Hi, I’m Chris. I help founders get out of their own way.
Your business isn’t stuck. It’s waiting for you.
You started doing it yourself because it was quicker. Now nothing moves without you. Sometimes that’s knowledge nobody else has. Sometimes it’s decisions only you make, work that comes back half-done, or numbers nobody looks at. I find which one is holding your business back, what it’s costing, and what to do about it. Give me 90 minutes and you’ll know, in writing, within 48 hours.
3 free audits for my founding cohort. Details below.
Sound familiar?
- Your team messages you before making decisions they’re perfectly able to make.
- Half the answers in your business start with “ask me”.
- There’s a job only you know how to do, because it’s never been written down.
- You’ve hired good people and you still check everything they do.
- Revenue’s up on last year. So are your hours.
- A week off means coming back to a pile. Or not going.
None of this is a character flaw. At some point, running decisions through you was the fastest way to get things done. Nobody ever changed it back.
What I look at
A business that waits on its owner usually has more than one cause. I look across all four, then tell you which one matters most.
Dependency
Decisions that wait for you. Work handed over without a clear brief, so it comes back to you. Clients who’ll only deal with you.
Systems and knowledge
How things get done living in your head instead of written down. Running on willpower rather than a system. No clear view of the numbers that matter.
Money and time
Revenue that grows while your freedom doesn’t. Growth that lands on you personally. What an hour of your time is really worth.
Direction
Positioning that’s too broad to win the work you want. No clear next step, so every week looks like the last.
“We have backups.”
For eight years I looked after the software that more than 1,000 independent opticians ran their entire business on. Patient records, appointments, recall dates, sales history. All of it, on one database.
Every owner told me they had backups. Nobody was checking. So, without anyone asking, I built my own process for checking them, practice by practice.
More than once, it found backups that had been failing for months. Running every night, saving nothing. The owner had no idea. From the outside the practice looked fine. Fully booked, phones ringing. One dead server and they’d have lost everything.
The problem was never the backups. It was something the whole business relied on that nobody owned. That was the opticians’ version.
In your business it’s more likely a decision only you can make, a handover that never quite works, prices nobody has looked at in years, or how a job gets done living only in your head. You’re too close to it to see which one matters most. I’m not.
Your business has one of these. I’d bet money on it. You just haven’t found it yet.
Do the sum before you do anything else.
Think about last week. How many hours went on decisions, approvals and questions that someone on your team could have handled? Be honest.
Then put a price on an hour of your time. The calculator does the rest, across a 48-week year.
What being the bottleneck costs you a year
£28,800
Before you count the work you never got round to. The Clarity Audit is £750.
Who I work with
Yes, if…
the revenue’s real, and whether it’s just you or a team of ten, most of what happens still goes through you. That can be true two years in, and it’s often still true at twenty.
Not yet, if…
you’re pre-revenue or still working out whether the business works. I’d rather tell you here than on a call.
A note on the founding cohort
3 places. Free. Here’s why.
I’ve spent 18 years watching this problem stall organisations, and fixing it where I could. Now I’m doing it for founders directly, and I’m taking on my first three.
You get the full Clarity Audit, normally £750, for free. In return, if it helps, you give me a testimonial and let me write up what we found as a case study. Anonymised if you’d prefer.
When the three are gone, the normal price applies.
How the work runs
Four stages, always in this order. You stop whenever the problem’s solved.
1
Find it
We talk, I look at how work actually moves, and we look at the numbers. You get the one or two things keeping the business dependent on you, with a rough cost against each.
2
Fix it
We change how that work runs. Sometimes that’s getting what’s in your head written down. Sometimes it’s who decides what, how work gets handed over, or what you charge. I’ll always try taking a step out before adding a tool or a hire.
3
Prove it
We set up a check that measures that one thing. You get a number that shows whether the fix held.
4
Keep it
We agree what would tell you it needs another look, like a new hire or a jump in volume. You get a short list of triggers, so you’re never guessing.
What it costs
Start small. Only go further if the Audit says you need to.
Clarity Audit
One 90-minute session and a written report within 48 hours. You’ll know exactly where you’re the bottleneck and what it’s costing you.
£750
Constraint Sprint
Four weeks. Stages 1 to 3 on one constraint. Founding price £2,000 for my first two.
£3,500
Marsh Method Engagement
Eight weeks. All four stages, across the business.
Priced after the Audit
I’m Chris.
For 18 years, my job has been working out why work stalls, and fixing it.
It started with small businesses: eight years keeping the systems of more than 1,000 of them running, and learning how often a business that looks fine depends on one person, or one thing nobody owns.
Then ten years in the NHS. In service management, I watched large suppliers stall because one person held the knowledge, or a process only existed in someone’s head. Now, in cyber security operations, the whole job is asking what breaks if one thing fails, before it does.
It’s the same pattern at every size: work that waits on one person. Sometimes the knowledge isn’t written down. Sometimes the decision was never handed over. Sometimes nobody owns it at all.
I got out of that first job by paying for my own evening courses, and I got promoted within the NHS three times before changing to Cyber Security. Nobody handed me this. I learned it by noticing what everyone else stepped over.
I live near Leeds with my wife and our three kids, two of them twins, and I’m building this alongside a full-time job. I know what it’s like when everything waits on you.
Chris
Fair questions
“How do I know you can help my business?”
Right now, you don’t. I haven’t got founder testimonials yet. What I have got is 18 years of working out why work stalls inside organisations, and fixing it. Book the call, bring your hardest question, and judge me on the answer.
“Why is the Audit free?”
Because I need proof as much as you need answers. My first three founders get the full Audit, normally £750, in exchange for an honest testimonial and a case study if it helps. Anonymised if you’d prefer.
“You’ve got a day job. Will you have time for me?”
Yes, and I’d rather be upfront about how. I reply to every enquiry within one working day. Calls and sessions run in the evenings and at weekends, which tends to suit founders, because that’s when the business finally goes quiet.
“What if the problem is me?”
It probably is. That’s not a criticism. You built it that way because it worked. The Audit shows you which parts of “you” the business still needs, and which it doesn’t.
“I don’t have time for this.”
That’s the problem talking. The call is 30 minutes. The Audit is one 90-minute session and a 30-minute follow-up. The rest is me and your numbers. The point is to give you more hours back than it takes.
“Why not just hire someone?”
Maybe that’s the answer. But if everything still goes through you, a new hire just joins the queue. The Audit tells you which it is before you spend a salary finding out.
30 minutes. One honest conversation.
You’ll leave with my best read on where the business depends on you most, whether we work together or not.
It’s just me on the other end. No sales team.