Vision is cheap. Execution is rare. It’s not big ideas that keep a company growing—it’s consistency. For leaders, this means leadership follow-through.

Last week, I had a long conversation in Miami with Ed Harycki, who is building his second $100M company. He sold his first, Swift Capital, to PayPal. Credit Genie, his new company, has, according to Ed, taken less than three years to go from $0 to a profitable $100M a year in revenue.

How did he do this so quickly? Setting aside the fact that he’s ridiculously smart and sees needs in the market that others miss…people trust him. He’s credible. He’s followed through in the past and he is following through now.

So, he’s able to bring together major investors and clients to create something significant.

But where does this kind of trust come from?

Not just inspiring ideas. Consistent actions.

In the late 1980s, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner launched one of the largest studies on leadership ever conducted.

Thousands of people across industries were asked one simple question: What do you most admire in a leader?

The top answers weren’t “bold vision” or “charisma.” They were honesty, consistency, and dependability. In other words—credibility.

This finding, repeated over decades of follow-up research, challenges the common assumption that great leadership is mostly about being inspirational. It shows what real-world leaders already know: Leadership impact is about trust built through execution, not words. This is where leadership follow-through makes all the difference.

Credibility (or trust) is built by consistently doing what you say you will do.

Why Leadership Follow-Through Becomes the Core Test For Growing Companies

Charisma, vision, and drive matter. When an organization is small, it can be enough to cover gaps and hold things together. But as companies grow, gaps get exposed. Teams scale faster than a leader’s personal influence.

At this point, execution and reliability—not ideas—become the cultural “glue” that holds organizations through complexity.

Not only that, but as companies grow they start to do business with or attract bigger players. The leaders in these ‘bigger players’ have usually been around the block a few times. They aren’t going to be easily impressed by song and dance. They want to know if you can be relied on.

What Great Leaders at Scale Actually Do

Prioritize fewer, clearer objectives.
They understand the old proverb that says, “The man who chases two rabbits catches neither.” They keep their focus tight and defend it.

Create highly visible progress markers.
This is about both public accountability and clear communication. They are comfortable discussing standards and goals because they believe they will live up to them.

Model success behaviors.
Many leaders and teams know that “If we all just did X around here – everything would work.” “X” represents basic behaviors that produce success. This might be consistently closing loops in conversation, ensuring clear accountability, being timely in communication, listening to others without getting defensive. These leaders model their success behaviors.

Build fast feedback and adjustment loops.
They experiment, learn, adjust and grow—quickly. Instead of deliberating forever about a new policy change or equipment buy—they make an experiment out of it, test it for a reasonable amount of time, evaluate success and either discard, adjust or adopt it. But they do it quickly.

The “Credibility Cycle” You Need to Build

The First Person You Need to Convince Is Yourself
If you’ve built a habit out of not following through—that shapes your self-image. Whether you feel guilty about it or have endlessly great excuses—deep inside, you’ve taught yourself that you can’t be trusted.

If you don’t trust yourself, you can’t expect others to either.

The solution: Keep the promises you make to yourself. Do the things you told yourself you would do. Make good on them.

Your confidence will just naturally grow that when you say something, you’ll do it. That confidence is the building block that credibility is built on.

Don’t Leave Your Credibility to Chance

You’ve built something real. That takes more than vision. That took a lot of work over time.

But as your business grows, so does the complexity. And eventually, charisma and hustle stop being enough. What matters then is consistency—doing what you said you’d do, even when no one’s watching.

That’s what builds credibility. And credibility is what opens doors.

If you’re leading a company where execution matters more than ideas—and you’re not interested in leaving your next stage of growth to chance—reach out.

Let’s make sure your systems, priorities, and leadership follow-through are as strong as the business you’ve already built.

Take good care,
Christian