Practice · Operating Partner
I build the systems your company runs on, then hand them to your team.
Operating plans, the numbers, the sales engine, the marketing, and the fundraising kit – built inside your company, alongside your people.
Photo · Redmind Studio / Unsplash
An operating partner takes a seat and owns the outcome.
Over the past forty years I have led sales, marketing, product, and business development at the C-level, and I have been CEO four times. An operating partner builds the parts of a company its leaders have not had time to build – the plan, the numbers, the sales machinery, the story for investors – and builds them the way someone who has owned those functions would.
Most leaders I work with are strong in one or two of these areas and stretched thin across the rest. A technical CEO who has never designed a sales comp plan. A team closing deals with no written process behind them. A company heading into a raise with a model nobody fully trusts. I step in where the gap is, do the work with your team, and leave behind documents and systems they can run without me.
Engagements usually start with one area and grow from there. The work falls into five areas.
§ 01 – What I build
Five areas, one operating core.
01
Plan
Decide, record, and follow through
02
Model
Know the numbers before anyone asks
03
Sell
A sales engine you can repeat
04
Market
The right message for each buyer
05
Fund
Walk into the room ready
One operating core
-
01 / Plan
Decide, record, and follow through
Operating plans and a meeting cadence, decision logs that keep settled questions settled, clear decision rights, and product roadmaps tied to what customers will pay for.
-
02 / Model
Know your numbers before anyone asks
A bottom-up pro forma built on sales capacity – a model I have refined over 25 years – that converts directly into your operating budget, with scenarios for growth, hiring, and cash.
-
03 / Sell
A sales engine you can repeat
A written sales process and pipeline cadence, compensation plans that pay for the behavior you want, contract tracking, and coaching for customer discovery.
-
04 / Market
The right message for each buyer
Positioning and messaging by buyer type, the collateral your team sells from, and a marketing plan that runs to a calendar.
-
05 / Fund
Walk into the room ready
Pitch decks, one-pagers, investor-ready financial models, and the logic behind round size, structure, and valuation. I build the fundraising kit. You run the raise.
§ 02 – How I work
Inside the company, on the work
- EmbeddedIn your meetings, on your documents, with your people
- Hands-onI write the deliverables myself
- Scoped up frontPriced by deliverable or a fixed monthly scope, not an hourly meter
- Built to hand offYour team owns and runs everything I build
Every plan, model, and process built here becomes part of the data that represents your company – the foundation an AI-first company runs on. See AI Transformation
Not sure which piece to build first?
A short conversation to find which of the five is holding you back, and what it would take to build it.