Founder & Mid-Market · the owner's path
Advice that fits the business you run.
For promoters, founders and owner-managers: the call, the numbers and the second line, scoped to your size, and to your stage.
The founder's path
Five places a growing company is won or lost.
Most founders meet all five. Start at the one costing you now.
MOVE · 01 / 05
The decision deserves advice. The advice is priced for a larger company.
A live decision needs a verdict, not a menu of options.
The evidence
The firms that could properly test a decision are built for organisations with a strategy function, and they are priced accordingly. Below that line the market thins into generalists. So the business that most needs an outside read is the one least able to buy one, and the decision goes ahead on the inside view alone.
Where we come in. We give you the call rather than the options, and the person who reaches it is the person you spoke to.
CASH · 02 / 05
Growth takes the cash first. Nothing shows which part gives it back.
A business cannot choose what to grow until it knows what pays.
The evidence
Revenue is reported in total, because that is what the accounts are built to produce. Underneath it some customers and some products carry the business and others are carried by it, and nothing in ordinary reporting separates the two. So growth is pursued wherever it is available, at whatever it costs.
Where we come in. We take the profitability apart at the level decisions actually get made at, customer by customer and product by product, so the answer is something that can be acted on now.
PEOPLE · 03 / 05
The business cannot afford a second line until it grows, and cannot grow without one.
Delegation is a written rule about who decides what, or it is a title.
The evidence
The person who could run the business is priced against the business as it is, not as it would be with them in it. So the hire waits on growth that the hire is required to produce. Meanwhile every decision routes back through one desk, and the ceiling is set by how many decisions one person can take.
Where we come in. We move decisions off your desk one at a time, with the rule for each one written down, because a second line without decision rights adds cost and changes nothing.
NUMBERS · 04 / 05
The business runs. Nothing reports it until the bank balance does.
A number is only useful while the decision it informs is still open.
The evidence
The accounts are built to satisfy a filing, not to run a business, so they arrive complete and late. Between them and the work there is usually nothing: no agreed definition of what is being counted, and nowhere for the counting to land. The business is read backwards, from what has already been spent.
Where we come in. We put in the few numbers that arrive while the decision is still open, and the data foundation that makes them trustworthy.
PROFIT · 05 / 05
Everything grew except what was left.
Profit that cannot be traced to a decision teaches nothing.
The evidence
Revenue, headcount and hours are all easy to count, and all of them can rise while the amount left over does not. Nothing in ordinary reporting connects the year's decisions to the year's result, so the ones that helped and the ones that cost are indistinguishable. Both get made again.
Where we come in. We connect what the business earned to what the owner decided, so next year is chosen rather than repeated.