The first thing you want to know is when I leave.
Most advisory relationships are designed not to answer that question. This one answers it in the first conversation.
Built to end.
The purpose of this work is to end. There has to be a point where you no longer need it.
An advisor with no plan to solve the problem has a plan to keep the engagement. That is a different business from this one, and it is worth knowing which one you are hiring.
Success here is not a longer engagement. It is a founder who no longer needs one.
“I can’t get this company to grow because I have to be involved in everything.”
Chief executive.
He is no longer in every deal. His regional leaders run their businesses, and he supports them when they ask.
If you worked with me, your name would not appear on a page like this.
One room first,
then two ways forward.
Everyone starts in the same session, and it is a discovery for both of us. You find out whether you are looking at a problem or an opportunity. I find out whether I am the right person to help.
From there, there are two paths. What the Session finds points to one, and you make the call. All of it runs virtually.
You run with the plan yourself.
The Session is a complete purchase on its own.
You bring me in to help.
Either on call, for the decisions you want checked before you make them, or alongside your team, building what is missing until they run it and I step out.
The Clarity Session
Everything holding the business, named and ranked, with the evidence behind the order. Everyone starts here.
Nothing to concede. Some founders never leave this path, and that is a finished outcome rather than a climb that stalled.
Virtual Board Advisory
Senior judgment on call, for the founder who was always going to carry this himself. Open after the session, never instead of it.
Two steps, and that is the whole path. It is not a smaller version of the other one.
Embedded, sized to what the business can absorb, and built to end. Most companies never use all of it.
Breathing Room
The first sprint, run end to end, on the constraint the session named.
Scalable Systems
What is in your head becomes something the team can run without you in the middle.
Institutional Growth
Embedded until the handoff holds without you, and it ends on a date.
Founder Freedom
The last of it, the relationships and the deals that still run through you.
The Executive Advisory Board
A virtual monthly review of whether the system still holds.
You built a capable team, and you are still the hub they orbit around.
You handed out the work and kept the decisions. You tried a no-meeting day, and it collapsed by ten. You told people to bring you solutions, not problems. It all still routes through you.
See why it still routes through you →Three things worth knowing before you commit to anyone.
The diagnosis stands on its own
You leave the Session with the findings and a thirty day roadmap. No retainer and no six or twelve month commitment sits behind it.
Your company stays yours
You are not giving up a piece of your company to get this help. No equity, no options and no warrants, so there is nothing to unwind if you raise again.
An end you can see from the start
The engagement ends on a date set at the start. A retainer renews by default. This cannot, and only you can change the date.
You should know what the problem is before you choose the person to solve it.
Most engagements of this kind ask for six or twelve months signed before anybody understands the problem, so the risk of choosing the wrong person is yours, carried blind and in advance. Here is where this one differs, line by line.
Diagnosis first, then commitment.
Six or twelve months signed before the problem is understood.
Built around the constraint the Session found. Diagnosis first, then commitment.
Weeks of discovery before any real work begins.
The prep calls do the groundwork, so the Session itself is spent on the answer.
Frameworks and decks handed off for you to execute.
Built out of your business rather than a template, and you make the calls.
When the contract runs out.
On a date set at the start, or when you choose. You are never locked in.
Kill fees and notice periods make leaving expensive.
No kill fee. If the fit is wrong, walking away does not cost you.
A report or a playbook that may or may not get used.
A ranked answer and the evidence under it, so you know what to do first.
A retainer that does not produce results costs more than money. Founders who have been through one of those become slower to bring in help the next time they need it, and that is the expensive part.
The seat after the session.
Every engagement here is built to end, which leaves an obvious question. Virtual Board Advisory is for the founder who wants senior judgment on call rather than somebody in the business, and it opens only after the Clarity Session. The seat is held for ten founders at a time, it runs month by month, and you can stop whenever you choose.
If that is the seat you want, start a conversation →One conversation, and both of us decide.
By the end of it we both need to know whether this is a fit, and I will say so if it is not.
I only take on work I can move, which means I turn down more of these than I accept. When I do, I will tell you what I think you need instead and introduce you to somebody better placed to do it.
You are choosing me. I am also choosing you. In my experience that changes how the rest of it goes, on both sides.
Of the deals your team closed last quarter, how many closed without you in the room.