I like order. And I really don’t like chaos.
So it makes sense that I would end up with a degree in supply chain management and an obsession with LEAN thinking in general. What doesn't make sense is that I would eschew all the job opportunities in manufacturing-heavy Michigan, visit a friend who was teaching school in Hilo, Hawaii, and then come home a few years armed with the business experience that would be the foundation of my career.
I had two suitcases and $500 in my pocket, and the first month's rent was $450. You shouldn't be surprised to learn that one of the very first things I bought with my first paycheck wasn't a bikini but rather a plastic box to keep my files straight and organized. #TrueStory!
In addition to playing a ton of beach volleyball, I took a job as a waitress, quickly working my way up to becoming the General Manager of Hernando's Hideaway ("always with the best drink prices in all of Hawaii"). Working with the owner, I was able to develop promotional and marketing skills as we competed with other bars to pull in tourists and locally stationed military service members. But we also focused on profit margin, specifically the percentage cost of alcohol. And while I was surrounded by beautiful beaches, sunsets, tropical flowers, and new friends, I couldn't help but think, "What if I could apply my supply chain management skills to running a military bar?"
So I created Excel macros and tied them to a system to measure pours, split the sheet by types of alcohol and shifts, and soon learned where (and when) we made the most money. Once we knew where our profit came from, the pricing strategies around loss-leaders, promotions, and clever and fun advertising followed. Yes, we could make a ton of money selling $1 Coronas as long as we charged the right cover at the door, pushed the pizza slices, and $5 shots. Simple, right? The key here is that we started with revenue first so that our promotions and marketing weren't random.
Much of the marketing I encounter today when talking to business owners still feels random. Goals and strategy seem to change every quarter. Good ideas from just a month ago are replaced by good ideas from yesterday. It's all done with good intentions, but it's hard to tell what works and what doesn't.
That's when my personal mission crystallized right in front of me, somewhere between pouring Mai Tais (actually it was a lot of beer) and creating those Excel sheets. I would take my supply chain obsession and bring systematic order to the chaos of marketing.
You see, in the supply chain world, everything is measurable, traceable, and optimized. There's no waste because waste costs money. But in marketing departments? Holy spreadsheet, Batman! I found teams focusing on activities instead of outcomes, counting MQLs all day long, while sales teams groaned about lead quality.
It's like manufacturing a bunch of parts without checking if they fit the final product. Madness!
What happens when you take that bartender who tracked alcohol pour costs down to the penny and let her loose on a marketing department? You get someone who's obsessed with connecting every single aspect of marketing to revenue. No more random acts of marketing. No more pretty reports that don't translate to actual dollars. Here's how those late nights tracking pour costs and optimizing bar operations translate directly into B2B revenue growth.
Enter the lean growth approach
Most marketing approaches treat growth like throwing spaghetti at the wall—launch campaigns, hope something sticks, and wonder why the budget never seems to be enough while results stay flat. But what if we applied the same systematic thinking that transforms manufacturing floors and restaurant operations to how we generate and nurture customers? The lean growth approach isn't about doing more marketing activities; it's about creating a disciplined system that identifies exactly where your revenue engine breaks down, eliminates the waste that's killing your conversion rates, and builds the kind of cross-functional alignment that turns marketing and sales from feuding departments into a revenue-generating machine.
Here's how three core principles can transform your approach to growth (and where my weird background makes all the difference).
Measure and manage what matters
My plastic file box from my first Hawaii paycheck wasn't just about organization, it was about knowing exactly where everything was so I could access it quickly. That's how I approach the customer journey now.
By mapping the entire customer journey as a value stream (supply chain talk, sorry!), we identify exactly where leads get stuck, opportunities drop off, and customers churn. Picture the busiest night of the week at Hernando’s - you've got customers three-deep at the bar, but somehow drinks aren't flowing. Where's the bottleneck? Is it the bartender taking orders? The person making drinks? Or maybe it's the credit card machine that takes forever to process payments? Just like in your revenue cycle, you have to map the entire customer journey from "thirsty customer walks in" to "satisfied customer with drink in hand" to find where the flow breaks down. Once you know, you can fix it.
I've learned that biweekly sprints with key players help us quickly spot what's working and what needs a pivot. Just like those shift reports at Hernando's showed me which bartenders were pouring too heavy on which shifts.
The real game-changer? Developing metrics that actually connect to revenue and market share growth, not just activity. Because nobody pays their mortgage with pageviews.
Knowledge worker optimization
The biggest waste I've seen in B2B companies would make any supply chain manager cry. It's the ridiculous wall between marketing and sales teams. They're often working in completely different systems with different goals and different metrics.
It's like having bartenders who don't know what the kitchen is serving, so they can't upsell appetizers, while the kitchen staff has no idea which drinks pair with their specials.
When you tear down those silos and get everyone focused on the same revenue goals, magic happens. One of our customers, Hydro-Chem Systems, experienced this firsthand. Since 2021, they've seen a mind-blowing 1400% return on their advertising spend and an 8x return on their marketing investment.
That's what happens when you apply supply chain efficiency to marketing departments!
Your process trumps everything
In LEAN thinking, we talk about "kaizen", continuous improvement. Back in Hawaii, I wasn't just tracking pour costs; I was constantly adjusting prices, promotions, and staff schedules based on what the data told me.
The same approach works for marketing. We align teams around common goals, enable them to create meaningful metrics, analyze results regularly, and improve. Then we do it all over again. Every two weeks. And we zoom out on a quarterly basis to give us a broader perspective.
The interesting part? How much you have to embrace failure. Some drink specials bombed. Some ad campaigns will too. But instead of hiding the failures, we learn from them and pivot. It's continuous evaluation and improvement, just like I did when tracking which nights made the most money at Hernando's. (By the way it was a bit of a tie between the 25 cent draft night on Monday (offset by the $6 door cover) and the $1 Corona night on Thursday (offset by the $5 shots)).
The never-ending journey
I'm back in Michigan now, those Hawaii days are in the rearview mirror. But that initial spark, applying lean principles to marketing, never left me. In fact, I built 1 Bold Step around it.
Building this company has been its own continuous improvement journey. I started with a fractional marketing team because we needed diverse expertise without massive overhead (very LEAN of me, right?). That approach has evolved into a growth agency supporting entire revenue operations teams.
1 Bold Step doesn't look today like it did when we started in 2019. How we do things has changed dramatically. But we got here by being willing to fail, experiment, and improve.
The process you use to drive revenue growth matters more than any brilliant strategy. Get your process right, put the right people in the room, and the strategy will follow.
The LEAN approach worked for tracking bar costs in Hawaii. It works for our clients now. And it can absolutely work for your business too.
