Advisory for owner-run businesses · Hill Country, Texas
You have worked out roughly what this business would sell for. You suspect the number is lower than it should be — and that the reason is you.
That is not something you can say to your leadership team, and it is not something you can say to the friend who has known you since college and still needs you to be the guy who has it handled.
I am the person you say it to.
01 — The problem
The revenue is up. The team is hired. The building got bought. By every measure anyone around you applies, you are killing it.
Most executives at your altitude do not have one person they can say the true thing to. That is not a character flaw. It is a structural feature of the job: nearly everyone in your life either reports to you, married into you, or is invested in you.
What I do is sit in that gap. I help driven leaders slow down long enough to see themselves clearly — before the pace catches up with them.
My work happens behind the face.
You don’t have to type it. That is what the conversation is for.
02 — The method
Four bearings, taken in order — because none of them can be answered honestly before the one above it.
Where are you actually trying to go? Scale it and sell it, hand it to your daughter, or build something that outlasts you? Almost no one has answered this out loud. We establish true north before we touch anything else.
Nothing you do matters more, and nothing gets delegated less well. We build the vision you will actually fight for — not the one that sounds right on a wall. This is where peace gets brought to the chaos.
Financial reality shapes every decision whether you look at it or not. We align what you’re choosing with what is actually true — not what you wish were true, and not what the P&L says three months after it mattered.
Where your hours go is the most honest statement of your priorities that exists. We close the gap between what you say matters and how you actually spent last Tuesday.
Clarity / Conviction / Accountability
In that order, and the order is the whole point. Accountability is not something I impose on you. It is what happens on its own once the conviction is yours — because by then it is your vision you’d be betraying, not my program.
03 — The work
The sprint exists so you can find out what I am worth before you commit to anything. It is finite, it is specific, and it ends on a date we set before we start.
Forty-five days · Fixed fee · Defined end
Forty-five days, ending on a date we set before we start. It opens the way nothing else you have tried opened: I talk to the people around you, on their own, before I tell you anything. Then one bearing at a time, a decision a week, and a written record of why you made it.
The terrain read. I interview you, then the people who actually run things — your operator, your bookkeeper, whoever holds the thing together on a bad week. Separately, and candidly. They tend to say things to me they have not said to you — not out of disloyalty, but because they assumed you already knew.
The decision you’ve been carrying. We take the one you have been putting off for months and settle it. You leave the first week with it made, not scheduled.
Destination. Where this is actually going, said out loud and written down.
Vision & culture. What you are building and who it takes — the part that cannot be delegated.
Economics. What the numbers are telling you that you have been arguing with.
Time & delivery. Your calendar against your stated priorities. This is usually the uncomfortable one.
The through-line. Everything above becomes one page and a sequence. Then we stop.
Monthly retainer · Month to month
The sprint tells you what to change. This is me staying while your team actually changes it — because when this does not stick, the plan is almost never what failed. Your people do the work. I hold the line on whether it is actually happening, so it does not quietly revert the first week you get busy.
Ninety minutes, same two slots. Held on the calendar so they do not quietly disappear when you get busy — which is exactly when you need them.
A direct line. You text me or you call me and it lands on my phone. Same day on weekdays, and if I am in a session I will tell you when I am out of it.
We re-run the read, and I go back to the people around you as well. Drift turns up in their answers months before it turns up in yours.
The hard rooms. A termination, a partner conversation, an offer on the table. I prepare with you, and I am reachable the day of.
Both are scoped to the size of the business and the weight of what is in front of you, so I quote them in conversation rather than on a web page. What I will say plainly: I take on work I believe will more than justify the fee. If I don’t believe that about your situation after we talk, I will tell you so.
One conversation, thirty to forty-five minutes. I ask questions, and you find out what it is like to be asked them. That is the entire first step.
If it fits, you get one page. What we will do, what it costs, and the date it ends. Written down before you decide anything.
You decide, in your own time. If it does not fit, I will say so in the first conversation and point you at who is better for it.
04 — Fit
You have not taken a week off in two years without checking in daily — and you have been telling yourself that is temporary for longer than two years.
Your people bring you decisions you have already given them permission to make. You answer anyway, because it is faster.
You have hired good people. More than once. And you are still the one in the weeds.
If you were unreachable for thirty days, you already know which parts would break — and roughly what week.
You have tried to fix this before: a system, a hire, a consultant, a book. It held for a quarter and then it went back.
The business clears seven figures, so money stopped being the constraint a while ago. Something else is.
You have worked out roughly what this would sell for. You also suspect the number is lower than it should be, and that the reason is you.
Free · Two minutes · No email required to see your result
Eight questions. At the end the needle points at whichever bearing is carrying the most weight in your business — and it is often not the one you would guess.
05 — Who I am
I started in pharmaceutical sales — four years at Novartis, sixth of a hundred and ten reps.
Then, as Executive Director of multiple non-profits, I grew membership from six thousand to more than ten thousand, and took our footprint from two locations to five in two years — hiring the teams that ran them.
Five locations meant five rooms that had to work every single week whether or not I was in the building — which meant I could not be the person holding them together. So I hired the leaders, built the pipeline that trained them, and got out of the way. The deadline came back every seven days, which turns out to be a useful way to find out whether something actually runs without you.
It all held because people told the truth. That is what I build — rooms where people say the real thing, and a direction clear enough for them to aim at.
Then I moved into business — leadership development, then advisory. The rooms changed. The work didn’t. An owner staring at a leadership team that won’t execute is in the same position as anyone else who has run out of road: they don’t need more information. They need one person who will be honest with them, and a way to think that holds after the conversation ends.
My 360-degree review put me in the 97th percentile for both interpersonal intelligence and integrity — scored by the people who worked for me, not by me. That is why I can usually tell when the thing you are describing is not the thing that is bothering you, and why your operator and your bookkeeper will tell me the truth in week one.
Two decades of high-stakes rooms taught me the thing that actually transfers: how to enter someone’s world quickly, earn enough trust that they stop performing, and read the terrain accurately enough to name what they cannot see themselves.
I am for the person in front of me before I am for their business, and I have never once found those two things to be in conflict.
I live in the Hill Country outside San Antonio, and I take a deliberately small number of clients at a time.
Years leading people through high-stakes decisions
Executive Director roles at large, fast-growing organizations
06 — Next step
One honest conversation about where you are and where you are actually trying to go. Nothing follows it unless you ask for something to. And if I am the wrong person for this, I will tell you inside that call and point you at who is better for it.