Book prints, RevOps alignment, Growth Circle state

On Friday, I received an email that 500 new prints of “MBA Disrupted” are now at the warehouse, with 100 copies en route to my office.

As of this week, my 2x bestseller is available on Amazon for local markets like the US, UK, Germany, Italy, Canada, France, Japan.

And local universities, communities, and business clubs in Sofia can order from Locus Publishing - getting uploaded in their catalog in the coming days!

Book prints are like business cards

As we printed limited copies last year, the event season this spring was, well, embarrassing. Attending about 15 events in Q2, about a hundred people asking for the best place to grab a copy or get a signed one.

My first two attempts at distribution weren’t successful.

Phase 1 aimed at US distribution across independent bookstores, libraries, and airports. We managed to get the book into Barnes & Noble last September, but only the digital collection. We also sent some copies to a couple of dozen professors, some already recommending my previous work and frameworks, but couldn’t arrange libraries to handle the rest.

Phase 2 was still local publishing, with a possible expansion later on. My go-to publisher had a hectic year personally and went MIA for months, which interfered with a busy work season here. Eventually, the process was restarted with Locus Publishing in June, and we’re now at the finish line.

First batch is now here!

“MBA Disrupted” will be shipped to local bookstores, sold locally online (plus, the Amazon and Barnes & Noble options), and we’ll arrange different deals ad-hoc on speaking + copies, or webinars/keynotes with giveaways, and other educational initiatives.

Our RevOps framework relies on multiple MBA Disrupted principles

While the initial goal for authoring the book was to consolidate my frameworks, guides, and principles authored since my last book - and reaching adoption through a broader audience (students, young workers seeking career advancement, blue collar workers looking to transition), the early stages of editorial reviews demonstrated interest and approval from successful business founders.

Including interest from experienced executives in non-digital ecosystems (healthcare, finance, energy, construction, professional services, and many others).

Additional recognition from the ecosystem includes:

• Blake Hutchison, CEO of Flippa

• Eric Siu, Single Grain CEO, co-host of the Marketing School podcast

• Arjun Mahadevan, doola CEO, the leading LLC formation & bookkeeping startup

• Maja Voje, veteran entrepreneur and author of “The GTM Strategist”

• James Schramko, veteran founder with multiple exits and an esteemed business mentor

• Thomas Tiroch, investor and MD at Stacked Marketer

• Kimberly Lipari, CEO of Valet Website Advisors

This broader adoption, combined with thank you notes and messages from traditional business founders, C-levels buying copies for their teams, investors from VC funds, translated to needs we pinpointed collectively in both DevriX and Growth Shuttle.

Our GTM enablement and FP&A services were growing in demand.

This turned into a long investment into transforming operations, processes, and frameworks and positioning DevriX entirely as a RevOps consultancy with GTM-enablement delivery in-house.

We have closed 5 ICP clients in late Q2 and Q3 for the RevOps solutions, tapping into multiple services across the solutions engineering, data, marketing, and strategic consulting front (with AI as an overarching optimization suite).

And most of the MBA Disrupted principles - GTM motions, primary/secondary research, ICP and offer definition, segmenting different business model types for PMF and expansion, going international with US LLCs, tooling and framework, P&L analysis - are just as applicable in our internal discovery and scope composition process.

Limiting the Strategic Growth Circle, too

Considering that transformative investments here were well in the 6-figures, plus we had to hire different fractional resources (advisors on restructuring, GTM, enterprise analysis, press) exceeding $100K on top, my focus on the SMB group has been lower, leading to 4 members churning over the past 3 months.

In early 2024, I set aside a flat asynchronous advisory plan, aside from the $600/hour consulting fee, which had several ongoing retainer clients over the past few years. Late that year, I introduced an SMB/startup - “up to $500k” business plan around Black Friday in this newsletter release at $297/mo. Which sold a couple dozen plans with a discount on top of it.

So I spent time each Monday answering questions and helping build strategy plans and roadmaps async. I also jumped in twice a week in the breaks to answer follow-up questions.

We even ended up consolidating business knowledge in standalone Drive templates organized consistently:

Over time, some churned, some stayed, and new ones joined as well. The price went up to $497/mo, which ended up being stickier than the lowest Black Friday deal.

Ultimately, the unit economics were tipped on the wrong side of the scale:

1. Some community questions required over an hour of my time (reviewing business plans, org charts, summarizing long statements, reviewing websites), all for a couple of hundred bucks a month. Fine as a one-off thing, but not if a member needs 4 hours on average for pennies on the dollar

2. Higher prices often led to greater commitment on the other end, too - better organization, more frequent reporting, etc. Many of the cheap plan members didn’t complete their docs and templates, and expected miracles with no context. The latter is comparable to ChatGPT generating business plans with outdated information and no context

3. I was personally spending $5K/mo+ on advisors while getting pushback on the low-end plans

4. The model still made some sense at scale, with 30ish clients, but immediately became jeopardized in the 10-15 range

5. We hired several A-players at DevriX and payroll has lifted significantly, and comparable to the cheap plans, this made less sense in the future

6. Even my $1,800/mo regular async advisory plan was seeing pressure from inflation or scarcity of specific services and market deals

The current consulting pricing program

As we’re approaching the shopping season, some future deals are possible (though not immediately planned) - but the current consulting program menu looks like this:

1. I maintain a mix of fractional CXO, mid-market advisory, and strategic circle clients from the past few years (in the realm of $200K ARR now)

2. My fractional CXO plan is a $10K/mo flat - I can only manage one more of these realistically, even with support from my team (usually booked for VC/PE/Series B or board-type of businesses)

3. My SME and mid-market async advisory at $3,500/mo - suitable for executive advisory, small executive teams or founders directly, coaching other CXOs, high-level assessments, or strategic/industry know-how and alignment (this works for digital transformation, upskilling VPs to CXO, deep digital/revops/WP consulting oversight, hiring support, agency ops building)

4. The Strategic Growth Circle is $997/mo now, perfect for $100K - $500K businesses aiming at rapid transformation and growth. Since the cost is low, time investment and rapid execution by founders is paramount. I can lift the ceiling to $1M max in certain cases before switching to the upper plan.

5. Ad-hoc consulting calls via Clarity at $600/hr - I rarely prefer calls because of the time-blocking (discarding travel or family time and unsuitable in different time zones), but it’s still an option for certain prospects

And the RevOps path - the DevriX consulting + delivery programs where our retainers are in the $10K/mo - $40K/mo ballpark, depending on the service lines and solutions (at an ongoing blended $150/hr for delivery retainers for my team). Our standard portfolio company is a $30M - $100M business going through growth and operational restructuring, or a $100M - $500M+ focused on stability, resilience, risk management, and fortifying all underlying systems.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong in DIY or triaging through the path over again. This is why MBA Disrupted continues to sell copies in the meantime. And businesses positioned to scale are fast-tracking their transformation with parallel investments into the right programs and people.

Mario

📚️ Books I read this month

• “The Sweaty Startup” by Nick Hueber (55% in)

• Ray Dalio’s “How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle” (55% in)

• The FP&A Handbook: Mastering Financial Planning & Analysis (40% in)

• “Revenue Architecture” by Jacco van der Kooij (50% in)

• “Hooked” - on habits and cues and product alignment (50% in)

• “The Sales Acceleration Formula” ✅ 

🇪🇺 The new EU-INC movement is worth the effort. I’ve known Andreas for over a decade since he stopped by Sofia and we met at a shisha bar here. The team is doing an excellent job and I’m a strong supporter.

📰 DevriX featured in Business Insider - our RevOps solutions got featured and I reported the story here.

💼 The M&A principles that last. Additional tactics by Mark Woodbury from our podcast last week.

🔖 Use AI to unify your marketing channels. Learn how to connect customer data and automate personalization across every platform.

🔖 Measure AI’s effect on customer experience. This guide links AI performance metrics to real outcomes like personalization and ROI.

🔖 Prepare for market swings with scenario planning. Top tools help businesses test strategies before risks hit.

🔖 Rethink how you collect data. Use voluntary, incentive-based methods to improve both trust and segmentation.

🔖 Track cultural shifts with hard data. These 10 KPIs help leaders assess how values and alignment impact performance.

🔖 Fuel growth through crowdsourcing. Learn from real communities that turn public input into business returns.

🔖 Build better Agile teams through motivation. Adjust autonomy and expertise to optimize team performance without added workload.

🔖 Use fasting to lift mental clarity. See how structured routines may improve mood and enhance brain health.

🔖 Why Caterpillar rebuilds instead of replacing. Its repair-driven model turned restoration into a competitive edge.

🔖 Nail executive transitions with a plan. This sector playbook helps leaders shift industries without losing strategic ground.

📰 AI supercomputing resilience. New Zealand uses a new supercomputer for real-time forecasting and disaster response with an AI system.

📰 MBAs lose venture edge. Venture firms now prize technical and deeptech skills over elite MBAs in hiring decisions VC hiring change.

📰 TikTok restructuring deal. Oracle, A16Z, and Silver Lake consider investing in a U.S. split of TikTok's operations TikTok deal.

📰 U.S. stocks outpace Europe. S&P 500 and Nasdaq rally on AI optimism and earnings, leading investors back into U.S. equities.

📰 Gen Z entry-level crunch. Too many graduates and fewer roles shift early careers, driven by AI job crisis.

📰 Trump’s H-1B overhaul. New $100K fee on H-1B visas could reshape tech hiring and investor plans policy analysis.

📰 Veezoo raises Series A. Veezoo secures $6M round led by ACE Ventures to expand its analytics platform Series A funding.

📰 Lumen expands network. Lumen plans over 2.2M new fiber miles in 2025 to support rising AI workloads expansion plan.

📰 Microsoft adds agent tools. Azure Logic Apps gains Model Context Protocol for AI-friendly workflows on connectors MCP integration.

📰 Perplexity unveils email AI. New assistant drafts replies, handles triage, and schedules meetings in Gmail and Outlook Email Assistant.

📰 Emerging commerce protocol. AP2 enables AI agents to complete secure, trackable purchases for marketers and retailers commerce protocol.

📰 Meta’s data center deal. Louisiana offers tax and power incentives with no job guarantees for Meta’s largest facility controversial deal.

📰 Reskilling infrastructure matters. Investors eye training platforms to meet workforce needs as AI automation advances reskilling potential.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers like these.

Premium Finance Newsletter: A highly engaged newsletter covering finance/investment, with over 99K subscribers - offered at $60,000 (reduced 60%).

Franchise Recruitment SaaS: 4-year-old data-driven SaaS helping franchisors reduce failure, disputes, and risk with evidence-based recruitment decisions - priced at $329,623.

KYC Automation Business: Blockchain-powered SaaS for secure, scalable onboarding and compliance with $376K annual revenue and low churn - selling for $800,000.

Croatian Enterprise Software Firm: Established MDM software company serving 1,100+ clients with recurring revenue from licenses and maintenance - selling for $2,277,220.

Supplement Membership Business: High-growth supplement membership business driving $560K monthly sales and $130K+ net income from 16K+ loyal subscribers - asking price is $5,250,000.

eSports Tournament Platform: 8-year-old online gaming platform generating €4.04M annually with 1.4M registered users and 200K monthly matches - offered at $10,000,000.

Need My Help?

Keeping myself busy - here are the main projects I focus on:

🌐 Scaling enterprises on top of WordPress? DevriX provides martech retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo and we manage high-traffic platforms (hundreds of millions of monthly views), B2B SaaS apps, partnership management solutions, supporting $10M - $250M businesses with scalability, custom funnels, CRO, big data augmentation, AI-driven processes, HubSpot workflows, programmatic SEO - and everything a modern business requires in digital in 2025.

🚀 Work 1:1 with me? At Growth Shuttle, I run two popular plans: Async Advisory ($3,500/mo) for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle ($997/mo) for $100K - $500K entrepreneurs, agency founders, scale ups.

🌠 Feature your business across the community? The B2B Ecosystem includes this newsletter and 40 other digital properties (directories, newsletters, blogs, SaaS, and social accounts) targeting B2B executives. See how your business can benefit.

📈 International founder looking into US LLCs? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Into digital M&A? I work closely with Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interest. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides the tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink.