The MakeWaves Blog
Practical reads for founders who run the business AND work the business.
Straight talk on operations, SOPs, reporting, and AI that earns its place. No jargon, no hype, just the systems work that turns treading water into forward momentum.
Your Reorder Points Are a Guess Wearing a Number
The reorder point in your system was probably set years ago by someone who has since left. Three questions that tell you whether your purchasing numbers are decisions or guesses, and why buying forecasting software first makes it worse.
“Field Notes: Bots Found Our Forms in Week One”
Days after our site went live, automated spam started arriving. The principle that shaped our response applies to any small business with a form: filter aggressively, but never let a filter silently delete a real customer.
A Weekly Scorecard Beats a Gut Feeling
Founder intuition built the business, but it does not scale, delegate, or survive a bad week. How a weekly operational scorecard turns gut feel into an operating rhythm.
Your Reports Are Late Because Your Data Is Homeless
If building a report means hunting through inboxes, exports, and six versions of the same spreadsheet, the problem is not reporting. It is that your data has no home.
When Your Best Employee Quits, What Walks Out the Door?
Tribal knowledge is a liability wearing a hero’s uniform. How to measure your key-person risk and turn irreplaceable people into well-supported ones.
When the Founder Is the Bottleneck
Every question routed through you feels like control. It is actually the constraint on your growth. How to move from being the answer key to owning the founder’s sweet spot.
The Tool Owns Your Data. You Just Rent It.
Your customer history, pricing logic, and operational records may be living inside platforms you can leave only by abandoning them. What owning your data actually looks like, and why it decides your AI ceiling.
Your SOPs Are Training Tools, Not Binders
A procedure nobody trains on is a document, not a system. The SOP accountability loop, why real coverage runs 30 to 80+ procedures, and who should own each one.
You Can’t Optimize What You Haven’t Defined
Automation-first fails for a simple reason. The six-step sequence that has to come before any tool, and why skipping it costs more than it saves.
Industry Reads
See all readsMost small businesses now use AI, but few have built it into how the work runs
A Babson College survey of small business program graduates, reported by Fortune, finds 86 percent now use AI, yet only 15 percent say it is fully part of their core operations, and 77 percent want more training. For a founder-run business, closing that gap starts before the tool: an assistant can only follow a process someone has defined and written down, so documenting how the work actually runs comes first.
Most organizations say their data is not ready for the AI they want
New research covered by CDO Magazine finds data problems delayed or derailed AI projects at 86 percent of organizations, and only 39 percent have data that is digitized, structured and ready to use. Data scattered across disconnected systems was a leading obstacle. A founder-run business has fewer systems to untangle, so deciding where each record lives and what each field means is far easier before an AI project than in the middle of one.
Freight costs are rising fastest for the smallest buyers
Bank of America's payments data shows freight and logistics spending growing about four times faster at firms under $5 million in revenue than at mid-sized firms, and the report suggests small buyers are more exposed to spot rates. Inventory transactions per firm are also climbing faster than spend. For a founder-run business, that rewards proactive purchasing: reorder points and supplier lead times written down, so orders go out on schedule instead of on rush freight.