Breakthrough the Growth Plateau E52
In this episode of Tycoons, tune in to hear Gary give some great advice on how to take your company to the next level. It all starts with an honest performance discussion about your goals, performance history, and applying a proactive approach using a system that brings value.
Having a process is so important to any program that aims to teach value and apply towards breaking through a growth plateau. This is what Pivotal Advisors does by handing you the keys to success: who has the best chance to win, putting in a system that works, and investing in sales leaders.
Pivotal Advisors works with small business that have plateaued and are trying to scale to the next level. Many businesses grow to a certain point through great products and services and a good core group of people who do everything. That growth can take them a long way, but at some point they start to plateau. They try several things to try to reignite growth such as hiring different people, sending their sales team to training and even changing up their compensation strategy to “motivate” people, but results of those efforts are limited. 
Pivotal Advisors was founded by partners who both experienced hyper-growth in their respective careers. They learned that the things that you do to manage your sales teams at $5M and $10M are very different than at $25M, $50M or $100M. You need to be more disciplined and intentional and use systems and repeatable process in order to scale.
Pivotal Advisors helps companies not only implement those key components, but they also help the sales leader and CEO drive adoption of them so the company can grow profitably, consistently and predictably. We do this by either inserting our own consultants as Fractional Sales Leaders or by working with your existing sales leader to help them drive the needed change.
Gary Braun is a lifelong salesperson and sales leader. His first job out of college was selling copiers door to door to small businesses. From there, he moved on to working for a manufacturer to sell desktop publishing equipment. Being successful at that, he was promoted to his first sales management position and quickly learned that managing sales and selling are two different skills and there were few resources to learn how to manage performance, coach, hire, train, forecast, etc.
Next, Gary sold high end servers, storage and networking equipment to Fortune 1000 companies and learned selling to large enterprises was very different from selling to small businesses. His next venture was critical in his learning as he took a job selling for an outsourced ecommerce company.
He joined as a salesperson and the 23rd employee of the company that was doing $1M in revenue. He left 11 years later when the company was $400M in revenue and had 1,400 employees across the globe. This is where learned a lot of the concepts about how make the critical changes needed to scale. In 2008, he joined his brother/partner to found Pivotal Advisors to help small business grow.
Gary has been married to his wife, Becky, for 28 years and they have two daughters – one a sophomore in college and one a Marine based in southern CA.
Follow Pivotal Advisors on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
About the Show
Tycoons of Small Biz spotlights the true backbone of the American economy, the true tycoons of business in America… the owners, founders and CEO’s of small businesses. Join hosts, Austin L Peterson, Landon Mance and the featured tycoons LIVE every Tuesday at 1 pm, right here on Business RadioX and your favorite podcast platform.
About Your Hosts
Austin Peterson is a Comprehensive Financial Planner and co-founder of Backbone Planning Partners in Scottsdale, AZ. Austin is a registered rep and investment advisor representative with Lincoln Financial Advisors. Prior to joining Lincoln Financial Advisors, Austin worked in a variety of roles in the financial services industry.
He began his career in financial services in the year 2000 as a personal financial advisor with Independent Capital Management in Santa Ana, CA. Austin then joined Pacific Life Insurance Company as an internal wholesaler for their variable annuity and mutual fund products. After Pacific Life, Austin formed his own financial planning company in Southern California that he built and ran for 6 years and eventually sold when he moved his family to Salt Lake City to pursue his MBA.
After he completed his MBA, Austin joined Crump Life Insurance where he filled a couple of different sales roles and eventually a management role throughout the five years he was with Crump. Most recently before joining Lincoln Financial Advisors in February 2015, Austin spent 2 years as a life insurance field wholesaler with Symetra Life Insurance Company. Austin is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and Chartered Life Underwriter. In 2021, Austin became a Certified Business Exit Consultant® (CBEC®) to help entrepreneurs plan to exit their businesses.
Austin and his wife of 23 years, Robin, have two children, AJ (21) and Ella (18) and they reside in Gilbert, Arizona. He is a graduate of California State University, Fullerton with a Bachelor of Arts in French and of Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management with a Master of Business Administration with an emphasis in sales and entrepreneurship. 
Connect with Austin on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Landon Mance is a Financial Planner and co-founder of Backbone Planning Partners out of Las Vegas, Nevada. He rebranded his practice in 2020 to focus on serving small business owners after operating as Mance Wealth Management since 2015 when Landon broke off from a major bank and started his own “shop.”
Landon comes from a family of successful entrepreneurs and has a passion and excitement for serving the business community. This passion is what brought about the growth of Backbone Planning Partners to help business owners and their families. At Backbone Planning, we believe small business owners’ personal and business goals are intertwined, so we work with our clients to design a financial plan to support all aspects of their lives.
In 2019, Landon obtained the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) designation through the Exit Planning Institute. With this certification, Backbone Planning Partners assists business owners through an ownership transition while focusing on a positive outcome for their employees and meeting the business owner’s goals. Landon is also a member of the Business Intelligence Institute (BII) which is a collaborative group that shares tools, resources and personnel, and offers advanced level training and technical support to specifically serve business owners. In 2021, Landon became a Certified Business Exit Consultant® (CBEC®) to help entrepreneurs plan to exit their businesses by counseling owners about exit options, estimating the value of the business, preparing the business for exit and tax considerations.
Landon enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife, stepson, and new baby twins. He grew up in sunny San Diego and loves visiting his family, playing a round of golf with friends, and many other outdoor activities. Landon tries to make a difference in the lives of children in Las Vegas as a part of the leadership team for a local non-profit. He regularly visits the children that we work with to remind himself of why it’s so important to, “be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Landon received his B.S. from California State University Long Beach in business marketing and gets the rest of his education through the school of hard knocks via his business owner clients.
Connect with Landon on LinkedIn.
Austin Peterson and Landon Mance are registered representatives of Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp. Securities and investment advisory services offered through Lincoln Financial Advisors Corp., a broker/dealer (member SIPC) and registered investment advisor. Insurance offered through Lincoln affiliates and other fine companies. Backbone Financial and Your Future Planning Partners are marketing names for registered representatives of Lincoln Financial Advisors
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