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Variable Compensation: Is It the Right Choice for Your Business?

Brian Sharwood
/ July 23, 2019

Creating compensation packages for your team members is challenging. There are so many factors to consider that it can be downright frightening, even for experienced managers. Ensuring equal pay for equal work, offering a competitive package at recruitment, planning for regular salary increases—the challenges are almost endless. One of the...

Dispatches

Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Roger Thorpe, President & Owner of Thorpe Benefits

Rob Drynan
/ June 26, 2019

This time, we’re speaking with Roger Thorpe, President & Owner of Thorpe Benefits. Thorpe Benefits are senior specialists in Group Benefits that help their clients by bringing a new perspective to how we should measure success in a benefits plan. They help HR and Finance teams build awesome benefits programs...

Main

Strategy as both task and process: a high-level overview

Brian Sharwood
/ June 20, 2019

Growing companies are faced with the task of building strategy documents for a variety of reasons—to help the founder or founders understand where they’re going, decide what key metrics they want to measure, and to help the team understand their role in the process. Stepping back from the day-to-day tasks...

Dispatches

Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Olivier Bue from The Hull Group

Rob Drynan
/ June 12, 2019

When we read stories about what makes a company successful, they’re usually told from the point of view of the business owner (we’ve even shared a few such stories ourselves). We thought it would be interesting to examine things from a different perspective, so we reached out to some operational...

Main

The Transformation of a Company from Seed to Series A

Brian Sharwood
/ June 5, 2019

High-growth companies go through many rapid changes as they scale. One of the hardest transitions often happens early in the company’s lifecycle when they begin to take on money from professional investors. This is known as a Series A financing. Before that, companies are either financed by seed money, backed...

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We built BeachHead to solve a problem

Brian Sharwood
/ May 23, 2019

Rob and I have been consummate entrepreneurs, but not in the traditional sense. While both of us have owned our own companies, where we’ve truly made our mark is in growing other entrepreneurs’ businesses. We’ve helped bring founders’ visions into reality and often added our own shape to those visions...

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Exit Interviews: Too Little Too Late?

Rob Drynan
/ May 16, 2019

Employee exit interviews are like having ‘The Talk’ with your kids. Everyone knows it’s coming but no one really wants to be involved. If you’ve ever been on either side of an exit interview, you know that they can be awkward at best and damaging at worst. The feedback offered...

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6 Things You Should Do to Establish a Strong Financial Process for Your Growing Business

Brian Sharwood
/ May 9, 2019

When companies start out, financial planning and forecasting isn’t typically a high priority. Their first order of business is making and selling a product or service that the market wants and making sure they have enough money in their bank account to cover early costs. Pre-launch financial forecasts are usually...

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In Defense of Management

Rob Drynan
/ April 25, 2019

Sometime in the late Twentieth Century, the term ‘manager’ became a four-letter word. It was a clear indicator of inefficiency and redundancy. Even worse was the term ‘middle-manager’ — now synonymous with ‘useless’. As we near the third decade of this century, technology has become an efficient response to the...

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How to (almost) painlessly upgrade your company’s software

Brian Sharwood
/ April 11, 2019

As companies grow, the tools they need to be effective need to become more sophisticated and flexible. Everything from billing to CRM systems, which often start out as spreadsheets and Word documents, require upgrading to systems designed for the specific task at hand. When this happens, a process is changed...

Main

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose”: How process mapping can show your business a better way to operate

Rob Drynan
/ April 3, 2019

Most organizations grow organically. They’re founded by a person or people who believe they can do something better than what the market currently offers. Naturally, those people may carry over learnings from their education and work experience, perpetuating systems or processes that may be dated or flawed to begin with....

Main

The Founder’s Dilemma

Rob Drynan
/ March 7, 2019

Starting a business is hard. Navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Is it any wonder that most founders are fiercely protective of their work? After all, it’s the founder who has driven the company to its current level of success. No one else...

Main

Why Communication Protocols Matter

Brian Sharwood
/ February 28, 2019

If you’ve ever been part of a growing company, especially one that started out with 3-4 people sharing a handful of desks, you’ll understand that how you communicate as a company changes completely as you begin to scale. In the beginning, everyone knows pretty much everything. You’re always chatting across...

Main

The Management Layer — When and How to Invest

Rob Drynan
/ February 19, 2019

Is any of this familiar? Your business is going well. So well that you can’t fathom how you could step away for a vacation. You have a great team, but they require your leadership to get the job done properly. Mistakes have been made in the past and it’s just...

Main

The Case for Operations

Rob Drynan
/ February 12, 2019

Operations are often referred to as the ‘ugly stepchild’ of a business and it's easy to understand why. There’s no instant gratification of a flashy marketing campaign, no rush of closing a big sale, and no big launch for the latest product. Operations are often invisible to the rest of...

Main

From Founder-Led to Mission-Driven

Rob Drynan
/ February 7, 2019

One sign of Organizational Adolescence is when loyal employees who have been there from the start begin to move on to other opportunities. It may be that they're unhappy in their current role or simply feel ready for something new, but sometimes employee attrition can be tied to the changing...

Main

3 Signs Your Company Has Reached Organizational Adolescence

BeachHead Strategic
/ January 28, 2019

Growing up isn’t always easy. If you remember your teenage years, you’ll know that navigating the period between your carefree youth, when everything was new and exciting, and adulthood, when you’re more mature and self-assured, can be rocky. Everything you thought you knew gets turned on its head, you have...

Main

How an Organization Audit Can Help Your Business Move from Start-up to Grown-up

BeachHead Strategic
/ January 28, 2019

There’s a story that many entrepreneurs know all too well: You start a business and in the beginning, everything is great. Your product/service is new and exciting, and you have a small, nimble team dedicated to bringing your vision to life. Yes, there are struggles, but there’s also a lot...

Dispatches

Dispatches from the Front Lines:An Interview with Photographer, Writer, and Podcaster, Darius Bashar

Rob Drynan
/ October 10, 2018

Every entrepreneur has their own stories of trials and tribulations – particularly from an operations perspective. In this series, I’m speaking with owner-operators to learn what makes them tick, along with some of their best advice for successfully running your own business. This time I’m speaking with Darius Bashar, a...

Dispatches

Dispatches from the Front Lines: An Interview with Talk Boutique’s Nick Kindler

Rob Drynan
/ August 26, 2018

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Every entrepreneur has their own stories of trials and tribulations — particularly from an operations perspective. In this series, I’m speaking with owner-operators to learn what makes them tick, along with some of their best advice for successfully running your own business. My first interview is with Nick Kindler, Co-founder...

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale of Raw Signal Group

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking to Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale of Raw Signal Group, and best-selling authors of How F*cked Up Is Your Management? An Uncomfortable Conversation About Modern Leadership. Johnathan and Melissa have been building tech companies for 20 years. They met in the early days of Mozilla — Johnathan in engineering and Melissa in …

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Mark and Carissa Stewart of wonderMakr

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking to Mark and Carissa Stewart of wonderMakr, an Innovation & Creative Technology Studio that turn ‘what if’, ‘if only’, and ‘I wish’ into award-winning human experiences for brands and agencies. wonderMakr was established in 2014 and since then, their work has been showcased in Brazil, South Korea, all over the USA …

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Shari Walczak, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of The Garden

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking with Shari Walczak, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of The Garden—one of Canada’s top independent Creative and Brand Strategy Agencies. Shari has amassed over 20 years of experience leading breakthrough strategic work for organizations like Capital One, Samsung, Interac, Roots, Cineplex, The United Way, Audi, TMX Group, Kraft, Coca Cola and …

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Tom Nickalls, Founder & CEO of Castle HR

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking with Tom Nickalls, Founder & CEO of Castle HR. Tom caught the entrepreneur “bug” when he was employee #5 at his father’s industrial sales company. He then went on to co-found a consulting firm, lead a SaaS sales division, build and lead a sales team of 40, and has now founded …

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Erin Bury, CEO of Willful

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking with Erin Bury, CEO of Willful, an online platform that makes it affordable, convenient, and easy for Canadians to create a legal will online. Erin is a journalism grad who has spent over a decade working in startups. She’s spent time as a startup marketer, tech journalist, and head of a …

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Hussain Bandukwala Founder & CEO of Parwaaz Consulting

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking with Hussain Bandukwala, Founder & CEO of Parwaaz Consulting, a boutique consulting firm focused on helping organizations set up and optimize their project management offices. Tell us a bit about your business. Every organization focuses on strategy, but oftentimes they struggle to figure out how to successfully execute that strategy. We …

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Dispatches from the Front Lines: an Interview with Amanda Munday, Founder and CEO of The Workaround

Dispatches / By Rob Drynan

This time, we’re speaking with Amanda Munday, Founder and CEO of The Workaround, a parent-friendly workspace in Toronto’s east end. Tell us a bit about your business The Workaround is a co-working space with childcare onsite. We want to be a solution for parents who need childcare in alternative situations. Most childcare providers have a …

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