Services · How this actually works

Two shapes.
One operator in the room.

Most engagements stop at the strategy deck. Mine start there. Two named ways to work together, depending on where you are. Equity is on the table for the longer one.

How this works

The two shapes.

Most engagements start with the Diagnostic. Most don't need to. We'll work out which on the call.

Scale Diagnostic · two weeks

A structured read on your business.

Two weeks, fixed scope. I sit with you, your team, and your numbers. Listen more than I speak. Map the business: not the org chart, the decision flow, the hiring posture, customer concentration, where the next 12 months of growth has to come from.

  • One-page diagnostic. What's working, what's brittle, what needs to be true for the next stage to land.
  • Three to five load-bearing moves. In the order they have to happen.
  • Named hiring and process gaps. Not implied. Named.
  • An opinionated next step. Could be a Fractional. Could be a hire. Could be the work we both agree shouldn't happen yet.

Fractional Engagement · 3–9 months

In the room, until the thing happens.

Long-form work. The strategy and the execution alongside it. Weekly sessions with you and the SLT, presence in the room where it matters, the conversations founders shouldn't have alone. Mostly face-to-face. Not just over Zoom.

  • Growth & GTM strategy. The moves that ladder up to it.
  • Hiring & senior-team shape. The wrong-fit conversations included.
  • Process built in parallel. Alongside delivery, not after.
  • Investor introductions. Warm only, when you're ready.
  • Standing alongside. Through the difficult calls.
  • Fee + equity available. See below.
Versus

You have other options. Here's how I'm different.

Each of these is the right call sometimes. If one of them is the right call for you, I'll say so on the discovery call.

An in-house senior hireCOO, commercial leader, head of growth
Faster to engage, lower commitment, broader pattern recognition across multiple businesses. Useful before you've decided what the seat is actually for.
A management consultancyBig four, boutique strategy
Polished deliverables, analytical heft. I bring lived operator experience, and I stay in the room past the read-out.
A fractional CFOFinance-led part-time leadership
They give you the finance function. I give you the scaling operator. The two often sit alongside each other.
An M&A advisorTransaction-led
They give you a transaction. I give you the scaling work that's worth doing before any transaction is on the table.
Going it aloneFounder running on instinct
Sometimes the right call. Often the cost of decisions in the wrong order beats the cost of an outside operator. You'll know which it is.
The shape

Three movements.
Each lasts as long as it needs to.

Most engagements start with the Diagnostic, then continue into Fractional if the work calls for it. Either can run standalone.

01

Clarify. · Scale Diagnostic

Two weeks. I sit with you, your team, your numbers. Listen more than I speak. Map the business: not the org chart, the decision flow, hiring posture, customer concentration, where the next 12 months of growth has to come from.

Face-to-face where the work happens. Output: a one-page diagnostic. What's working, what's brittle, what needs to be true for the next stage to land.

02

Plan. The smallest credible plan to get there.

Not a deck. A short, opinionated set of moves and the order they happen in. Hiring, structure, customer concentration, pricing, ops cadence. Whatever the diagnostic surfaced as load-bearing.

Every move ladders up to the same outcome: faster revenue growth, with foundations that hold at the next stage. Process gets built in parallel with delivery, not after.

Plans you can read in one sitting. Decisions you can act on in two weeks.

03

In the room. Until the thing happens.

This is what most advisors don't do. I stay engaged through execution. SLT meetings, hiring calibration, the difficult conversation with the wrong-fit senior, the customer call that needs another voice in it.

Mostly face-to-face. With you, with the team, wherever the work needs it. Weekly sessions. Async between. As much room presence as the moment needs. No more.

Skin in the game

How equity works.

Most advisors won't sign up to outcomes. They invoice on time spent. I'd rather have something at stake alongside you.

Fee plus equity.
Where it makes sense.

For Fractional engagements (not Diagnostic), fee plus equity is on the table where there's mutual interest. The terms are a conversation, not a template. The principle is simple: my upside and yours both come from the same number you're scaling.

It keeps the work honest. It also keeps me selective about who I take on. If equity isn't right for either side, the engagement runs on fee. No pressure either way.

Boundaries

What I don't do. And won't pretend to.

If your need lives in one of these, I'll point you to someone who does it well.

Out of scope

  • Pre-PMF work. If you're still searching for product-market fit, you need a different specialist.
  • M&A transactions, buy-side or sell-side.
  • Transactional recruitment / headhunting.
  • Strategy decks without an execution mandate.
  • Day-to-day management of someone else's team.

Disqualifies an engagement

  • Founder unwilling to engage seriously with the work.
  • Looking for a deliverable factory, not a thinking partner.
  • Still searching for product-market fit.
  • Wanting someone to make the difficult call instead of you.
Start here

If this is the shape of what you need…

One twenty-minute call. We see if there's something to do together, and which shape it would take.

Book a 20-min call About me