The founder was the operating system
A LinkedIn outreach agency where every decision went through the founder.
The problem
Every escalation, pricing call and delivery problem went through the founder, so the business couldn’t grow faster than one person’s calendar. Cash came in slowly, and nobody could say which role was responsible for what.
What I did
- 01
Split the business into four systems
Sales, onboarding, delivery and account management, with clear handoffs between them. A lot of the chaos turned out to be in the handoffs.
- 02
Wrote SOPs and one owned number for each of seven roles
Once every role had a written process and one number it owned, people stopped having to ask who was responsible for what.
- 03
Put billing on a fixed cycle
Invoices went out on a schedule, receivables got checked every week, and chasing payment became a step in the process instead of something someone had to remember.
- 04
Built a second line and pulled the founder out of eight workflows
Other people took over decisions the founder used to make. By the end, eight recurring workflows ran without them.
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
Try the problem yourself A small game: the same business, twelve weeks, twelve moves.
What I’d tell you in the interview
This was the first time I’d done this inside someone else’s company, and it’s where I realised the thing I’d been doing for years had a name: operations. I want a lot more of it.