I work with owners doing between $250,000 and $5 million a year, on the problems that come with running a business that has outgrown the way it was built.
They usually show up in the money, the people, or the owner’s own role. Often in all three at once, because they are frequently the same problem appearing in different places.
The work is hands-on and non-operational. I am in the spreadsheet with you rather than running your company, and I am paid based on whether the business gets better.
What I do
Owners describe their problems in terms of how they feel. They usually get solved by changing how something is set up. A lot of my value is making that translation, then putting the fixes in an order the business can take.
An owner tells me a customer is difficult and he wants to let them go. We look at it. The customer is not the problem. There is no contract, the price has not moved in three years and he is personally driving across town to collect paper checks. Fix those three things and it is a normal account. It is also a template he can run on the next hundred.
Another owner tells me she cleared $25,000 last quarter and feels good about it. We split her hours into owner work, administration and production labor, price the last two at market and find she is earning about $14 an hour for the replaceable work she is absorbing. Her return on owner work is fine. She had just never separated the two.
Sequence matters as much as the answer. I have watched owners raise a price, introduce a contract and change payment terms on the same account in the same week, and turn a routine adjustment into a renegotiation of the whole relationship. The advice was not wrong. The order was.
Who this is for
- $250,000 to $5 million in revenue, anywhere from one to fifty employees
- The business makes money on paper and you cannot find it in the bank
- You are the only person who can answer most of the questions
- You want to hire someone and are not sure you can afford to
- You have not raised prices in years and do not know what would happen if you did
- You could not disappear for two weeks without something breaking
Who it is not for
- Pre-revenue. I am not useful before there is a business to work on.
- Anyone looking for a course or a program to follow
- Anyone who wants a plan more than they want to change anything
- Anyone who wants agreement. I will tell you when I think you are wrong, and when something is outside what I know.
How I work
Hands-on, non-operational. I am not going to run your company and I am not going to hand you a strategy document and leave. The business stays yours to operate.
Skin in the game. My compensation is tied to your growth rather than to my hours. There is a small advisory fee, set deliberately below what a fixed-fee engagement would cost, plus a position tied to how the business performs.
I structure it that way so there is no question about why I am recommending something. If I tell you to raise a price, walk away from an account or hold off on a hire, the only way I benefit is by being right. It also means I have to be selective, and I will not take an engagement where I do not think I can move the number.
There is a tradeoff in this for you. Aligned incentives cost you a share of the upside you would keep with a fixed-fee advisor. If you are confident you can solve this alone, a fixed fee is cheaper. The model is designed for owners who would rather share the upside than carry the risk of being wrong by themselves.
Paced to what the business can absorb. The right strategy delivered faster than an organization can metabolize it does not work. Part of the job is separating the problems that are existential from the ones that are important and the ones that are only irritating, then working them in that order.
What we would work on
Most engagements live in five areas. Owners usually arrive certain their problem is in one of them and find it is in another.
Money and cash. Why the P&L and the bank account disagree. Where cash leaves outside the obvious expenses. A thirteen-week forward view so problems arrive while there is still time to solve them. How much reserve the business needs before a slow season rather than during one.
Your role. What still runs through you because it always has. What can be delegated with real ownership, meaning a person, a process, authority and a number, rather than handing pieces of the work to four people.
Pricing and customers. Which customers produce revenue and which produce profit, and why those are different lists. What an account costs you in management time. Which prices to move, in what order and with what said out loud.
Labor and accountability. Labor as a percentage of revenue, and whether that is survivable at your size. What you are buying when you pay above market. Why a raise is a poor tool for correcting performance. How to be genuinely good to people and hold a standard at the same time.
The decisions underneath. What you want the business to make possible in your life. What your number is and what changes when you reach it. And the question owners are rarely asked: not only what you are building, but who you are becoming while you build it.
On confidentiality
Every client example on this site is anonymized and most are composites drawn from more than one engagement. I do not name clients, industries or locations, and I do not write about a negotiation while it is live.
If you are going to send someone your financials, it is reasonable to want to know how they handle information first. Here is the full policy.
Start here
Tell me what is going on. The form asks for your revenue range, your headcount and one question: what is the problem you would most want solved in the next 90 days?
Answer that one honestly. A paragraph is enough, and it tells me more than anything else about whether I can help. If I am not the right person I will say so, and I will usually know who is.
Not ready for that, or not sure this describes you? Start with the assessment instead. Making the Jump from “My Business” to The Business is a twenty-question diagnostic and a four-pillar framework for owners in this position. It takes about fifteen minutes.