You're the reason the company still works. That's the problem.
In most founder-led product businesses past a certain size, the company quietly reorganizes itself around the founder — decisions, escalations, reporting gaps, accountability holes, all routed through one person. It works. Until it stops working.
I help founders rebuild the operating structure underneath, so the business runs on a system instead of on you.
Best fit: founder-led product businesses — physical goods, e-commerce, Amazon, inventory-driven operations.
"At some point, the thing holding the company back stops being the product and starts being how it's run."
Who I help
Not every product business is a fit. These are the ones where I can actually help.
Physical Products
Tangible goods, suppliers, quality issues, and the operational weight that compounds as volume grows.
E-commerce & Amazon
Multi-channel complexity, platform risk, and the operating strain that comes with scale you can't slow down.
Inventory Complexity
Purchasing, lead times, logistics, and working capital are tied together in reality — but rarely managed that way on paper.
Founders who've become the bottleneck
Companies where too much still depends on one person to connect the dots, unstick the team, and carry the operating load.
What’s usually breaking
Growth isn't the only thing getting bigger. Complexity is growing faster than the structure that's supposed to hold it.
The founder is the bottleneck.
Decisions, approvals, escalations, and follow-through still funnel through one person. The team waits. The founder is exhausted.
Numbers exist, but they don't drive behavior.
Reports are late, inconsistent, or disconnected from what people actually do day to day. The dashboard is not the operating system.
Accountability is soft.
Good people, unclear ownership. Work moves, but no one is clearly on the hook for the outcome.
Operations and decisions are disconnected.
Inventory, purchasing, channel, and execution decisions happen in parallel — not in a system that ties them together.
Meetings happen, nothing changes.
The team syncs, updates, aligns. Then the same problems show up again the following week.
Management is heavier than it should be.
The company has outgrown the informal operating structure that got it here — and it shows up as friction, fatigue, and drift.
What I do
I help founder-led product businesses build the operating structure their growth now requires — so the business runs on a system instead of on the founder.
In practice, that means a tighter decision rhythm, reporting that actually drives action, real accountability across functions, and less of the company depending on the founder to hold it together.
Operational Diagnostic
A focused assessment of how the business actually runs — not how the org chart says it does. I surface the real bottlenecks, reporting gaps, accountability breakdowns, and sources of operational drag. You get a clear read on what's worth fixing first.
12-Week Operational Reset
A structured engagement to rebuild how the business runs day to day: operating cadence, decision visibility, ownership, and a practical plan to stabilize the next stage of growth. Twelve weeks because that's enough time to change how the company operates — not just to produce a deck.
Ongoing Fractional Support
For companies that need continued founder-side operating judgment after the reset. In practice, this typically looks like a standing weekly operating review, founder-side escalation and decision support during the week, and a quarterly operating reset to keep priorities and structure current as the business evolves.
It's senior operating help and follow-through, for businesses that aren't yet ready for — or don't yet need — a full-time senior hire.
Where it's useful, engagements include hands-on implementation for systems, workflow, and process execution. The work doesn't stop at recommendations.
How I work with AI
AI can create real operating leverage. It can also waste six months and a budget. The difference is almost always whether the underlying problem was clear before anyone started building.
I use AI where it improves visibility, removes drag, supports better decisions, or makes execution faster. I don't treat it as a strategy, and I don't turn companies into automation science projects.
Use AI where it actually creates leverage
The question is never "should we use AI." It's where AI can measurably improve how this specific business runs — better information flow, faster analysis, less manual coordination, cleaner handoffs, smarter scoping of repetitive work. Not automation for the sake of sounding modern.
"The goal is not more tools. The goal is a business that runs better."
Why Craig
I'm not a generic consultant and I don't sell abstract strategy.
My background is inside real founder-led product businesses — where inventory, channel decisions, reporting, systems, team dynamics, and founder load all collide in the same week. I'm most useful when a company has outgrown improvisation but isn't ready for (or doesn't yet need) a full-time senior operator.
What founders tend to get from working with me:
- check_circleclearer accountability across the team
- check_circlereporting you can actually make decisions from
- check_circlea weekly rhythm the team actually runs on
- check_circlea steadier pair of hands on the founder side
Especially when the business is growing faster than the structure underneath it.
How it starts
A short call to understand where the business is getting stuck, what the operating reality actually feels like, and whether there's a fit. No pitch.
A focused review of how the business runs today — bottlenecks, visibility gaps, accountability issues, and the priorities worth acting on first.
If the fit is right, we move into a structured engagement to change how the company runs.
If the business feels harder to run than it should, it usually is — and it's usually fixable.
If you're carrying too much of the operating load, or the company has outgrown the way it's currently run, I'm open to a conversation.