The founder was the operating system
A LinkedIn outreach agency where every decision routed through one person’s calendar.
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
- 01
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.
- 02
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.
- 03
Put billing on a fixed cycle
Receivables visible weekly, follow-up as a defined step rather than an act of remembering.
- 04
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
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 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.