The Handbook: The Operations Podcast

Most service businesses don’t stall because of a lack of talent or ambition. They stall because the business quietly outgrows the systems it was built on.
In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sits down with Jason Swenk – agency founder turned advisor who’s spent two decades helping agencies and consultancies scale with more confidence and less chaos. 
After building and selling his own eight-figure agency, Jason codified the patterns he kept seeing into an eight-system framework for predictable growth.
We unpack why so many leadership teams feel stuck, what actually breaks as businesses scale, and how operators can help reset the foundations before things start to crack.
Here’s what we get into:
Why clarity, positioning, and offering are the foundations everything else depends on
How to move from reactive growth to a more deliberate, scalable operating model
The difference between prospecting and sales – and why skipping steps causes pain later
How delivery, ops, and leadership systems protect margins and give leaders time back
What it really means to transition from founder mode to CEO mode
Whether you’re an Ops Director, COO, or part of a leadership team trying to break through a growth ceiling, this conversation is a strong reminder that maturity isn’t about working harder – it’s about building the right systems at the right time.

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Jason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonswenk/ 
💻 Jason’s website: https://jasonswenk.com/  
🎧 Jason's podcast: https://www.agencymastery360.com/podcast 

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 
📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity 
📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 
➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

A short one to close out the year! 🎁
No frameworks. No deep dives. Just a genuine thank you.
Whether you found The Handbook last week or you’ve been listening since episode one, I wanted to reflect on the year and say how much I appreciate you making time for the show.
This year I’ve had the chance to sit down with brilliant operators and leaders across agencies and consultancies, covering people, process, tools, data, and growth – all anchored by one belief: operational maturity is what lets professional service businesses scale without burning people out.
I'd also love your input on what to tackle next!
What should we go deeper on next year?
What’s been most useful?
What challenges are you dealing with right now?
Please fill out the short survey below, and it genuinely shapes what comes next for the podcast.
Survey: https://bit.ly/handbook25survey
Have a great holiday, and see you in 2026!

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿
"Ballpark" is a dangerous word.
Especially when Sales sells the dream, and Delivery is left living the nightmare.
In this Quickie, Harv shares a real story from a consulting session with a 100+ person agency. They had the headcount and the revenue, but behind the scenes? It was pure chaos.
We're talking manual spreadsheet reconciliation, "remembering" to log expenses, and invoicing based on memory rather than milestones.
Harv breaks down why this "Chaotic Era" caps your growth and why moving to a PSA is the way to align what you sell with what you actually deliver.
Stop running your business on memory. Start running it on data.

When your business feels busy but the numbers don’t back it up, something’s off.
Agencies and consultancies often confuse effort with progress – and today’s guest has the data to prove it.
In this episode of The Handbook, Harv Nagra sits down with fractional CFO and Trimline founder Michael Wark to unpack why so many service businesses hit revenue ceilings, run on thin margins, and stay stuck in that exhausting cycle of over-servicing.
If you’ve ever wondered why more clients and more staff don’t automatically create more profit, this one’s for you.
Here’s what we get into:
The hidden math behind low profitability – and why over-servicing is usually the real culprit
Why headcount growth can become an ego metric (and why hiring your way out of inefficiency rarely works)
How to diagnose your true unit economics and reset your pricing based on reality, not optimism
The operational signals your business is running harder in place rather than growing
What healthy, scalable service businesses measure – and the benchmarks Michael looks for in top-performing firms
Whether you’re firefighting day to day or thinking seriously about scaling, Michael brings a clear, practical lens to understanding your numbers and building a healthier business.
Listen to the full episode to hear the data, the patterns, and the playbook that can help you break the cycle. 🎧

Additional Resources:
👉🏽 Follow Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-wark-18627628/ 
💰 Check out Trimline: https://trimline.co/ 
📺 Check out Michael’s Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@MichaelWarkTrimlineCFO 

👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/ 
📈 Measure your business maturity and find out how to get to the next level: https://bit.ly/assess-business-maturity 
📬 Stay up to date with regular ops insights. Subscribe to The Handbook: The Operations Newsletter: https://www.scoro.com/podcast/#handbook 
➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.

Ops Quickies – snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. 🍿
Flat demand, tighter budgets, squeezed margins. And AI is adding uncertainty on top of it all. 
But the real risk? It’s flying blind. 
If you don’t know what’s profitable, where time’s going, or what’s around the corner, every decision is a gamble.
In this Quickie, Harv lays out how visibility and control de-risk your business – and why data beats gut feel when markets wobble. 
When the foundations are tight, AI becomes an amplifier, not a threat. 
If you're wondering how to make your professional service business more resilient, this one's for you.