Insights
What we think, why.
Practical writing on fractional leadership, commercial performance, operational improvement, business health, enterprise value and exit readiness. Written from experience of running businesses, for founders and leadership teams.
In preparation
Pieces we are writing. If one of these is the question in front of you now, it is probably quicker to have the conversation.
Enterprise value and exit
Why £5m revenue doesn't necessarily mean you've built a valuable business
Turnover is the number founders quote. Quality of earnings, client concentration and founder dependency are the numbers that decide what the business is worth.
Enterprise valueTransformation
The founder dependency problem: could your business operate without you?
When decisions, standards and relationships live in one head, growth is capped and value is discounted. What it takes to move them into structure.
Business operationsFractional leadership
When does a fractional commercial director make more sense than a full-time hire?
The honest comparison between a permanent director's cost and risk, and a day a week of senior commercial leadership.
Fractional commercial directorCreative businesses
Preparing a creative agency for sale: what buyers actually want
Reputation opens the conversation. Repeatable earnings, client spread and delivery independent of the founders decide the price.
Business exit planningEnterprise value and exit
EBITDA isn't just for exit: why founders should understand it earlier
Understanding how your own pricing, scoping and resourcing decisions move earnings changes how you run the business today.
Enterprise valueCreative businesses
How to build enterprise value into a creative business
Turning craft, judgement and relationships into something that holds value beyond the people who built it.
Creative business consultancyEnterprise value and exit
Seven things I'd fix three years before selling an agency
A practical list, in the order they should be tackled, based on what a buyer will examine and what takes longest to change.
Business exit planningFractional leadership
Fractional director vs consultant: what's the difference?
One is engaged to recommend. The other joins the leadership team and is accountable for what happens next.
Fractional leadershipCreative businesses
How to make a creative business more scalable
Keep the judgement bespoke and make everything around it repeatable: scoping, pricing, resourcing and reporting.
Agency growthEnterprise value and exit
Build with the exit in mind, even if you never sell
Preparation buys optionality. The same work that makes a business saleable makes it more profitable and less fragile now.
Exit and successionBusiness health
Better businesses perform better
The commercial case for the AND philosophy: why clear leadership, sensible workloads and responsible practice show up in margin, retention and enterprise value.
Responsible businessBusiness health
Your team doesn't need another wellbeing initiative. It might need a better operating model.
Most workload and morale problems are produced by how the business is run: unclear roles, under-resourced work and decisions that all route through one person.
ChangeBusiness health
Growth or just more work? The difference between getting bigger and getting better
A simple test for whether last year's growth improved the business or made it busier, and how to choose better revenue over more of it.
GrowthBusiness health
Founder dependency isn't healthy for the founder or the business
The founder as bottleneck is a personal cost and a commercial one. What it takes to move decisions into structure without losing what made the business work.
Business Health CheckBusiness health
Efficiency doesn't have to mean cutting people
Most waste in a growing business is unnecessary work, slow decisions and duplicated effort, not headcount. Where to look first.
ChangeBusiness health
Why sustainable workloads are a management issue
Workload is set by scoping, pricing, resourcing and management decisions. Treating it as a resilience problem for individuals misses where it is created.
Responsible businessBusiness health
Can you build a more profitable business by asking people to do less?
Removing meetings, rework and low-margin work often improves profit faster than adding output. The arithmetic, and the management discipline it needs.
GrowthBusiness health
What does a healthy business actually look like?
Commercially, operationally and organisationally: the observable signs of a business that performs well and is run well, and the questions that reveal them.
Business Health CheckBusiness health
Responsible business isn't a CSR strategy
Responsibility lives in everyday commercial decisions about people, suppliers, clients and growth, not in an annual report. How to build it into how the business is run.
Responsible businessBusiness health
The hidden cost of poor management
Churn, rework, slow decisions and lost margin rarely appear as a line in the accounts, but they are paid for every month. How to see them and what to do.
Fractional leadership
Advice action.
If any of this describes your business, the useful next step is a conversation.