Revenue Up 2x, EBITDA Up 5x: The Operating Model Behind It with Andrew McBarnett

Everyone wants AI to fix their messy data. Andrew McBarnett will tell you straight: it won't. In fact, it'll just help you reach the wrong conclusion faster.Andrew is Group Financial Director at Lucid Group, a PE-backed medical communications agency. He joined in 2020 for what was meant to be a four month contract. Six years later, he's still there, and the numbers tell the story: EBITDA up from £3.6m to £18.1m, revenue more than doubled, legal entities cut from 25 to 15, and a finance team that's shrunk in headcount while transaction volume has nearly doubled.In this conversation, Andrew explains how he diagnosed a business that looked successful on the surface but was being held back by its operating model. Here's what we get into:Why numbers don't explain your business, they just reveal where the pain isAndrew’s five pillars of an operating model that can actually scaleWhy "businesses don't fail to grow, they fail to absorb their growth"How Lucid built single sources of truth across accounting, project delivery, and expensesWhy AI was never the goal, it was the reward for doing the foundational work properlyWhat changing the culture of a team actually takes (it’s harder than the tech, according to Andrew)Plus, Andrew shares the real reason finance teams get sidelined in the business, and how to fix it.Additional Resources:👉🏽 Follow Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmcbarnett/👉🏽 Lucid Group: https://wearelucidgroup.com/ 👉🏽 AMB Associates: https://amb-associates.com/ 👨🏽 Follow Harv on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvnagra/  💰 The Missing Finance Course (free): https://learn.scoro.com ➡️ This podcast is brought to you by Scoro, where you can manage your projects, resources and finances in a single system. Sign up for a free trial or a demo at https://scoro.com/demo – and for the VIP treatment, tell them Harv sent you.