{"podcast":{"title":"Scaling Up with Fexingo: How Small Businesses Become Mid-Market Companies","slug":"scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589","podcast_index_feed_id":7871589,"rss_url":"https://feeds.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up.xml","website_url":"https://www.fexingo.com/","image_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/cover.png","author":"Fexingo","episode_count":77,"summary":"Lucas and Luna anchor themselves on a mezzanine balcony, surveying a floor of empty desks below, as they dissect the exact financial and operational thresholds that separate a small business from a mid-market contender. Each episode isolates a single case—a specialty manufacturer in Ohio, a regional dental chain, a software consultancy in Austin—and walks through the specific revenue inflection points, debt structures, and hiring sequences that mark the transition. Lucas, a journalist who has covered private-company growth for a decade, presses on the numbers: at what EBITDA multiple does a bank change its lending criteria? How does a payroll of 40 versus 150 alter your tax liability? Luna, with a background in operations, tests those numbers against real friction—the founder who lost control of culture after a Series A, the CFO who swapped QuickBooks for NetSuite too late. They never promise a formula; they examine why some companies stall at $10 million and others blow through $50 million. The listener is someone running a 30- to 200-person firm, or an investor evaluating that space, who is tired of 'growth hacking' and wants the actual ledgers. Can you scale without diluting th…","last_synced_at":"2026-06-27T12:19:03.505596+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589"},"episode":{"title":"How a Dog Trainer Scaled to Seven Figures Without a Facility","slug":"how-a-dog-trainer-scaled-to-seven-figures-without-a-facility","published_at":"2026-06-17T04:03:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/how-a-dog-trainer-scaled-to-seven-figures-without-a-facility","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589","url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/episode-0057.mp3","audio_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/episode-0057.mp3","summary":"In episode 57 of Scaling Up with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how a solo dog trainer in Austin bootstrapped a million-dollar business without ever renting a facility. They walk through the specific decisions—from using clients' homes as training spaces to building a referral engine that replaced all ad spend—that turned a side hustle into a scalable service company. The episode digs into the numbers: how 12 weekly sessions per trainer at $150 each hit $93,600 annual revenue per trainer, and how the founder grew to 8 trainers and $750,000 in revenue before adding a single paid ad. Key lessons include why avoiding fixed overhead gave them pricing power, how a simple feedback loop kept client acquisition costs at zero, and why the founder turned down a VC term sheet to stay asset-light. If you run a service business and think you need a location to scale, this episode will change your mind. #DogTraining #ServiceBusiness #Bootstrapping #NoFacility #Scaling #AustinBusiness #ReferralEngine #ZeroOverhead #AssetLight #SevenFigures #SmallBusinessGrowth #BusinessStories #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #ScalingUpWithFexingo #Entrepreneurship #RevenuePerTrainer #ServiceScaling Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo","meta_description":"In episode 57 of Scaling Up with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how a solo dog trainer in Austin bootstrapped a million-dollar business without ever rent…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":563,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/episodes/how-a-dog-trainer-scaled-to-seven-figures-without-a-facility/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/how-a-dog-trainer-scaled-to-seven-figures-without-a-facility.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}