Chad McMillan's Growth Focused Blog

Buying a stock is often the easy part. Selling forces you to deal with uncertainty, FOMO, loss aversion and the possibility that the move continues without you. Here’s how I think about it.

A simple way I read an uptrend: follow the higher highs and higher lows, understand the channel, and stay with the move until the structure tells me it has changed.

A good idea does not automatically require a new company. Different ideas deserve different vehicles: operating ventures, partnerships, licensing, IP sales, creative projects or simply more time.

AI matters to me less as a novelty than as a change in the economics of experimentation. Individuals and small teams can now test certain ideas faster and more cheaply than was recently practical.

A technology, invention or creative idea does not create value simply because it exists. Commercialization is the work of connecting it to a customer, business model, distribution system and economic reason to scale.

Small public companies move through recognizable phases: formation, financing, execution, growth, reinvention and sometimes failure. Understanding the phase changes how I see the opportunity.

Ideas are abundant. Venture building is the process of turning an interesting possibility into something customers want, economics can support and a team can actually execute.

Momentum feels productive, but without reflection it is easy to repeat the same patterns faster. I value periods of review because they turn experience into learning and motion into direction.

An acquisition can accelerate a strategy, but it cannot replace one. I look at M&A through the lens of strategic fit, value creation, structure, integration and what becomes possible after the deal.

Before I enter a trade, I want to know the setup, entry, target, stop, thesis and risk/reward. Planning those decisions before money is on the line helps me trade with more discipline.

Public and private venture capital can fund very similar entrepreneurial journeys. The difference is where ownership, liquidity and capital formation live.

I care less about perfect balance than alignment: whether the way I spend my days supports what I say matters, and whether my work, values, relationships and ambitions are moving in compatible directions.

Unlimited options can create paralysis. Constraints force prioritization, combinations and unconventional solutions—and can become a surprisingly powerful creative tool.

My two primary trading setups are swings and breakouts. One looks for movement within an established structure; the other looks for price escaping that structure into a new move.

One of my favourite setups is the first meaningful breakout from a quiet trading range. I’m looking for a stock beginning to move before the story is already obvious to everyone.

For me, meditation is less about escaping thought than creating enough space to notice it. Quiet can reveal what constant stimulation, urgency and momentum keep covered up.

I do not need every idea to become a company. I want to understand the problem, timing, differentiation, feasibility, economics, my own advantage and the right vehicle before deciding what an idea deserves.

One of my simplest position-sizing checks is emotional: if a trade is making me unusually anxious before it has even moved, I may be taking too much risk.

Support and resistance are two of the simplest technical ideas I use. They help me see where buyers and sellers have historically shown up, frame risk and recognize possible swing or breakout setups.

Before getting absorbed in valuation or deal mechanics, I want to understand why the target matters, what we are really buying, and whether the combined business is better than the two businesses apart.

A short trading lesson that changed how I think about exits: selling a stock does not mean losing the opportunity forever. If the setup returns, I can always buy it back.

Future thinking is not predicting exactly what happens next. It is noticing the forces changing what is possible and asking what opportunities, behaviours and systems might emerge as a result.

A lot of trading is emotional. My idea of trading zen is staying calm enough to see what the market is actually doing instead of making decisions from fear, greed or hope.

Technical analysis became much more useful to me when I stopped treating charts like random lines and started seeing them as a language with structure, patterns and probabilities.

A stop can occasionally take me out of a trade that later recovers. I still prefer that inconvenience to letting one failed setup turn into a major loss.

I’ve spent decades around penny stocks and small-cap companies. I think the label is less useful than understanding the venture underneath the ticker.

For an early-stage public company, financing is often part of the operating model. Here is how I think about private placements, dilution and financing the next milestone.

When I look at an early-stage public company, I keep coming back to four things: people, project, structure and capital. Then I look at what could change the story.

Wanting a different life is not the same as living differently. At some point, transformation has to reach the calendar, routines, environment, relationships and repeated choices that actually create your days.

Identity can become a source of stability, but it can also become a cage. Growth sometimes means letting an old definition of yourself expire so a more current version can emerge.

Business development is not networking for its own sake. The best relationships create a specific exchange of value that helps both sides move faster than they could alone.

Positioning is not just marketing language. It determines how customers, investors, partners and talent understand what a company is, why it matters and where it fits.

Reverse takeovers are one route private ventures can use to enter the public markets. Here is the practical way I think about the transaction and what matters afterward.

Moving across different disciplines can look unfocused from the outside. For me, it creates a larger library of patterns, models and ideas that can be recombined in unexpected ways.

Leadership often means making consequential decisions with incomplete information. I try to separate reversible from irreversible choices, identify the real downside, and keep decisions connected to the larger strategy.

When a company is under pressure, sequence matters. My first job is to understand what can hurt the business fastest, what must be preserved, and where management attention should go now.

I take intuition seriously, but not as a substitute for thinking. I see it as a signal worth examining—especially when experience has absorbed more patterns than I can easily explain in the moment.

Capturing ideas is not just about remembering them. A long-running collection of observations, concepts and fragments becomes raw material that can connect and compound over time.

I do not see mindfulness and ambition as opposites. Presence helps me notice what is happening now, while ambition gives me something to build toward. I want access to both.

More marketing, more products and more capital do not automatically create growth. I start by finding the constraint that is preventing an otherwise viable business from moving faster.

Hope is not a trading strategy. I want my decisions grounded in the price action and structure actually in front of me, not the price I wish a stock would reach.

When an idea contains uncertainty, I would rather design the smallest credible experiment that teaches me something important than build an expensive system around assumptions.

Freedom is not only having fewer obligations. It is having enough control over time, money, location and attention to make meaningful choices about how you live. I increasingly think of that as a design problem.

Every yes has a cost. Intentional living, to me, means becoming more conscious of where my time, energy and attention are going—and whether those choices are building the life I actually want.

Invention creates something new. Innovation creates a change that matters. The distance between those two ideas is usually commercialization, adoption and execution.

A trading journal gives me a record of the plan, strategy, entry, exit, stop, risk/reward and result so I can see what is actually working and keep improving my execution.

New environments interrupt familiar patterns. For me, exploration is not only about seeing somewhere new; it is one of the ways I see my own life from a different angle.

In early-stage public companies, management is often the difference between an interesting asset and an investable venture. Here is what I look for in the people.

The project gets the attention, but the share structure tells me what I actually own. Here is how I think about shares, warrants, options, debt, dilution and pricing history.