The pressure that builds your company shouldn't be the thing that breaks it
I work with founders and their leadership teams to build the infrastructure โ operational, cultural, and human โ that holds pressure before it becomes attrition, dysfunction, or a story that stops landing.
Book a ConversationThe number one reason early-stage startups fail isn't the product, the market, or the money. It's founder disagreement.
You close the round. You start hiring fast. The team doubles. The pressure doubles with it.
And then something shifts. Decisions get reopened. Co-founders who were aligned start pulling in different directions. The people who built the thing with you go quiet. Communication between functions breaks down. The pitch that closed the round stops landing with the next audience. The senior hire you were counting on starts looking somewhere else.
This doesn't happen because the founder isn't talented or driven. It happens because the intensity that builds a company from nothing โ without the right infrastructure around it โ starts to fracture the culture, the co-founder relationship, and the story. By the time it's visible, the damage is already done.
Founder & Leadership Coaching
I work directly with founders on how they hold and distribute pressure as they scale. That includes navigating co-founder dynamics before disagreement becomes existential, building trust with a growing team, setting expectations clearly, and developing the leadership presence that keeps people in the room and bought in. When a founder can stay clear, composed, and decisive under sustained pressure, everything downstream improves.
Storytelling & Pitch Development
At the end of the day, everything is sales โ and all sales come down to storytelling. I help founders refine and deliver their narrative โ for investors, for customers, for recruits โ so the story lands every time. From pitch deck delivery to the way a founder communicates vision in a Monday standup, the founder's voice is the company's most valuable asset. I make sure it's working.
Business Operations & Team Building
Most founders are brilliant in their technical domain, but building a business requires a different skill set. I help founders build what they've never had to build before: hiring and vetting processes that get the right people on the bus, sales team structure and systems from the ground up, cross-functional communication infrastructure, and the operational foundation that turns a product into a company. I step in fractionally and build alongside the team.
I've spent thirty years learning how people work โ what makes them shut down, what makes them come alive, and what it actually takes to lead well under pressure. People who know me will tell you I have an uncanny ability to walk into a room, put people at ease, and tell the kind of story that makes everyone lean in. I've built sales teams from scratch, coached executives through their hardest seasons, and helped people find the words for the thing they've been carrying alone. This is what I was made to do.
Three startups. Three founders with the vision and intensity it takes to build something from nothing. Three organizations that struggled with the same things โ co-founder misalignment, communication that broke down across functions, expectations that were never clearly set, pressure that had nowhere to go except onto the people trying to execute the vision. I watched all three combust.
I have spent my career inside high-pressure organizations โ including building out a sales team and creating structured sales systems from the ground up at a high-growth tech startup, leading change management inside a pharmaceutical acquisition, and serving as a top performer across complex platforms in public safety, education, and staffing technology. I also bring over a decade of executive coaching experience working with leaders at every level, and thirty years of training in how the body carries and responds to pressure โ which means I can diagnose what's breaking inside an organization and work directly with the humans carrying the pressure at the same time.
A Conversation
We talk about what you're building, where the pressure is, and what's at risk. No pitch. No frameworks. Just an honest assessment.
A Focused Engagement
We start where the impact is highest โ whether that's your pitch, your co-founder relationship, your first sales hires, or how your team communicates under pressure.
Visible Traction
Within the first month you'll feel the work. A pitch that lands differently. A conversation you've been avoiding that finally happens. A hire you're confident in. Real movement, fast.
You bet everything on this vision. I'm here to make sure the build doesn't destroy it.
They'll tell you to be realistic. They'll ask when the revenue comes. They'll never ask what dies if you stop building it. I will. And then I'll help you protect it.
Engagements are available in 3, 6, and 12-month formats. Scope, structure, and investment are shaped in conversation.
Every engagement is custom. Let's start with a conversation about what you're building and where I can help.
Book a Conversation