From Hallmark Strategist to Growth Catalyst: Thinking Your Way to 2x

with Margaret Reynolds

 

Now Forming: A New Kansas City Team
For CEOs, Founders & Owners

Margaret Reynolds is Acumen's newest Growth Catalyst. She is forming a new Kansas City Acumen team for CEOs, owners, and business leaders who want trusted peers around the table: people who offer perspective, challenge their thinking, keep them accountable, and help them make better decisions. If that sounds like something you'd value, Margaret would love to have a conversation.

Curious if it's the right fit? Start with a conversation.
[Connect with Margaret]

In this episode of The Sharpen Podcast, host Dan Cooper sits down with Margaret, former Chief Strategy Officer at Hallmark Cards. Together, they look at a question that has shaped Margaret's career: why do two companies in the same industry, with the same kinds of capable people, end up on completely different growth paths? Her answer is that the difference isn't what they do. It's how they think, the questions they ask, and the data they use to answer them.

Margaret explains "business gravity," the way success breeds habit and habit breeds the status quo. She shares her three-pile method for pointing resources at the few priorities that matter. She also explains why most companies have budget and operational clarity but not strategic clarity, and why sales numbers are the wrong thing to steer by. Dan and Margaret close with how she brings her faith into her work and what she's building with her new Kansas City team.

Margaret Reynolds Episode-2

 

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What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why companies in the same industry, with equally capable teams, grow at very different rates
  • How "business gravity" (success → habit → status quo) quietly holds growth back
  • Why "How do we get back to what we had?" is the wrong strategic question
  • How to redirect the time, people, and money you already have toward your real opportunities
  • Why most companies have budget clarity and operational clarity but lack strategic clarity
  • How to swap lagging sales numbers for internal and external leading indicators
  • How to find the growth sweet spot where market demand meets what you do uniquely well

About the Guest

Margaret Reynolds – Growth Catalyst, Acumen (Kansas City)

Margaret calls herself "a growth catalyst at heart." She spent the first chapter of her career at Hallmark Cards. There she was a general manager responsible for a $100 million business and later became Chief Strategy Officer. She was known for taking on the "gray area" assignments, and a colleague once said she was the one who could "see over the top of the hill." After Hallmark she worked as a coach and professional speaker for small and mid-sized, mostly privately owned businesses, using her own framework to help leaders define growth opportunities, identify barriers, and aim for at least 2x growth. She now leads Acumen's new CEO/Owner/Founder team in Kansas City.

Connect with Margaret and Her Team

Connect with Margaret on LinkedIn

Learn more about Acumen and our Peer Advisory Teams

 

Practical Takeaways for CEOs and Leaders

  • Ask "What could this look like if we doubled?" Plan from your potential, not from last year's 3–5% path.
  • Sort your desk into three piles: on-strategy, off-strategy, and "revisit in three months." Keep editing.
  • Segment your customers. Not every customer is equal. Find the ones you can grow with (remember the 80/20 rule), and look for transactions that may be losing you money.
  • Ask "Why are we doing this?" If nobody can answer, question whether it deserves time and money.
  • Build strategic clarity at every level. Every employee should be able to say where the company is going, what the key priorities are, and what their own role is.
  • Add leading indicators to your scorecard. Examples: % of revenue from products launched in the last three years, % of priority accounts growing, bundling rates, service contracts, and recurring revenue.
  • Find the intersection. Plot what your core growing customers want against what you do better than anyone else. Set your top three priorities for next year where the two overlap, and base them on hard data rather than hearsay.

Key Topics & Timestamps

  • 0:08 – Welcome and introduction of Margaret Reynolds, Acumen's newest Growth Catalyst
  • 1:21 – Margaret's path from Hallmark GM to Chief Strategy Officer, and loving the "gray area"
  • 2:28 – Working with entrepreneurs: "What would it look like if you doubled the business?"
  • 4:05 – Why Margaret joined Acumen, and the "Godwink" behind the Growth Catalyst title
  • 5:07 – Why 70% of growth plans never get executed
  • 6:20 – Reliable data: "It's not what you wish to be true, it's what the market will allow"
  • 7:04 – Same industry, different results: it's how they think, not what they do
  • 7:51 – Business gravity: success breeds habit, habit breeds status quo
  • 9:27 – "Everything you need to grow, you already have"
  • 10:29 – The three-pile method for redirecting resources
  • 11:37 – Real-world shifts: training people, segmenting customers, and asking "Why?"
  • 13:33 – Strategic clarity vs. budget and operational clarity
  • 15:21 – Barriers to growth and thinking outside-in, including AI as an environmental mandate
  • 17:16 – "What do customers buy when they buy an accountant? Not accounting."
  • 18:11 – Why 90% of company data is operational and financial, not strategic
  • 19:26 – Leading vs. lagging indicators: internal and external metrics
  • 22:20 – Where to start if you want 2x: Walmart vs. Target and the two-circle exercise
  • 24:15 – Integrating faith and business through the golden rule and prayer
  • 25:19 – "The quality of your business is only as good as the quality of your decisions"
  • 26:03 – Margaret's new CEO/Owner/Founder team
  • 26:38 – How to connect with Margaret and Acumen

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