{"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 One Hat Maker Scaled to 100 Million Without a Factory","slug":"how-one-hat-maker-scaled-to-100-million-without-a-factory","published_at":"2026-06-25T16:04:54+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/scaling-up-with-fexingo-how-small-businesses-become-mid-market-companies-7871589/how-one-hat-maker-scaled-to-100-million-without-a-factory","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-0074.mp3","audio_url":"https://audio.fexingo.com/business/scaling-up/episode-0074.mp3","summary":"Episode 74 of Scaling Up with Fexingo tells the story of Goorin Bros., a 130-year-old hat brand that grew from a single San Francisco shop to over $100 million in revenue without ever owning a manufacturing plant. Lucas and Luna break down the company's asset-light playbook: licensing its name to a factory in exchange for exclusive distribution rights, then building a cult following through storytelling and vintage-inspired designs. They walk through the key inflection point when fourth-generation owner Ben Goorin decided to outsource production while keeping design and retail in-house. The episode also covers how the brand navigated the shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer, the economics of licensing versus vertical integration, and why owning fewer assets can sometimes mean owning more of the market. A practical look at scaling through partnerships rather than capital expenditure. #GoorinBros #HatMaking #ScalingUp #AssetLight #LicensingStrategy #DirectToConsumer #BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #SmallBusiness #MidMarket #RetailStrategy #BrandBuilding #Manufacturing #Wholesale #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Business #Scaling Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo","meta_description":"Episode 74 of Scaling Up with Fexingo tells the story of Goorin Bros., a 130-year-old hat brand that grew from a single San Francisco shop to over $100 mi…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":471,"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-one-hat-maker-scaled-to-100-million-without-a-factory/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-one-hat-maker-scaled-to-100-million-without-a-factory.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}