HERDING GAZELLES  

Karl Stark and Bill Stewart are Managing Directors and co-founders of Avondale, a strategic advisory and principal investing firm focused on growing companies. Karl, based in Chicago, and Bill, based in San Diego, have a combined 30 years of experience helping businesses achieve and sustain profitable growth. Their strategic and financial advice helps companies unlock the value drivers in their business and focus investment around the most profitable growth opportunities. Avondale, based in Chicago, is a high-growth company itself, and is a two-time Inc. 500 award recipient. @karlstark


Difference Between Brute Force & Strategic Growth

As your company grows it may be necessary to move away from your brute force approach to a more calculated plan.  Read story

Growing Like Gangbusters? Then It's Time for Change

Tomorrow's growth won't resemble today's, especially if you're growing at a rapid pace.  Read story

Selling Your Business: Timing Is Everything

Knowing the right time to sell is key to getting the best return for your business. Here are five things to consider about your exit strategy.  Read story

What Your Customers Would Love to Tell You

Customers are your best insight into launching a new product if only you're willing to listen.  Read story

Get Inside Your Customers' Heads: 3 Ways

Find new ways to mine the most important insights to improve the customer experience.  Read story

3 Unconventional Strategies for Fast Growth

As you develop an execution plan for your long-term growth strategy, you may have to disrupt the status quo.  Read story

The Profitability Illusion

If you aren't providing profitable products and services, you may not be creating true customer value across the business.  Read story

How Your Business Can Avoid Extinction

Businesses can learn from the evolutionary prowess of penguins and Facebook.  Read story

The Sticky Customer Trap

Are you creating value with your best customers, or is it just an illusion? Here's how growing revenue can lull you into complacency.  Read story

The Growth Company's Dilemma

When your business isn't a start-up but it isn't yet acting like a "big" company, your role as CEO must evolve from jack-of-all-trades to team-builder.  Read story

What Investors Want to Know Before They Commit

A Fortune 100 investor outlines what questions he would ask before signing on the dotted line.  Read story

Nurture Your Most Profitable Customers

Profitable growth is more achievable if you focus on identifying your most valuable customers--and keeping them happy.  Read story

4 Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs

What special mix of ingredients separates the best business-builders from the rest of the pack? Entrepreneurs from Brightbox share their perspective.  Read story

Growth With No Capital? No Problem

Small businesses can overcome limited resources by following three basic steps.  Read story

Do Entrepreneurs Destroy Businesses?

Entrepreneurs are calculated risk takers, but do they have the right skills to manage a sustainable business?  Read story

6 Fundamentals to Minimize Growing Pains

Gino Wickman's Traction , outlines a more structured approach to management that improves productivity and performance throughout the business.  Read story

4 Demotivators That Will Cost You

Keeping everyone on your team focused and motivated is not easy, especially if you fall into one or more of these common traps.  Read story

3 Steps for Motivating Your Team

Successful businesses are built around people, not ideas. Here's how to keep your team motivated and working toward a common goal.  Read story

Create the Spark That Will Ignite Your Start-up

You can't launch a successful business on just an idea. Discovering your strategic asset is the key.  Read story

Move Your Client Conversation Forward: 3 Tips

The key to cross-selling is understanding the client's needs.  Read story

Want to Grow in 2013? Use This Checklist

Here are ten things that you should do before the end of the year to put your company on the right track for growth in 2013.  Read story

Be Irresistible to Investors: 3 Steps

Don't overcomplicate your pitch to investors. You'll have more success with a business case that can be clearly stated in under a minute.  Read story

How to Grow? Don't Gun the Accelerator

Growth is not a race. Instead, think strategically about how to create a sustainable growth trajectory.  Read story

Want to Grow Fast? Then Slow Down

There's an art to maintaining a rapid growth trajectory. Ironically, you may have more success by taking things slowly.  Read story

A Better Way to Finance a Start-up? Venture Debt

Growing companies can get much-needed capital without giving up equity or control through venture debt.  Read story

Keep Your Team Together Through Tough Times

Every business has setbacks. These three steps can help you create an atmosphere of trust and collaboration to navigate past the rough patches.  Read story

Is It Time to Sell Your Company?

You've built a valuable company that's attractive to potential buyers. How do you cash in without selling out?  Read story

Living and Working in South Africa

What challenges does a businessperson face living in South Africa? Avondale's Bill Stewart shares his story of a year abroad in Johannesburg.  Read story

How to Scale Your Start-up

You've identified a problem worth solving and created a viable product that meets customers' needs, but how do you accelerate growth with limited resources?  Read story

Brightbox: Turning an Idea Into a Start-up

A start-up that has developed a venue-based charging station for mobile devices offers some valuable lessons in defining and building a business model around...  Read story

3 Signs It's Time to Quit Your Day Job

You can't choose a path to entrepreneurship - it chooses you. Here are three signs that it's time to leave your corporate job and start chasing your dream.  Read story

How to Restart Your Business's Engine

A growing business will eventually hit a growth plateau. Here are four steps to power through the plateau and put your business on a new growth trajectory.  Read story

Dealing with a Midlife Crisis - for Your Business

Ask yourself these seven questions to determine if your business has reach a plateau and you don't know what to do next.  Read story

3 Ways to Prep Your Business for Sale

Selling your business is a rigorous process, so the more you can do in advance, the more likely you are to realize a successful transaction when the time is ...  Read story

What's Your Unfair Advantage?

Anything that is worth copying will be copied, so how do you establish an advantage? By building something that cannot easily be copied or bought.  Read story

Do the Numbers Add Up for Your New Venture?

Any new business model must include sources of revenue, costs, as well as key metrics for measuring success. Here's how we modeled our potential new venture.  Read story

Expenses (& Perks) of Working Abroad

Expanding your business internationally may create new opportunities for employees to work abroad. Here's how to make the experience a positive one.  Read story

4 Tips to Stay on the High-Growth Track

Getting off the ground is only the first challenge. As your business grows, your role must change to keep that growth going.  Read story

4 Dysfunctions That Will Eat Away at a Growing Business

Small problems can grow quickly as a company grows. Here a several that are known to plague even the best teams.  Read story

Ditch Your Strategy, Keep Your Vision

Winning strategies are not set in concrete, but your long-term vision should remain rooted.  Read story