from teaching and advising hundreds of entrepreneurs have most changed how you think about work and success?
The Small Business Operator’s Manual (book aimed at small businesses), Most Problems Solve THemselves (book aimed at small businesses), From Pitch to Payoff (book about venture finance)
My new book, Most Problems Solve Themselves
5000+ Linkedin, 7500 twitter