Certified EOS Implementer in Toronto

Who I am

I’m Gavin Brauer. My purpose is to help leaders grow the value of their business and live a more meaningful life.

To me, growth means strengthening who you are at your core: as a business, as a team, and as a person. Because a great business shouldn’t cost you the life you want.

I do that with kindness, clarity, and courage. Kind enough to care, and tough enough to tell you the truth.

Brauer Growth is where it all comes together. I coach leadership teams as a Certified EOS Implementer^®, serve on boards, and invest in privately held companies. I’m also building eFIT Lab (a community for change makers who love adventure and care about giving back) and The Ride Within (a workshop for leaders focused on authentic success). Different seats, one purpose: increase value, deepen meaning.

When I’m not working, you’ll find me skiing in the backcountry, on an epic bike ride, or volunteering for a cause that matters.

What I’ve done

I’ve had an insatiable appetite for sports gear since I was a kid. When I was 12, I wanted top-of-the-line goalie equipment, and my dad wouldn’t buy it for me. Instead, he gave me a job in his mattress factory.

Since then, I’ve been involved in 15 businesses owned by my family. I’ve run companies, sat on boards, and when cash got tight, I didn’t get paid.

I’ve lived the full life-cycle of a business:

Starting from scratch and sourcing deals
Doing due diligence and validating what’s really there
Running the day-to-day
The exit: sometimes a sale, sometimes shutting it down

I learned more from the businesses we shut down than the ones we sold. Every time, the difference came down to people: how they worked as a team, and whether they stayed focused on what mattered.

The business I’m best known for is KindHuman Bicycles. That’s where I discovered EOS^® as a client. It helped me hand over all day-to-day operations to my leadership team and lead as owner.

Having implemented systems in many businesses over multiple decades, I’ve learned the system is the easy part. The hard part is getting people to change, and making it stick.

Three Seats of Leadership

Every business needs ownership, governance, and management. Many leaders sit in more than one of these seats, often on the same day. Each one asks for something different. When the lines blur, tensions rise, progress stalls, and teams start pulling apart.

I’ve sat in all three seats. The roots of each word show where one ends and the next begins.

Invest

From the Latin investire, to clothe.

To invest is to wrap something in what it needs to grow. As an owner, you’re not just putting money in. You’re giving the business what it needs to become what it could be.

Govern

From the French gouverner, to steer a ship.

Governance isn’t about rowing. It’s about setting the course, watching the horizon, and keeping the ship pointed where it needs to go.

Manage

From the Italian maneggiare, to handle the reins of a horse.

Management is close to the ground. It’s the daily work of guiding a powerful thing with a steady hand, so it goes where you mean it to.

Doing all three at once is a lot to carry.

With a practical system and the right guide, you can do each one with more ease, so your business runs well, is worth more, and gives you your life back.

Grow the value of your business and live a more meaningful life.