Fieldnotes for Founders
Commercial insights for founder-led businesses
Pattern recognition from real commercial work inside founder-led B2B businesses turning over £1m to £15m. Frameworks, case patterns and straight answers, not theory.
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Why is my website attracting the wrong prospects?
You are attracting the wrong prospects because your proposition tells everyone they are welcome. When a page does not say who it is for, the wrong buyers enquire and the right buyers quietly leave without contacting you. A clear fit line, including who you are not for, filters out the wrong enquiries and gives the right buyers confidence to get in touch.
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The three ideas everything else builds on
01 · Where you areThe 7 Plateaus: where is your business stuck?
The seven stages every founder-led business moves through, and the ceiling at each one.
02 · What to buildWhat is commercial infrastructure?
The systems that let revenue grow without the founder at the centre of every decision.
03 · Who builds itWhat is a Fractional Commercial Director?
Senior commercial leadership one to two days a week, and when it is the right move.
All insights and case patterns
The Leaderboard Lied – Key Stakeholder Mapping
Board packs mislead when they are filled with numbers that are easy to pull, such as revenue, pipeline, headcount and activity, which feel like progress but are often just motion. The cause is objectives set without a key stakeholder map. The fix is to build objectives from the outside in: map your stakeholders, understand what matters to each of them, then build metrics that show whether you are actually delivering it.
The Treacle Feeling Isn’t a Sign of Failure. It’s Success.
The treacle feeling is almost always a sign of success, not failure. It means the business has outgrown the solo decision-maker at the centre of it, so every decision still lands on the founder. It is a structural problem, not a motivation or strategy problem, and the answer is often a number two: someone with complementary strengths who thinks alongside the founder and carries the commercial function.
Why your proposition loses before the conversation starts
A proposition loses before the conversation starts when it describes the firm instead of naming the problem the buyer needs to fix, so buyers must do the translation work themselves and most do not bother. Tom Wood of Addoli identifies four proposition failure patterns: the Mirror Trap, the Wrong Invite, the Trophy Cabinet and the Comparison Trap. The Mirror Trap is the most common.
The Mirror Trap: Why Your Positioning Is Losing You Business
The Mirror Trap is a proposition failure where a business describes itself, its history, capabilities and credentials, instead of the problem its buyer has. Buyers read to recognise themselves, so when they cannot see their own problem, they move on to a competitor. Tom Wood diagnoses where it has taken hold with the 5S Proposition Score: Specific, Standout, Substance, Signature and Shareable.
The Silent Pivot – Why your last great idea did not deliver
The silent pivot is the gap between what is happening in a founder’s head and what is happening in the business, widening every time their thinking moves faster than the infrastructure can follow. It is not a failed strategy, a bad hire or a communication problem. The decision was never stress-tested before it travelled, so the team, systems and pipeline keep executing the old direction. A Commercial No. 2 provides that pause and translation layer.
The 7 Plateaus: The Ceiling You Keep Hitting Isn’t Bad Luck.
The ceiling founder-led businesses keep hitting is not bad luck. It follows a pattern: the infrastructure that got them here is not built for where they are trying to go. The 7 Plateaus Framework maps seven stall points, from The Starting Line to Category Ownership. Most businesses get stuck longest at Plateau 3, The Busy Trap, and Plateau 4, Almost There, because the business was built around the founder, not commercial systems.
The Transformation Treadmill: Why a restructure doesn’t work
A restructure does not work because the real problem is not the team structure but the absence of commercial infrastructure for the team to operate within. Restructuring is a proxy for building systems, so every decision still runs through the founder and the same problems resurface in new form. Stop restructuring and start systematising, then adjust structure only once the infrastructure exists.
The Comparison Trap (And How to Escape It)
The Comparison Trap is a proposition failure pattern where weak differentiation leaves buyers unable to tell firms apart, so they compare on price and the cheapest option wins by default. It comes from positioning around what you do rather than the problem the buyer has. Escape it by repositioning from the ground up: name the specific problem you solve, build use cases for the right buyer and create something proprietary that is difficult to copy.
Why Your Prospecting List Is Doing Your Pipeline’s Job
A prospecting list ends up doing the pipeline’s job when targets that might become real sit alongside qualified opportunities, making it impossible to tell whether the business is healthy or confusing activity with progress. Keep them separate. Then design the prospecting list instead of letting it accumulate: define your Ideal Client Profile, including the trigger situation, tier the list, run a contact cadence and review it fortnightly alongside the pipeline.
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The Commercial No. 2
For founders who need a commercial number two. One idea per edition, straight from the work.
Reading is useful. Knowing where you are stuck is better.
The 7 Plateaus diagnostic takes five minutes and comes with a written report.