A client came to me stuck on a funding decision. He had a potential partner — someone he knew, someone he trusted, good terms on paper. Everything pointed to yes. But as I worked with him and his business, something kept surfacing that didn't match the story he was telling me. The message was clear: wait six months. He almost didn't listen.
He pulled out at the last moment, just before signing. The following day, a better offer arrived — one that let him move closer to family, better terms, better fit. He sent me a WhatsApp message: I'm so happy I listened. I almost didn't, but I'm so happy I listened.
A different client, a woman who felt like her business had stopped growing. We talked for a while, and what came through wasn't about her marketing or her offer or her team. It was about location. She'd moved her office home when her kids were young — the right call then. But her kids had grown, circumstances had changed, and the business was sitting in a context it had outgrown. She moved the office. The deadlock broke.
Neither of them came to me with the actual problem. They came with the symptom — and an open mind to go beyond traditional business coaching and technical solutions.
That's the thing about listening to a business. The business is almost never saying what the owner thinks it's saying.
Most people, when they're stuck, get closer to the wall. They analyse it, they push harder, they try a different tactic on the same surface. What they can't see — because they're standing too close — is that three steps to the right, there's a clear path.
My job is not to get you out of the forest. My job is to hold up a candle so you can see where to place your next step safely.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Because when people come looking for solutions, they want the endgame. The final answer. The thing that solves everything. And I understand that impulse. But that's not what gets you moving again. What gets you moving is one good insight that opens up options. Options create relief. Relief creates playfulness. Playfulness creates momentum. And momentum, it turns out, is what actually gets you somewhere.
I once told a client — someone stretched thin and running on empty — that they needed to spend more time by the water. A specific place, close to where they lived. I described what it looked like. The bank, the light, the texture of it. I described a blanket they should bring from their house — the specific one — and where to sit. I had never been to their home. I'd never seen the pond.
They went quiet for a moment. Then: yes. That's exactly the place. That's exactly the blanket.
That's what I mean when I say I listen.
The way I've come to understand it — and I held this lightly for a long time before I said it out loud — is that a business is its own entity. I say this not as a theory. It has proven true for me, and for many of my clients, on more occasions than I can count.
Not a tool you operate. Not a machine you maintain. Something closer to a relationship. It was brought into the world with a purpose. It wants to grow. So does the owner. The problem, almost always, is that they're not in disagreement about the destination. They're in conflict about the path. Both pulling in slightly different directions, neither wrong, just out of alignment.
Stagnation is usually what that misalignment feels like from the inside.
So when I work with a business owner, I'm not just working with the person in front of me. I'm working with the person and the business — two distinct voices that are deeply bound to each other. Listening to what the business is trying to say. Translating it back. Finding the place where the two can move together instead of against each other.
It's less like consulting. More like parts integration work — helping two voices that want the same thing find their way back into alignment.