I am a business coach and strategic advisor for founder-CEOs of mid-market growth companies. I built a software agency, led it through five consecutive years on the Inc. 500/5000 list, sold it in 2013, and have spent the years since helping other founders do it better than I did.
CEOs advised, from first leadership hire to final signature.
75+
Leadership teams coached through strategy and alignment work.
250+
Strategy sessions and retreats facilitated.
Bruce Eckfeldt: Background
From Drafting Table to Boardroom.
Preparing the company for the sale took years. Preparing myself took almost none. The gap between those two numbers is most of what I have written and talked about since.
I trained as an architect at McGill University, which is where I learned to trace a problem back to its real source rather than the place it happens to show up. That habit turned out to matter more than the drafting. After graduation I was recruited to New York to work in interactive media. I spent more than a decade in the agency world leading digital product strategy, user experience, and technology teams for brands including Motorola, WebMD, and Prada.
In 2003 I founded my own Lean/Agile software agency. Over the next decade it spent five consecutive years on the Inc. 500/5000 list, and I worked through every problem that comes with scaling a professional services firm. The leadership team that outgrows itself. The founder who quietly becomes the bottleneck. The plan that never survives contact with the quarter. I sold the company through an acquisition in 2013.
Since the exit I have coached founder-CEOs on strategy, leadership team development, and exit preparation. I write for Inc.com, host podcasts on the full arc of building and selling a company, and wrote Springboard, on selling your company with clarity and a vision for what comes next.
Outside the work I am a father of four, from grade school to young adult. I find clarity outdoors, hiking, rock climbing, backcountry skiing, and cycling whenever I can get out of the city. I keep the creative side alive with drawing, painting, and photography. A meditation practice and a long-running men's group keep me honest, and remind me what the work is actually for.
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I help founders build businesses worth keeping and sell businesses worth buying, so they can live lives worth living.
Bruce Eckfeldt: At a Glance
The Short Version.
The record behind the coaching, in one place, for anyone who wants the facts before reading further.
Bachelor of Science in Architecture, McGill University
Bruce Eckfeldt: Credentials
What a Business Coach Should Prove.
Coaching is easy to claim and hard to back up, so here is the foundation under mine. Six certifications earned across two decades, each covering a different part of the work, from how a company gets built to how it gets sold. None of them replaces having sat in the chair. What they do is make the experience transferable.
Through the Exit Planning Institute. It covers what buyers actually scrutinize, how enterprise value gets built or destroyed before a deal, and how the personal side of an exit gets planned rather than improvised.
A full operating system for a growing company, built around the four decisions that decide whether it scales. People, strategy, execution, and cash, reviewed on a rhythm rather than once a year.
Metronomics and the 3HAG method turn a three-year target into a quarterly execution rhythm. That is how a strategy stops being an offsite document and starts being the way a leadership team runs the week.
Behavioral and cognitive data for seat decisions, so calls about who belongs in which role rest on evidence about how a person actually works rather than on tenure or gut feel.
Earned 2023
Flow Research Collective Coach
The performance research on how leaders do their hardest thinking under pressure. A good deal of the Defensible Calendar methodology comes straight out of it.
Earned 2004
Certified ScrumMaster
Through the Scrum Alliance, early enough to be running Lean/Agile delivery before most of the industry had a name for it. It is the practice the agency was built on, and the habit behind how I run engagements.
Credentials open the door. They are not why clients stay. What matters is that I have sat in the founder's chair, made payroll in a bad quarter, rebuilt a leadership team, and gone through the exit myself. The frameworks are useful because they are grounded in that, not borrowed from a textbook.
Bruce Eckfeldt: The Book
The Book Behind the Work.
I wrote Springboard so other founders would not have to learn the second half of an exit by living through it. Selling well is two jobs, preparing the company and preparing yourself. The book is where the Sell-Keep Posture, the Whole Life Assessment, and the Exit Blueprint come from. The first chapters are free.
"Springboard is one of the most honest and strategically grounded books I've read on exits."
Shannon Byrne Susko, Founder & CEO, Metronomics
"All founders and business owners should be required to read Springboard. Far too often, they retire without a plan."
Bill Snow, Managing Director, FOCUS Investment Banking
"This is not just a book about exiting a business. It is a guide for using an exit as a true springboard into a meaningful next chapter."
Gregg Lederman, NYT Bestselling Author, Brand at Work
Common Questions
Questions People Ask About Working With Me.
The short answers to what people usually want to know before a first conversation: who I work with, how I work, and how to get started.
Who is Bruce Eckfeldt?
I am a business coach and strategic advisor for founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies. I am a former Inc. 500 CEO who founded a Lean/Agile software agency in 2003, led it through five consecutive years on the Inc. 500/5000 list, and sold it through an acquisition in 2013. I am also the author of Springboard, an Inc.com columnist, and host of the From Angel to Exit podcast.
Who do you work with?
I work with founder-CEOs of mid-market growth companies and their leadership teams. Most are past the startup stage and running into the limits of a company built on their own effort. They want a leadership team that runs the business, a strategy that survives the quarter, or an exit that works for both the company and for them. Many are working on two of those at once.
What makes your coaching approach different?
I have sat in the chair. I scaled and sold my own company, so the work is grounded in operating experience rather than theory. I draw on several frameworks, including Scaling Up, Metronomics, Predictive Index, and exit planning, and fit them to the company instead of forcing the company into one methodology. My architecture training shows up as systems thinking about where a problem really starts.
What certifications do you hold?
I am a Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) through the Exit Planning Institute, a certified Scaling Up coach, a certified Metronomics/3HAG coach, and a Predictive Index certified consultant. I am also a Flow Research Collective coach and a Certified ScrumMaster. I completed the Entrepreneurial Masters Program at MIT and trained as an architect at McGill University.
Where are you based, and do you work remotely?
I am based in the New York City area and work with clients across the US, Canada, and internationally. I have coached founder-CEOs in the US, Canada, South America, Europe, and Asia, and run retreats throughout North and South America and Europe. Most ongoing coaching runs by video, with in-person sessions for planning intensives, leadership team work, retreats, and speaking engagements.
How do I start working with you?
The best first step is a strategy call, a focused conversation about where your company is and what it needs next. There is no proposal at the end unless you ask for one. If you would rather look at data first, the readiness assessments take about ten minutes each and give you an honest read on your team, your strategy, or your exit.
Bruce Eckfeldt: Get Started
Let's Work Together.
There is no single right way to start, so there are two. Pick the one that matches where you are. If you want to see where you stand first, the readiness assessments take about ten minutes each.
Coaching and Advisory
Ongoing work as your business coach and strategic advisor, on the three things that decide whether a company scales well and sells well.
✓ROADMAP12 for strategy that survives the quarter, not just the offsite
✓LEADERSHIP360 for a leadership team that runs the business without you
✓VALUE10X and BLUEPRINT90 for the company side and the founder side of an exit
✓NEXTLEVEL for executive coaching through the shift from doer to leader
We get clear on where you are, what you actually need, and what the right next move looks like. You leave with a sharper plan either way.
