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
Why You Keep Treating the Wrong Commercial Problem
Founders keep treating the wrong commercial problem because they treat symptoms, such as declining win rates or flat revenue, rather than the structural cause underneath. Proximity, confirmation bias and single-point data make accurate self-diagnosis hard. The fix is to separate symptoms from causes, run a structured commercial audit, gather evidence from multiple angles, identify the binding constraint, often positioning, and build a sequenced intervention plan.
Why Your Growth Has Stalled & What Stage You’re Actually At
Most founder-led B2B businesses stall between £1m and £15m because the business has outgrown the founder, not the market. Delivery is strong and the team is capable, but positioning, pipeline and the sales process still run through one person. In the 7 Plateaus framework this is the gap between Plateau 3, The Busy Trap, and Plateau 4, Almost There. More effort will not close it. Commercial infrastructure will.
Why Your Pipeline Is Unpredictable: It’s Not A Sales Problem
An unpredictable pipeline is rarely about sales activity; it reflects the absence of a commercial system that generates and progresses pipeline consistently. It is almost always caused by three infrastructure gaps operating together: no repeatable demand generation, no pipeline discipline and no disqualification culture. Precise stage definitions, time-boxing, a systematic demand channel, a commercial rhythm and leading indicators make revenue forecastable.
Why Prospects Keep Comparing You on Price (And How to Make It Stop)
Prospects keep comparing you on price because of capability-first positioning: when competing firms all describe what they do, the prospect has no basis for comparison except price. The fix is issue-led positioning, which leads with the specific problem the buyer is trying to solve, names the cost of leaving it unsolved and explains how you resolve it. Pricing pressure then reduces because the comparison becomes harder to make.
Why You Are Still In Every Sales Conversation
Founders stay in every sales conversation because the commercial system was never built, so the problem is structural, not a quality or people issue. Without clear positioning, a qualification framework and a commercial rhythm, the team defaults to the founder and new hires fail. The cost is stalled deals, evenings and weekends lost, and a business that stays stuck. The fix is to diagnose what is being held, build that infrastructure, then withdraw deliberately.
The Business Case for a Fractional Commercial Director
For a founder-led B2B business turning over £1m to £15m, a Fractional Commercial Director is usually worth it. It costs around a quarter of a full-time hire in year one, starts delivering in the first month and leaves behind systems the team can run without them. The stronger argument is not the saving. It is what waiting costs.
What I Learned Rebuilding the Training Solution I Once Disrupted
After more than 15 years building e-Learning platforms, in 2022 I was asked to transform a traditional training company just as the pandemic had stopped classroom training. Two years inside showed me that classroom learning builds confidence and community, but cannot survive on legacy methods alone. The answer was to blend human interaction with digital access. The lesson is to make competence measurable, focus on skills rather than courses, and embed learning into work.
The Lead Gen Flywheel: Boost Your Marketing Campaigns
Structuring campaigns around the Lead Gen Flywheel replaces start-stop linear marketing with a continuous system in which each campaign compounds the last. It forces clarity on one person, one problem and one promise, then uses the insights, performance data and refined messaging from each campaign to power the next rotation. The result is marketing that generates learning as well as leads, and builds momentum instead of starting from scratch.
Why Smart Leaders Get Stuck (And How to Get Unstuck)
Smart leaders get stuck because what worked getting the business to £1m to £2m does not work at £15m, so they keep doing what they know, just harder, until the founder becomes the constraint. Most plateau problems are clarity problems, not motivation problems. Getting unstuck takes three shifts: from vague to specific, from infinite capacity to ruthless prioritisation, and from founder-dependent to system-dependent.
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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.