I quit my job just before my first kid was born.
Started an agency from my bedroom.
Leap of faith.
The first few years were brutal.
Freelance gigs. Tight deadlines. Clients who paid late or not at all.
But I kept building.
10 years in, we had 30 people. International clients. Real revenue.
From the outside, it looked like I'd made it.
Inside? I was drowning.
Every client call needed me.
Every scope change landed on my desk.
Every invoice waited for my approval, even when I had 40°C fever and could barely stand.
I wrote SOPs. Hired managers. Bought every project management tool that promised to "fix delegation."
Nothing worked.
Because the problem wasn't the tools.
The problem was I'd built a business with no decision architecture.
No one knew who decides what.
No one could move without asking me first.
No one knew what "good enough" looks like.
I was the system.
And the system was collapsing under its own weight.
At year 15, something had to change.
So I rebuilt:
→ Installed escalation thresholds
→ Mapped every decision and who owns it
→ Made delegation real, not wishful thinking
→ Created visibility through dashboards, not meetings
It took 18 months.
But it worked.
The last 5 years of running that agency?
The business moved without me.
I stopped checking Slack at night. Nothing broke.
I finally had space to think. To breathe. To live.
And that's when I realized something unexpected:
It was efficient. Profitable. Well-oiled.
But it no longer meant anything to me.
I'd built a machine that worked.
But it wasn't mine anymore.
So at year 20, I exited.
Not because I was burnt out (I wasn't).
Not because it was failing (it wasn't).
But because I'd proven what I needed to prove:
You can build a business that doesn't need you.
And once you do that, you're free to choose what's next.
Now I help agency and service founders who are where I was at year 10.
The ones who:
- Live in Slack and can't escape
- Approve every decision because no one else can
- Watch scope creep eat their margin while they smile and say "no problem"
- Cancel vacation plans because the business can't survive two weeks without them
If that's you, I get it.
I was there for 15 years.
Here's what I learned:
You don't need more hustle.
You don't need better time management.
You don't need another PM tool.
You need decision architecture.
You need to know:
- Who decides what (and when to escalate)
- Where ownership lives (one name per outcome)
- How visibility works (dashboards, not meetings)
- What "good enough" looks like (so your team can ship without you)
When you have that, everything changes:
✓ One founder I worked with cut hours from 70 to 40, and doubled margin
✓ Another added 20 clients without hiring by fixing onboarding and delivery
✓ Another increased margin 14% and cut overruns from 18% to 4% by redesigning handoffs
These aren't "success stories."
These are founders who fixed their decision systems.
I write a weekly Businessletter where I share:
Operational war stories from 20 years in the trenches.
Decision systems and frameworks you can use today.
Lessons learned the hard way (so you don't have to).
No fluff. No "10x overnight" promises.
Just real systems, built on real experience.
If you're tired of being the only system in your business, you're in the right place.