Author’s Notes
What do you learn about how to scale in emerging markets after c.20 years of focus on scaling companies as a scale up founder, avid student of the best minds on scaling great companies, investor, mentor, advisor, coach, and leader of a network of scale up coaches?
The Art of Scale. And that’s what this book describes.
My goal was to make this the most valuable book in the world on scaling, for founders in the 10-200 headcount range, in emerging markets. It’s a huge ambition in light of the quality of existing books. But the nuances in emerging market 10-200 headcount businesses really matter, and the top scale up books aren’t written for our context. I hope that founders in this bracket will find greater success, faster, by applying the principles in this hand guide.
Are you ready to scale your business but not entirely sure how? Then Jason Goldberg’s book, The Art of Scale, is what you need.
Tailored for scale ups in the tricky 10 to 200 headcount zone, and catering for the important differences faced by emerging market businesses, this comprehensive guide demystifies the obstacles to scale, the path to scale, the science of scale, and the art of scale, giving you the practical toolkit you need.
The Art of Scale distils vast amounts of collective scale-up expertise from a network of seasoned scale-up leaders and coaches, and the top 120 business growth books. It skips the theory and cuts straight to proven principles, leadership models, and actionable tools that successful scale-up leaders use every day.
The book is divided into six parts: Part 1 covers the science of scaling a business; Parts 2 to 6 are playbooks for the five critical disciplines in the ‘Art of Scale’ – Strategy, People, Execution, Money and Scale Up Leadership. Each chapter offers essential principles, ready-to-use downloadable tools, and handpicked reading recommendations for those craving deeper mastery. With real-world stories woven throughout, this book is an engaging, practical guide that invites you to dive in and immediately start applying what you learn.
Coupled with over 50 free tools and 150 book summaries available online, this scale-up guide is what you need to grow with confidence and clarity, armed with the proven principles and tools you need to turn your vision into reality.
Download the preface below
The scars come from spending the last two decades scaling businesses in Africa. I have walked on glass as we’ve scaled Edge Growth and our related brands since 2007. I’ve had insomnia for half of my adult life, been so burnt out that my coach said I would never fully recover, seen most of my relationships pushed to the limit because I was so trapped in the frenetic job of keeping what felt like hundreds of glass balls in the air while burnt out, under-slept, and physiologically damaged by chronic stress.
Along the way, my core business has been to fund, and help, other founders on their own version of the same harrowing quest to scale-up.
Today, if you Google ‘books about how to scale a business’, your search will return literally hundreds of results. That’s very different to when we started out, when we had to figure things out for ourselves.