Touch the same piece of information more than twice – fix the workflow. That’s the kind of CFO-meets-COO thinking we get into in this episode of The Handbook, where Harv sits down with Lindsey Head to connect the dots between finance, ops, tech, and people – and what really changes when you standardise how the business runs.
Lindsey helped scale a PR agency from 5 to 125 people and $750k to $25m in revenue, leading finance, ops, HR, tech, legal and M&A along the way – so she’s seen where the cracks form, and how to close them.
Here’s what we dive into:
• The case for “non-billable” hires early – why dedicated new-business and ops roles pay for themselves, and a simple admin-as-%-of-revenue rule of thumb (aim for ~7–8%).
• Systems thinking > shiny tools – map the ideal information flow first, then pick tech to automate it. If you’re touching the same data repeatedly, the process is broken.
• Change management that actually works – phase rollouts, involve users early, test, train, and measure adoption before you “go live.”
• Multi-entity without the migraines – standardise what you can across entities, respect local nuance (currency, tax, PTO), and use partners/EORs when expanding fast.
• Run the business by the numbers – utilisation, gross margin by client, and labour % tell the truth; AI can accelerate FP&A and reporting, but you still sanity-check the outputs.
If you’re feeling buried under tools, processes, and hiring questions, Lindsey’s final nudge is simple: pause, map “how it’s going” vs “how it should go,” and focus this quarter on the single change that unlocks the most leverage.
Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Lindsey Head on LinkedIn.
💡 Check out Pulse Business Group.
👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn.
📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity
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