[Top Agency Series] Data-Driven Growth and Mission-Focused Strategy With Paul Burani

​Paul Burani is the Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Mission Flywheel, a consultancy that empowers mission-driven organizations to scale revenue through data-driven strategies and measurable social impact. His career spans over two decades, including leadership roles at Google and in the edtech sector, where he focused on workforce development and economic inclusion. Paul’s expertise aligns business growth with social outcomes, helping clients in sectors like climate, education, and healthcare prove their impact to investors and stakeholders. Through Mission Flywheel, he supports purpose-driven ventures in building sustainable, high-performing revenue models.​

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [05:32] Paul Burani discusses his favorite books that shaped his approach to leadership and growth
• [08:59] The launch of Mission Flywheel and the clients it serves
• [11:00] Ideal company profiles for Mission Flywheel engagements
• [12:31] Technological and corporate lessons learnt at ThingLink
• [15:50] How Paul begins solving problems for clients — starting with clear problem articulation
• [19:30] The meaning behind the name Mission Flywheel and the flywheel business model
• [25:58] Key leadership lessons learned from managing high performers at Google
• [39:49] Paul talks about the importance of having mentors as an entrepreneur

In this episode…

Scaling a business is never a straight line — especially when growth hinges on aligning a company’s mission with its revenue strategy. Many leaders struggle to build sustainable momentum without compromising their core values or burning through capital. How can growth-stage companies maintain velocity while staying true to their purpose?

Paul Burani, a seasoned revenue strategist and fractional CRO, offers a blueprint for achieving capital-efficient growth rooted in clarity, data, and customer-centricity. He recommends starting with a clear articulation of the core problem and then layering on insights from data — whether from existing operations or direct customer research. He emphasizes the power of using data to optimize internal decisions and create feedback loops that fuel continuous momentum. Paul also discusses how transparent OKRs and cross-functional collaboration can replace rigid funnels with resilient flywheels.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Paul Burani, Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Mission Flywheel, about data-driven growth strategies for mission-led companies. Paul discusses the flywheel model, transitioning from startup to scale, and how to unlock customer insights. He also shares lessons from Google, approaches to managing high performers, and his thoughts on building work cultures rooted in purpose.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Paul Burani on LinkedIn
• Mission Flywheel

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now by John Doerr
• Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr
• Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz
• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “Sometimes when you give a lot in a weird way, it comes full circle and you get a lot too.”
• “A good book is one that you want to come back to, that sticks with you.”
• “Every business is really just in the business of solving problems — and data helps de-risk uncertainty.”
• “If you’re truly a customer-centric organization, at some point every decision comes back to your customer.”
• “Opportunities don’t grow on trees. They’re not your birthright. If you’re ready, you go for it.”

Action Steps:

1. Define the core business problem upfront: Clearly identifying the issue aligns team efforts and prevents wasted time and resources.
2. Use data to uncover blind spots: Analyzing existing metrics can reveal overlooked opportunities or inefficiencies in customer engagement and revenue strategy.
3. Replace funnels with a flywheel model: A flywheel encourages continuous growth by creating momentum through interconnected marketing, sales, and customer success.
4. Conduct direct customer research: Asking your target buyers about their needs and pain points leads to better product-market fit and messaging.
5. Coach through questions, not answers: Guiding team members to find their own solutions promotes ownership, confidence, and long-term development.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Paul Burani of Mission Flywheel. You can check him out at missionflywheel.com. Paul, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast.

People should check out since this is part of the top agency series. There’s a couple interesting ones I. Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey helps pair agency owners with private equity, so he helps sell agencies. He has the Second Bite Podcast because sometimes he’s found that when the owners sell the private equity, the private equity sells again. Sometimes those founders make more in the second bite than they do on the first.

So it was a really interesting conversation about the agency space, the valuation, M&A space, and just business in general. Another one of the fan favorites, Paul, was Adi Klevit. Adi Klevit has an agency that basically is a done-for-you solution for SLPs. So she goes into a company and if they need to smooth out their onboarding process or they need for staff or clients, she comes in and just documents the SOPs for them and puts it into a portal. We geeked out on our favorite productivity tools, software, and those kind of things, so check those out. More on inspired Insider.com.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25 and Rise25. We help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in two ways. One, we help companies launch and run a podcast or an easy button for a company to do that. We do the strategy, the accountability, and then the full execution and production.

Kind of like the magic elves that run around the background and make it look easy for the host. So create amazing content and amazing relationships and, and obviously, you know, run their business. So number two, we’re an easy button for a company’s corporate gifting. So we make gifting and staying top of mind easy and simple and seamless. And for me important is affordable.

You know, because if I’m sending it to clients or partners or staff, I want to make it all of those things. So people just give us a list of their addresses and we do everything else, you know, from the gift selection to the card to the branding, to which is their brand and everything else. So, you know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways on how I can give to my best relationships. And over the past decade, I’ve found no better way than profiling people on my podcast and sending them follow-up gifts that mostly are food so they can enjoy it with the family too.

So check it out. Rise25.com or email [email protected]. I am excited to introduce Paul Buroni’s, Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Mission Flywheel. I guess, Paul, people would describe you as a numbers person. You do digest large sums of data, picking it apart for insights, but then most importantly, kind of putting it back together to tell compelling stories.

And really, Paul’s use this approach for over 20 years to help clients optimize revenue growth. He’s done it as a market researcher and advertising agency founder, managing partner, a sales leader and a digital media company, which you may have heard of called Google and Education Workforce Development. You know, really, since 2023, he’s worked as a fractional CRO consultant advisor to growth-stage companies. So really what that means is he helps companies achieve capital-efficient scale through a validated go-to-market strategy, and also works on innovation and a customer-centric culture, which you can obviously get from the name of his company called Mission Flywheel. So Paul, thanks for joining me.

Paul Burani: 04:18

Thanks for having me. Jeremy, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. And we have at least one thing in common just hearing about your product. I think both of us are pretty bought into this idea of the power of giving, right? Especially as a business owner, I find that it may seem counterintuitive to people, but sometimes when you give a lot in a weird way, it comes full circle and you, you get a lot too.

And I found that to be especially true in this stage of my career.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:45

Totally one of my favorite books. I’m curious, some of yours too. Brian Kurtz wrote Overdeliver, and so he talked. He’s a friend, colleague, mentor. I consider him all of the above.

And he talks about kind of 100 zero, which is like just give as much as humanly possible and don’t expect anything in return, which is kind of like a weird hard concept sometimes for people. So I try and live by that. And, you know, Adam Grant’s book Give and Take, right? Talks about this and that givers are the least successful and also the most successful. So I encourage people to check that book out.

Do you have any favorites in your Audible or Amazon that people should check out over the years?

Paul Burani: 05:32

Yeah, you know, too many to list, but a few that are top of mind. A couple that I come back to, right? A good book is one that you want to come back to. I read a book about 15 years ago during my agency days called Made to Stick, and it’s sort of like a manual for how to.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:51

It’s one of my favorites. I love it.

Paul Burani: 05:53

It’s fantastic how to make ideas sticky, right? And how good ideas that aren’t sticky fall by the wayside. But if you follow a simple framework, you know it can make you, you know, really memorable. But a more current book that has really compelled me to think in a new way is called Speed and Scale. It’s written by John Doerr, one of the early venture investors in Google.

And it’s really a very pragmatic look at our climate crisis and creating a sort of a, a very analytical view of what are our priorities and what is the relativity of those priorities. Before getting into some very practical topics around how to take action.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:38

I love that I will have to check that out. I’ll have to put that one in my audible for sure. I’m looking it up right now. Yeah. Speed and Scale.

John Doerr because that. Did he also write another one measure what matters or. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Paul Burani: 06:53

Yeah. Measure what matters. Another good one. It’s all about the OKR framework for, you know, strategic leadership and sort of top to bottom execution. Smart guy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:04

Yeah. And OKR is Google had implemented his OKR system too.

Paul Burani: 07:11

They did. But fun fact OKRs were as the record would indicate, OKRs are actually the brainchild of oh my God, the name is escaping me. The founder of Intel.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:26

Andy. Yeah.

Paul Burani: 07:28

Andy.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:28

Andy. Grove. Yeah.

Paul Burani: 07:29

So Intel really, like, birthed the idea of OKRs and weaving it into the sort of modern corporate framework. Google is famous for it because Google took them and evolved them and brought them along at a time when company culture was going through, you know, an interesting heyday. And one thing that I think Google applied to the OKR framework, which made it even more appealing, I think, was transparency at the very highest leadership levels. So one of the coolest things about working at Google was that every quarter, every functional business leader around the company would get in front of the company and basically in an all hands meeting, say, all right, here’s our scorecard for me and for my business. Here’s what I set out to do.

Here’s what we as a team achieved. I am accountable to these results. And wherever there’s green, we high-five ourselves. Wherever there’s red and yellow, there’s more work to be done. And they were very honest and transparent about it.

But the really cool thing about it was if there was too much green, you actually were not celebrated as a hero. You were basically slapped on the wrist and said you didn’t make ambitious enough OKRs. So see you next quarter.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:43

Interesting. We’ll get into the Google days. I do want to talk about, you know, mission flywheel and what you do and what the company does. And as you do that, I’m going to pull up the website too. So talk about Mission Flywheel and what you do.

Paul Burani: 08:59

Yeah. So I was a founder a long time ago, went and had a corporate career. Learned a thing or two along the way. But I always felt this kind of tractor beam pulling me back to entrepreneurship. And so after spending a number of years in media and advertising space, working with big clients that really were the best in the world at measuring human behavior and then making big investments based on those insights.

I spent time in edtech and learned about how to apply, you know, sales and marketing and revenue ideologies in a new context and in Mission Flywheel. I’m basically trying to sort of open source that those sensibilities and that means, you know, working with clients, especially growth stage businesses where there’s a lot of building to be done to build it right. You know, because I’ve seen how early-stage companies can kind of run that lean startup methodology and be scrappy to succeed. I’ve seen how big companies achieve the momentum that keeps them moving forward. And so there’s something to be learned at both extremes.

But I like to work, you know, Mission flywheel is really about supporting these growth stage companies to kind of be the best they can be, lean into their mission and achieve momentum in their revenue operation through a number of little tricks that I’ve picked up along the way.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:31

I’d love to hear how you decided on the type of client you were going to serve. Obviously you’ve worked with huge clients and you worked with Google, and also you are a mentor at Techstars as well. So you can you’ve mentored small clients who’s like the ideal client sweet spot from like, I don’t know. However, you want a company size. It could be staff or revenue.

I’m not sure how. Who’s ideal for you?

Paul Burani: 11:00

Yeah. The practical answer, Jeremy, is, you know, I think most of my clients are companies, like, probably capped at about 100 employees. I like working with those companies. And there’s a lot of diversity from 0 to 100, of course. But I like them because there’s a lot to be built, there’s more building than maintaining.

And I just tend to be better as a builder. There is a pattern in terms of the types of clients that we attract. It’s, you know, there’s a lot of education, climate, healthcare. But you know, I’ve got also, you know, at the intersection of those industries, you have other business models as well. A lot of my clients, you know, operate a sort of a SaaS business.

A lot of them are B2B. Some of them, you know, bleed into professional services. And the truth is, you know, I look for the individual that founder or C-level that, you know, has a certain mindset and has a, you know, a certain need that I can maybe step in and deliver on. A lot more so than some of these firmographics like, you know, an industry or a size or, you know, they utilize a certain technology.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:13

I’d love to get, you know, inside Paul’s head for a second on how you think about things, your methodologies. Maybe we could talk about Thinglink and what you did there and some of the things that you, you know, talked about and implemented.

Paul Burani: 12:31

Yeah, Thinglink is a really cool company. One of the aforementioned, you know, SaaS companies in the edtech space. And they’ve got a really cool product, which effectively what it does is it delivers immersive learning experiences through a technology enabled platform. Now, if we strip out the marketing speak, what does that mean? It means that if you were a student, you’re going to learn about the Civil War.

You know, traditionally, your teacher might say, turn to page one ten inches your textbook, or here’s a ditto or a handout, right. And now with Thinglink, what it means is, hey, you know, log in to this website and experience 360 video, put on VR glasses. And you are standing in the Battle of Gettysburg. And click on these hotspots to see what different soldiers and generals have to say. So the evolution of that business was for many years they really dug into the education space, first working with teachers, then districts and ultimately higher education.

And at the time that I joined as a fractional CRO, really there was an acceleration in a pivot to not so much a pivot, but an augmentation of the scope to also include corporate learning. So imagine, you know, a manufacturing company that is bringing new employees into its facilities, into its factories every week. And, you know, traditionally, these people might get a bunch of PDFs in their inbox, and it’s all about how to navigate the factory floor. How do you operate this machinery without losing an arm? And so now.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:06

That’s an important one.

Paul Burani: 14:07

It’s an important one. You got to have one, ideally two arms to do good work in the factory. And so nobody wants to lose it. And you know in business speak on the corporate side it’s also about compliance. It’s about employee experience.

Right. So yeah everyone should keep their arms. But also we’re going to make you better at your job. We’re going to make you a happier employee. We’re going to streamline some of the operations that chew up resources in a business.

Right. Like dealing with regulators and staying on top of, you know, the sort of table stakes for operating in a given industry. So safety training is a classic use case. It’s one of many for ThingLink. But the role has been very interesting because, you know, I’ve sort of weaved in and out of different business functions, everything from, you know, developing revenue operations, playbooks and kind of setting the tone for how the revenue organization would function to almost like chief of staff, investor relations type work, doing some brand communications, supporting lead generation efforts and, you know, bringing on team members, you know, to sort of create end to end pipeline of inbound opportunities.

So, you know, the work is never done, but it’s a fast-paced business. And I love the mission, right? I mean, they’re just trying to make learning more of a pleasant experience and to dispel the myth that it has to happen in a classroom.

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