Scott Trench

It was like, obviously, I want to be a part of this company, this mission of what's going on over here.

And so I just threw myself into it when I joined in 2014.

And by 2017, I ended up leading the company as the founder stepped back.

I consider myself an entrepreneur at this point, for sure.

I kind of have a different path around it, right?

I didn't found a company, but I have other advantages too, right?

Where being in a private equity-backed business, I had two very powerful mentors, right?

First was the founder, Josh,

who I learned directly from for three years.

He taught me the concepts of growth hacking, of how to be scrappy, how to build up things.

Another great mentor was a man named Mike Zawalski, who was the chairman of the board, very traditional private equity operating partner.

And that's a very powerful playbook, right?

There's another set of systems that one needs to scale a business, which include the ability to hire and fire, to actually manage, to actually deliver quality performance reviews, to put together workshops,

a real strategy.

What is a strategy?

What does that look like?

What does a real annual operating plan look like?

These are things that don't make sense for a very small business with a handful of employees most of the time.

It provides a great deal of inflexibility and can actually constrain growth.

But they're absolutely essential to go from a startup or a small business to something with