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Owner Academy Series

Series: Growth 101 Bootcamp

Academy

Series / Bootcamp

Growing Your Business

Expert Network

This growth bootcamp is part of a series designed to help owners master their growth numbers and kick-start their scaling journey.

By Jon Polenz, M&A Expert

August 26, 2025

10 Articles in Series

01

Building Great Businesses with Great Advisors

You’ve built a successful business—but even for the best business leaders, reaching the next level often requires another perspective. Whether it's a seasoned industry expert or a coach with niche experience, getting fresh insight can unlock new growth and sharpen your strategy.

02

The Starting Point for Scaling Your Business: Know Your Numbers

If you want to grow your business, start by knowing exactly where you stand. This post breaks down how to analyze your past performance, spot patterns, and set a smart financial foundation for scaling.

03

Setting Growth Goals That Guide Your Scaling Journey

Most business owners want to grow, but without clear goals, growth stalls. This post walks you through how to set S.M.A.R.T. goals, break them down into actionable steps, and build a team that’s aligned around hitting them.

04

The Secret to Growth: Knowing Why Customers Buy

Growth doesn’t start with marketing or sales. It starts with knowing exactly who your customer is and why they buy. This post walks you through four steps to sharpen your product-market fit and choose a growth strategy that actually works.

05

Building a Repeatable Sales and Marketing Machine for Predictable Growth

If you want to scale and eventually sell your business for a premium, you need more than momentum. This guide shows you how to build a sales and marketing engine that creates consistent, predictable growth without relying on the founder.

06

Addressing The Most Overlooked Asset in Your Growth Strategy

A well-set-up CRM is more than a contact list. It becomes the backbone of a scalable sales system that brings clarity, automation, and predictable growth.

07

Fuel Your Growth: How Marketing Can Ignite the Work You've Already Done

Want to turn your hard-earned progress into real growth? Discover how smart marketing fuels your business, targets the right audience, and avoids costly mistakes so every dollar you spend moves you closer to your goals.

08

Execute the Playbook: Build the Sales Team That Gets it Done

Struggling to turn leads into closed deals? Learn how to build, manage, and motivate a sales team that actually delivers results and fuels your growth goals.

09

Stack the Wins: Why Retention Outperforms Acquisition

Too many businesses focus on constantly making new sales and ignore their biggest area for growth: the customers they already have. Learn how to turn retention into long term revenue.

10

From Revenue to Real Profit: Scaling Your Business the Right Way

Revenue is exciting, but profit is what builds real value. Learn how to scale your business without sacrificing margins, and why smart growth beats fast growth.

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About the Author Jon Polenz, M&A Expert

Jon Polenz, the Managing Partner of Owner 1st, LLC, built and sold a commercial service business to PestCo, then helped scale PestCo to over $120M in revenue through strategic acquisitions in just 18 months. His passion for the business owner journey makes him a great expert resource at Ownly.

Click here to learn more about Jon →

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