Design
The company still needs you in the room
The first pillar, DESIGN. If the business stops when you leave the building, you don't have a company yet. You have a job with extra people around it.
Operating design for founder-led companies
When the founder is the system, growth stops.
I work with owner-led companies under $20M, most of them under $5M, that have customers, a product people pay for, and a curve that has gone flat. It's rarely the market. It's usually the founder's role.
15+companies owned and operated: real estate, development, e-commerce, consulting
$200M+in revenue through those companies
<$20Mthe companies I work with, most under $5M: still owner-led, still founder-run
The three problems
What's usually in the way
Different businesses, the same three problems. They feed each other, so the order you fix them in matters.
Read the overviewDesign
The company still needs you in every deal. Who decides, what a finished job looks like, and what still has to bounce off you before anything moves. If the business stops when you leave the building, start here.
Margin
Busy, but not keeping enough. Priced to win, fuzzy scope, donated work, and your own unpaid hours making it look profitable. More leads won't fix a thin business. They multiply it.
Inputs
You know what to do. You're not doing enough of it. The two or three actions that move the number, counted every week and protected from the meetings and fires that eat the week. Volume on the right input compounds.
Approach
What I actually do with owners
I install simple systems — short rules, named owners, a weekly number — that take the business off your desk. So you can get back to the work you're great at: the work that made the company successful in the first place.
Your week, next to the constraint
Not the story. The calendar and the numbers. If collections are the constraint and you're spending Thursday on brand ideas, there's no mystery.
The few jobs only you should keep
Usually some mix of capital, key relationships, offer design, culture standards and hiring the next layer. Not all of them, and not all at the same depth.
Out of the work that flatters you
The work you're good at and should stop doing is the most addictive work in the company. It also keeps the company the size of one person's arms.
A cadence that doesn't need hustle
Weekly numbers. Clear owners. A short list of priorities that survive Monday. If the company can't run for two weeks without you, that's a design problem.
Writing
Start here
The pieces that explain how I think about the work.
If you are the bottleneck, you are also the lever. You can change a role faster than you can change an industry.
Start a conversation
Send me one word.
DESIGN, MARGIN or INPUTS. Tell me which one sounds like your company, and I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.