01 — How I think
The question I can’t stop asking
For a long time I thought I was confused about what I wanted to do. Marketing, maybe. Sales. Startups. Technology. AI. I kept starting things to find out.
Then I noticed the same thing was happening in everything I built. I would run into something inefficient, repetitive, or dependent on one person, and I could not leave it alone.
The questions were always the same, and always in the same order.
- 01 Why are we doing it this way?
- 02 Can this be simpler?
- 03 Can this be automated?
- 04 Can we build a system around it?
- 05 Can it work without me?
That chain is the whole thing. Everything below is it happening in real life.
02 — Proof
Three problems I couldn’t leave alone
Every one of these started the same way: something annoyed me, and I could not stop thinking about why it worked like that. Same four parts each time, because that is how it actually went.
-
The agency that ran on my hours
The problem
I started Knox as one person building Shopify stores for Indian D2C brands. Revenue tracked my hours. Quality tracked my attention. Every new client made both worse. And the honest part: I did not enjoy the repetitive delivery work, so I had a strong personal reason to make it go away.
What I did
- Turned delivery into a repeatable pipeline. Standardised scoping, build, QA and handoff so quality stopped depending on who picked up the ticket.
- Cut the service menu to two things. Shopify builds and D2C growth. Narrowing the offer is what made a delivery system possible at all.
- Hired six people with clear ownership. Delivery, design and client success, each owning one thing. Hired for the system the business needed next, not the backlog it had that week.
- Documented before delegating. Handing over an undocumented process is transferring stress, not work. Write it down, then let go of it completely.
What happened
- 21 → 9 days Average project turnaround
- 45+ D2C brands, incl. boAt, FNP, Miduty
- ₹1Cr+ ARR, from zero
- 95%+ Client satisfaction, held while turnaround halved
- 20–30 min Of my day it needs now. Sometimes less.
What I’d tell you in the interview
Growth came mostly from referrals. I am not good at sales and I will not pretend to be. I am good at what happens after the client says yes.
-
The founder was the operating system
The problem
Every escalation, every pricing call, every delivery exception went through the founder. Growth was capped not by demand but by one calendar. Cash was slow. Nobody could say which role was accountable for which outcome.
What I did
- Mapped the business as four systems, not one. Sales, onboarding, delivery and account management, each with defined handoffs. Most of the chaos turned out to be handoff chaos.
- Wrote SOPs and one owned number for each of seven roles. The point was not the documents. It was that “who owns this?” stopped being a question anyone had to ask.
- Put billing on a fixed cycle. Receivables visible weekly, follow-up as a defined step rather than an act of remembering.
- Built a second line and pulled the founder out of eight workflows. The measure of the work was the founder’s absence from it.
What happened
- 9 → 3 days Client onboarding
- 34 → 10 days Cash collection cycle
- −62% Overdue receivables
- +18% Client retention
- 8 Recurring workflows off the founder
What I’d tell you in the interview
This was the first time I did this inside someone else’s company, and it is where I realised the thing I had been doing for years had a name: operations. I want much more of it.
-
The bookkeeping I refused to keep doing
The problem
Running an agency meant repetitive finance admin every month: categorising, reconciling, GST, ITR. Bookkeeping, compliance and the actual work lived in three places that did not talk to each other. I had been quietly annoyed by it for three years.
What I did
- Built the automation for myself first. Python and workflow automation for categorisation, reconciliation and reporting, so the monthly cleanup stopped being monthly.
- Realised every agency and freelancer had the same problem. The solution to my own irritation turned into a product.
- Partnered with CA firms for the parts that need humans. Bundled bookkeeping, GST and ITR compliance through partnerships rather than pretending software alone could do Indian compliance.
What happened
- 7 months Concept to launch
- Python Built hands-on, not briefed out
- CA firms Compliance partnerships
Launched, learning. Early days, and I would rather say that than dress it up.
What I’d tell you in the interview
I am not a hardcore programmer. I know enough to build what I want, and AI tools have made that gap much smaller than it was two years ago.
03 — An experiment
Fix the agency
A small game about the elevraa problem. You get the business as it was in February 2026, twelve weeks, and twelve possible moves. Six are what I actually did; six are things we were genuinely tempted to do instead. Spend the quarter and see if yours beats mine.
The short version: a LinkedIn outreach agency where the founder was the operating system. In one quarter, onboarding went 9 → 3 days, the collection cycle went 34 → 10 days, overdue receivables fell 62%, retention rose 18%, and eight recurring workflows left the founder's calendar for good.
The moves, in order: Map the business as four systems → SOPs and one owned KPI per role → Install billing discipline → Build the second line of leadership → Weekly reporting cadence.
Read the full case studyWeeks left
12
-
Client onboarding Onboarding 9 days
How long from signed to running.
-
Cash collection Collection 34 days
Invoice sent to money in the account.
-
Founder load Founder 8 flows
Recurring workflows that still route through one person.
-
Client retention Retention 72 %
Clients still there after six months.
Your moves
Pick a move. Costs come out of the twelve weeks — you cannot afford all of them, and that is the actual job.
Your score
0
You vs. what happened
| Meter | Start | You | Actual |
|---|
What each move actually did
The line I played
- Map the business as four systems
- SOPs and one owned KPI per role
- Install billing discipline
- Build the second line of leadership
- Weekly reporting cadence
Twelve weeks exactly. The order matters more than the list — SOPs written before the systems are mapped are just documentation of the chaos, and delegating an undocumented process transfers stress rather than work.
04 — What I notice
Things that get my attention
Tick the ones that sound like your company. I am not trying to be clever about it — this is genuinely what I look for in the first week anywhere.
And, honestly, what I’m not
- I do not enjoy selling, cold outreach, or convincing people repeatedly.
- I do not enjoy repetitive execution, or being handed a checklist every morning.
- I am lazy in a specific way: if I have to do something every day for a year, I would rather spend a week making it disappear.
Tools I reach for
- n8n
- Zapier
- Python
- Claude Code
- spreadsheets
- Notion
- ClickUp
- Shopify
Whatever fits the problem. The tool is never the interesting part.
0 of 8 sound like your company.
05 — What’s next