You Have Investors, a Board, and a Team. And No One You Can Think Out Loud With..
You’re building a company, and you’re surrounded by people who care how it turns out. That’s exactly the problem.
Every one of them has a stake in the answer. So the hardest things you’re carrying stay in your head, where nobody can help you with them.
I’m the person with no stake in the answer. No equity. No board seat. No agenda. Just the questions nobody else around you can afford to ask.
Everyone Around You Has a Stake in the Answer.
Your investors want to see progress. Your board is evaluating you. Your team needs you to be sure.
None of that is wrong. But it means there’s nowhere safe to say I’m not sure this is working. Nowhere to test the decision you keep putting off, or rehearse the conversation you’ve been avoiding with a co-founder, an investor, or yourself.
So you carry it alone. And the longer it sits, the more it costs: in time, in money, and in the trust of the people counting on you.
You’re not short on advice. Everyone has advice. You’re short on someone you can trust with the truth.
What a Founder Says About It.
“Cecil makes me a better CEO – plain and simple. He asks questions from a unique perspective that get right to the root of our challenges. I never seek his help when I want someone to confirm that I am right – that is never his goal. I seek out Cecil’s help when I look at a situation and say ‘we have got to be better.’ Cecil is my ‘dead reckoning’ – he guides us to recalibrate our true positioning and gets us pointing in the right direction.”
– Chad Johnson, Co-Founder, Grain Weevil.
Someone Who Has Been on Both Sides of the Table.
I’ve spent 35 years inside organizations as an engineer, a quality advocate, a product owner, and an IT leader, in hospitality, aviation, telecommunications, agriculture, manufacturing, and more. Before that, I waited tables, tended bar, and worked as a police officer.
I’ve built the systems and lived with them when they failed. I’ve been the one making the call and the one living with it. And I’ve sat across from a lot of people at the exact moment they had to say something hard out loud.
I won’t hand you a report or tell you what to do. I’ll ask what nobody else will, stay with you while you answer it, and help you hear what you already know.
That’s the only kind of clarity that actually changes anything.
Here’s How It Works.
1. Ask the First Question – One conversation, no charge. You tell me what’s on your mind, even if you can’t name it yet. We find out whether you need someone like me, and whether I’m the right one.
2. I’m in Your Corner – For six months, I’m available the way you need me: a text at 11pm, a call before the board meeting, a Saturday at your whiteboard, a couple of hours by the firepit. We keep a regular check-in, so we’re not only talking when something’s on fire.
3. You Decide What’s Next – Keep going month to month, or don’t. No contract to unwind. No report to file away. What you do with what you’ve learned is yours to own.
I work with a small number of founders at a time. In person when you’re within a drive of central Nebraska; by phone or video anywhere else.
The First Question Is Waiting.
You don’t need a problem statement. You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be ready to say the thing you haven’t said to anyone else yet.
