I recently went one-on-one with Mar Mercadé, CEO of Fit Analytics.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Mar: Being the only daughter of immigrants has defined my entire outlook, for better and for worse. I am drawn to creation and creators, to fighters and makers, and have taken over 40 years to find a middle gear.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Mar: Unless you want to plug yourself into the nearest VC money hose and scale yourself right off a cliff, you have to think about growth that sticks, and prioritise aggressively towards that growth. Step one is to hire only the right people, and no more; step two is to identify the simplest and cleanest marketing strategy you can, and execute; and step three is to make sure you stay one step ahead of your company’s max capacity at all times in terms of process and team, and no more. Scaling a business requires a careful balance between not too much and not too little. You do not want to die of success or bloat, but also need enough oxygen to climb upwards and onwards.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Mar: Don’t compromise on how much you invest into your team. Also, hire people who can shoulder responsibility and move autonomously towards the vision. Give everything you can to your people – which is not only money! Don’t be stingy with your time, with your knowledge, with giving them trust and flexibility. Make sure they’re the right people: driven, smart, competent, loyal, and growth-minded. A mercenary army will do great until things start going wrong, and then you’re SOL; and doomsayers will continuously erode your overall impact by requiring that you follow them with a mop and bucket. Hire the right people and give them everything. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the sunken-cost fallacy: be willing to let go of mismatches kindly and fast.
Adam: What are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?
Mar: We’re all bracing so hard for the AI bubble to burst that we’re getting charley horses, but very few are looking systematically into what realistic alternatives exist. We’re in a post-globalisation economy where national policy is shaking our confidence in business contracts holding. Before giving more of our core competencies into the AI goliaths (and I say this as a Claude fan and user), leaders need to understand what’s the path to actual technical sovereignty. There’s an incredible community working hard at turning local AI into an enterprise reality (from self-hosted to on-premise, on-device, to private cloud). The models are currently lagging around one year behind edge, but they’re closing in. Can your business survive the next five price hikes? Let’s not wait around to find out.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Mar: Endless curiosity and the ability to move from eagle’s-eye-view to detail without missing a beat. If your time is too valuable to know how your domain is actually running, you can’t lead effectively. Alternatively, if you live deep in the woods of detail, your team will be running blind. It’s a goldilocks answer, but you cannot both be effective and also lead without striking the right balance here. Finally, never lose sight of what makes your people tick—this is where things break.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Mar: Don’t flatter yourself but also don’t waste your time becoming someone you’re not. Some top executives I’ve worked with made a career out of being impervious to reality; I would not recommend that path. Be self-aware enough to identify your weaknesses and find ways to grow out of them enough to avoid dysfunction, and then devote the bulk of your time to building up your talents to their sharpest possible edge. Be on the lookout for the right environment for your talent / weakness combination, and change environments if there’s a mismatch.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Mar: Firstly: answer why constantly. Why are you doing this? Why are you leading your team, your company, your department towards this goal? Is the answer “money” or “because process” or jargon? Then it’s not the real answer, or you’re not a real leader. Dig deeper. Strategy is everything.
Secondly: It’s all about people. Understand them. Yourself included. It’s the best and only investment worth making. The domain knowledge comes with the job, but understanding people takes conscious effort.
Thirdly: Look beyond the quarter, whether you’re listed or not. Stop eating tomorrow’s bread.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?
Mar: Everyone hates being marketed to—hire marketers who understand that and can connect with people’s needs rather than pushing their buttons and adding to the deafening noise. With notable exceptions, you should minimize or avoid paid ad campaigns if you can. Paid is a money sink with worse ROI by the year and the AI Internet is poised to squeeze out the last drops. Finally, if you’re not a branding person, still bring yourself to care about a single fundamental: does your branding speak to your core, and can it be understood by those you need to reach? Gut-check this and leave the rest to your expert team.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Mar: Find your buffer and safeguard it. Operating at 150% once in a while happens, but it’s not a sustainable way to work. Refine your skills and approach so that your 80% is more powerful than anyone else’s, and protect that remaining 20% so you have gas left in the tank when the inevitable crisis hits. As a leader, there’s no end to what’s needed of you; your primary responsibility is to do all you need to remain upright, strong, present and driving.
