For founders and leadership teams
Growth is a clarity problem.
Friction is the enemy, and it’s slowing your business down.
Sound familiar?
What founders tell us before the work starts.
“We’re not hitting the growth we planned for.”
“We’re busier than ever, but the numbers aren’t moving with it.”
“We know we want to get from $10M to $50M. We don’t know how.”
“We’ve got the product. We don’t understand why we’re not growing.”
Friction builds quietly.
Then suddenly, growth stops.
Misalignment
Leaders agree on the call, then leave without next steps. Two people do the same work. Other work goes undone because nobody knew it was theirs.
Unclear strategy
Ask five leaders where the business is headed and you’ll get five answers. Effort gets pulled in directions that at best create tension, and at worst break your business.
Spreading effort evenly
Every customer, product and channel gets the same attention, so the few that drive most of your growth never get enough. Plenty of activity, not much to show for it.
Too many priorities
Everything matters, so nothing gets finished. Your best people stay busy on work that doesn’t move the number.
Work stalls at the handoffs
Between sales and delivery, between the plan and the week. The offsite plan stops running a month later.
Bottlenecked at the top
Decisions keep flowing back to the founder or a few leaders. The team waits, and so does growth.
None of it shows up as a line on the P&L.
It shows up as growth that should have happened and didn’t.
Where friction comes from
Most friction traces back to three questions your leadership team isn’t answering the same way.
01
How do we work together?
Who decides, who owns what, and how the team handles disagreement.
02
Where are we headed?
Which customers and which work will actually grow the business, and what you’re saying no to.
03
How will we get there?
How the plan turns into growth week to week, and how you know it’s working.
When the answers differ, the friction above follows. Get clear on them together and most of it goes away. Growth follows.
Results
When clarity cuts through the friction.
71%
More sales in eight months
A $10M consumer goods manufacturer whose owners were pulling the company in different directions.
We named how each of them works, then set clear lanes, ownership and accountability.
57%
More revenue the following year
A newly acquired agency where nobody could say which services or clients made money.
We found the profitable work, leaned into it, repriced the rest and let some of it go.
41%
More profit the following year
A SaaS company taking almost any customer that came along, with its effort spread thin.
We defined the ideal customer, cut what didn’t serve it, and changed sales comp to hold the line.
Working together
An advisor who guides the work alongside you.
The friction that stalls growth usually sits where people and strategy meet. That’s where I work. I start by finding where the friction is coming from: talking with your leaders, digging into the numbers, watching how the work actually runs. I facilitate the hard conversations your team has been putting off, and stay shoulder to shoulder with you while the changes take hold. It’s not just a deck with your logo on it. The work gets done, and it holds after I leave.
Three questions, three areas of focus
Leadership
How do we work together?
For teams where decisions stall, roles overlap, or the hard conversations keep getting skipped.
Strategy
Where are we headed?
For teams spread across too many customers, services or bets, with no shared answer to where the business is headed.
Rhythms
How will we get there?
For teams whose plan made sense at the offsite and stopped running soon after.
Not sure which one fits? The Trail Finder takes four minutes and shows where your team’s friction is coming from.
Where I’ve done the work
Who you’re working with
Marshall Welch
I’ve spent 20 years building and running growth systems for $2B enterprises, $600M brands, SaaS companies and founder-led businesses. The teams that grew fastest were the ones clearest on how they worked together, where they were headed and how they’d get there. That’s the work I do now, with founders and leadership teams outgrowing how they work.
Increase clarity.
Remove unnecessary friction.
Growth follows.
The Trail Finder takes four minutes and shows where your team’s friction is coming from.
To provide the highest value, I work with a limited number of teams at a time.