Over more than twenty years working inside small and medium businesses - across marketing, sales, operations and management - I kept encountering the same issue. The jobs I loved always came down to having a great boss and a cohesive team. The roles where I struggled? They almost always traced back to a leader who hadn’t figured out the people side.

When I transitioned to working with small businesses, I spoke to owner after owner who never planned to be a manager. They had built something brilliant - a product, a brand, an aesthetic that was entirely theirs. They hired people to help them grow, only to find themselves drowning in the very responsibilities that were supposed to make their lives easier.

I noticed something that most coaching and consultancy approaches quietly overlook. When a founder struggles with their team, the standard advice is to make them a better manager: more structure, more accountability, more performance conversations. While that might help, it often pulls them further away from the work they love and deeper into a role they were never meant to fill.

Nobody was asking the more interesting question: What if the founder isn’t the problem? What if they just need someone who can translate their vision into the team, so they don’t have to?

That’s the gap nobody was addressing. So, I decided to fill it.