The Growth Scaling founders are David Mitroff, Ph.D., and Steven Lockhart — a growth strategist with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology who founded Piedmont Avenue Consulting, and a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt who builds scaling systems. Most firms give you one or the other. Here, both are on every engagement.
Name the problem before the fix: owners usually hire a strategist who can’t execute, or an operator who can’t position. The Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey shows how thin owner margins are — there’s no budget for hiring the wrong half twice.
Growth happens in the mind before the numbers. David holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, founded Piedmont Avenue Consulting, spent six years as a Google for Startups mentor, and has given two TEDx talks. He runs strategy, buyer psychology, and the relationship engine.
A machine that runs without the owner. Steven is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt whose operating career includes taking companies public and serving 8,000+ marketing clients. He runs the production system, web architecture, and operational discipline.
A mindset without a machine is a wish. A machine without the mindset is a faster way to run in the wrong direction. Buyers decide with psychology; businesses scale with systems. Fund only one and you feel the gap within a quarter.
So the work is split on purpose. David frames the strategy and the buyer psychology. Steven engineers the production system that makes it repeat. You get the diagnosis and the build from the same room — see how that plays out in our case studies & results.
Between them, the partners have started 15+ companies and taken 12 public — and a registered trademark is treated as the business asset it is, not decoration. Start with how the method works.
Three phases carry most of the weight. Full sequence — Orient, Measure, Engineer, Build, Compound — lives on the method page.
We price the gap between what you spend and what you get back — before anyone touches a channel or a budget.
We design the single route where the cost to acquire a customer falls as volume rises, and cut the tactics that don’t.
The engine keeps producing after the retainer ends, so growth stops depending on your hours in the business.
With one concrete action: a paid, two-hour Assessment where you meet both partners. We price your model and hand you the math, so the conversation ends with numbers rather than a follow-up proposal. The baseline we start from is real data — the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistics of U.S. Businesses is the kind of ground truth we anchor to. You leave able to act, whether or not you hire us.
David holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and applies buyer psychology to growth strategy. He is not a licensed psychologist and does not provide psychological or mental health services. He founded Piedmont Avenue Consulting and spent six years as a Google for Startups mentor. His work centers on why buyers decide before they act, and how to build a message around that. On an engagement, he owns the growth engine — positioning, messaging, and the relationship side of the business.
It means the strategy and the systems come from two people who are each excellent at one of them. David runs the growth engine: positioning and buyer psychology. Steven runs the scaling engine: production systems and web architecture. Both are on your engagement at the same time, so the plan and the build never drift apart the way they do when a strategist hands off to a separate vendor.
You work with the founders. The firm stays small on purpose, so the partners are on the work rather than supervising a junior team from a distance. That’s the trade you get with a two-person firm — less volume, more of the people whose names are on the door. If your project outgrows that model, we’ll tell you plainly rather than staffing around it.
The firm is new, but the partnership isn’t improvised. David and Steven kept meeting the same problem from opposite sides — owners with a good message and no system, or a good system and no message. Growth-Scaling exists to put both in one room, which is the ‘sage and builder’ pairing behind the brand. The speaking & media page shows where that story gets taught in public.
The Assessment is paid, runs about two hours, and ends with numbers you keep — whether or not we work together.
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