Many people believe that the hardest part of starting and growing a business is coming up with the right idea, finding customers, or raising capital.
But according to today’s guest, the most difficult challenge entrepreneurs face may be something far more personal: becoming the leader their company needs them to be.
Decisions become more complex. Teams get larger. The stakes get higher. And the skills that helped someone start the business are often not the same skills required to lead it at scale.
My guest today, Andrew Poles, has spent more than two decades working with entrepreneurs and executives who are navigating exactly that challenge.
As an executive coach and multi-time founder, Andrew focuses on helping leaders grow into the role their companies demand of them. He has worked with thousands of founders and executives to help them manage the pressure of leadership, build stronger teams, and scale their businesses without sacrificing their Health, their Relationships, or their sanity.
Today we’re going to talk about the leadership gap many founders encounter, the pressure that comes with scaling a business, and why growing yourself may be the most important part of growing your company.
Andrew’s Website:
‘https://andrewpoles.com
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewpoles/
Mike Konrad entered the electronics manufacturing industry in 1985. Four decades later, he continues to dedicate his career to advancing reliability within the industry. In 1992, he founded Aqueous Technologies, an equipment manufacturer serving the electronics sector. Becoming an entrepreneur was never part of his plan, he simply had a passion for a product he designed. When his employer declined to build it, he realized the only way forward was to create it himself.
Mike entered business with strong technical skills but no business acumen. His early assets were ego, passion, arrogance, ignorance, and above all, a poor assessment of risk. Ironically, those traits proved useful in the beginning, ignorance really was bliss. But as his company grew, Mike recognized that those same traits could lead to its downfall. To survive, he had to transform himself, developing business acumen, adopting sustainable strategies, and evolving from reckless enthusiasm into purposeful leadership.
Today, with 40 years of industry experience, Mike shares both his technical expertise and his entrepreneurial journey, offering lessons from personal and professional growth, the near-misses that almost derailed him, and the strategies that carried him forward. He is also a strong advocate of “conscious marketing”, moving beyond traditional chest-thumping advertising toward education-driven authority building. By offering value through knowledge rather than hype, Mike helps organizations connect with a new generation of decision-makers who prefer independent research over bold claims.
