What does it really take to scale a company from $10 million to $100 million in revenue? In this episode, we sit down with Nate Edgerly of Blystone & Donaldson to unpack the operational discipline, leadership evolution, and capital strategy required to break through the $10M ceiling. While many founders can reach early traction through grit and strong sales, the leap to $100M demands a shift toward scalable systems, intentional culture building, and strategic financial structure.
Nate shares practical insights on eliminating growth bottlenecks, building leadership layers that drive accountability, and aligning capital with long-term enterprise value creation. We also explore the transition from founder-operator to capital allocator — a critical pivot for those who want to build enduring companies, not just fast-growing ones. If you’re aiming to scale with clarity and purpose, this conversation delivers a roadmap for doing it right.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want
you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.
Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Hello everybody, and welcome toanother episode of the build to billions podcast where we got successful entrepreneurs andinvestors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling your wealthand compounding your impact is by having a mindset and practice of stewardship overownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is to help you scale and compound your wealth and life so you can give more, all of it away to help MVPs, most vulnerable people. My name is Brett Swarts, and every episode, I’m joined by the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires, where they share their secrets, insights and wisdom with us, we can all level up and have a bigger impact. I’m excited about our next guest. He’s out of the Great State of North Carolina, and he has extensive experience in hot and hospitality and business, prior to working with Blystone and Donaldson, and it’s a formation of Enzo, he was the chief financial officer of investors Management Corporation, where he led all company development and M and A activities. Additionally, he has served in various executive leadership roles within his portfolio of partner companies, including CEO before his role at IMC, he was the CFO and CEO of Morehead Capital Management, a middle market private equity firm. There’s so much here. I’m really excited about our next guest. He has expertise in scaling businesses, and he’s now heading up Blystone and Donaldson, which is a merchant bank, and so much more. Please welcome the show with me, Mr. Nate Edgerly, Nate, how we are doing?
Nate
great. Thank you for having me, Brett. I’m really excited to be here, and I look forward to having a good conversation. Absolutely.
Brett
And for our listeners, getting to know for the first time, would you give them just a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Nate
Sure, yeah. So most of my career, I’m a CPA by training, and I spent about a decade with a big four accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and I worked with a lot of middle market companies, a lot of private equity groups and hedge funds, and I really enjoyed working with that, that client base, and so much so that I kind of jumped ship and I and I went into that industry. Public accounting is great, but it’s intense and, you know, a lot of these, a lot of my clients, were doing interesting stuff operationally, and, you know, from an investment strategy standpoint, seeing a lot of cool things. And so, I started the fun that you mentioned earlier, Morehead, with a couple of good friends, and we had a really great run. And, you know, I learned a lot about traditional private equity in that process, and sort of like, what the role of private equity is and how it works, that there’s a lot about that industry that people don’t know, the investors don’t know about the way it really works. And so, I got to see that firsthand. And then our team actually joined our largest investor and took over the leadership of kind of that investment platform, which was a much larger investment platform. So that afforded me the opportunity to work with a lot of businesses ranging from small to really large, you know, billion plus size businesses, and I got to wear a lot of different hats. I, you know, I played executive roles in the companies, and, you know, in through that process, what I learned is exactly what you what you described at the top of the podcast, which is leadership. Once you really understand leadership, business leadership, it’s about people and it’s about giving back. It’s about serving and creating opportunities. And the best businesses truly are the ones, the most sustainable businesses, the most profitable, long-term businesses that create dynastic wealth are the ones that are led with a philosophy of service. And that is, that is been my experience time and again, and that’s what I carry into my current role in working with businesses and helping them, you know, figure out everything from scaling strategy through to financing strategy.
Brett
And so, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview. And please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody.
Watch the episode here:
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About Nate Edgerly
Nate Edgerly is a business leader, investor, and strategic operator known for helping companies scale beyond founder-led growth into professionally managed, high-performance enterprises. As part of Blystone & Donaldson, he works closely with leadership teams to strengthen operations, improve financial visibility, and build the infrastructure required to grow from middle-market traction to institutional-level scale.
With a background that blends finance, accounting, and hands-on operational leadership, Nate brings a disciplined yet practical approach to value creation. He focuses on aligning people, process, and capital to drive sustainable growth — helping founders transition from doing everything themselves to building organizations that can scale without dependency on any single individual.
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