Keynote · Workshop

Build the Machine: From Ugly Action to Scalable System. The keynote for founders who are still the system.

Most growing companies run on one thing: the founder’s effort. Every decision routes through one brain, every fire gets put out by one pair of hands, and the whole thing stalls the day that person takes a week off. Build the Machine, delivered at the Badass Business Summit, is about how a company gets from heroic effort to a system that runs without the founder in the middle. I led five companies with the payroll on my desk. I know what it costs to be the system, and I know how to stop.

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What the room walks out with

• The ugly-action-first rule. You don’t design the system and then act. You act before it’s clean, and the system comes out of what worked. Leaders leave knowing why waiting for the perfect plan is usually a way to avoid starting.
• Where the founder’s brain has to be scripted out. The handful of decisions that still live only in your head, and how to get them onto paper so someone else can make them the same way you would.
• The first systems to build. Not thirty. The few that buy you back the most time and the most sleep, in the order to build them.

The framework it teaches

The talk runs on two frameworks I use with the companies I advise. Scale Through Scripting is the method for getting the founder’s judgment out of the founder’s head and into a process anyone on the team can run. The Invisible Operating System is the bigger picture: the set of rhythms, scoreboards, and decisions that keep a company running when no one is watching it. Your audience gets both, with the steps, not just the slogans.

Who books this talk

• Founder conferences. Rooms full of people who built something real and are now the bottleneck in it.
• CEO peer groups. Leaders who have heard “work on the business, not in it” a hundred times and want the actual method.
• Growth-stage leadership offsites. Teams that have outgrown the way they started and need to decide what the next version runs on.

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Questions planners ask

Is this for early-stage founders or established companies?

Both, because the problem is the same at both sizes. An early-stage founder is the system by default. An established company is often still the founder’s system with more people attached to it. The talk meets the room where it is: the early-stage version is about which three systems to build first, and the established version is about which decisions are still stuck in one person’s head and how to get them out. This is one of three flagship talks; see everything I speak on.

Does the talk use the companies Jerry ran as examples?

Yes. I led five companies as the operator, with the payroll on my desk, and the stories come from there. Soccer Post went from $5.9MM to $15MM in 18 months and on to $25MM+ as the second-largest seller of soccer equipment. NFFS, a construction company, went from $7MM to $30MM in three years and made the Inc. 5000 twice. What changed in both was that we stopped running on heroics and built the machine. I tell the parts that went ugly first, too.

Can it pair with a working session?

Yes, and it’s better that way. The keynote makes the case. The working session takes your leaders’ real bottlenecks and builds the first system with them, in the room. Tell me what the team is stuck on and I will build the session around it.

What does “ugly action” mean?

Doing the thing before it’s ready. Most founders wait for the clean plan, the right hire, or the perfect process before they move, and the waiting costs more than the mistakes would. Ugly action is the rough first version you run now, watch closely, and fix as you go. The system you end up with comes out of that, not out of a whiteboard. The talk shows how to go from the ugly version to one that scales without you.

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Check availability

Send the date, the room, and what you need the audience to walk out with. I answer every inquiry myself.