THE SALTY CONSULTANT™

You Don't Have a Business Problem.
You Have a You Problem.
(And deep down, you already know that.)

It's 11pm on a Tuesday.Your team is asleep. Your phone is quiet. And you're still at your desk — handling something that should have been handled by someone else three weeks ago.You built real revenue. Real clients. A real team.And somehow you are still the single point of failure for all of it.You keep telling yourself it's a process problem. Or a hiring problem. Or a systems problem.It's not.It's you.Not because you're weak. Because you're too capable. You built every system around your own competence — and your team learned the safest path through any problem is to route it straight back through you.You trained them to need you.And now you can't get out.

I've watched this pattern break companies — and the leaders running them — for 20 years.PwC. Cognizant. Techstars-backed startups. Founder-led firms doing $2M–$20M with a founder who hasn't slept through the night in two years.Same story. Different logo on the door.The consultants come in and fix the process. Bill you $40,000. Leave a binder no one reads. Six months later you're right back where you started — except now you're also out $40,000.I don't do that.

The Founder Operating System90 Days. Two Problems Fixed Simultaneously.
Most engagements fix the business or the person running it.This one fixes both — because one without the other doesn't hold.Month 1: The Forensic AuditI go through your delivery infrastructure the way a surgeon reads a scan. Sales-to-delivery handoffs. Project scoping. Margin bleed points. Team capacity gaps. Founder bottleneck patterns.You get a prioritized Correction Roadmap — ranked by margin impact, not my opinion of what's interesting.Month 2: ImplementationI coach your internal ops person through execution. You attend one session per week. That's it. The work happens without you — by design.Month 3: Transfer and TransitionOperations move to your team. I shift to working directly with you: delegation patterns, identity recalibration, what this next stage of growth actually requires from the person at the top.You exit with a business that runs without you. And — for the first time in years — you exit with clarity on what your actual job is supposed to be.Investment:$18,000–$24,000 flat.
90 days. Defined exit.
No ongoing retainer.

A word about who this is not for.If you want a permanent ops babysitter — I'm not your guy.
If you want someone to validate your current plan and tell you you're doing fine — wrong address.If you want a coach who nods along for 50 minutes and hands you a "reflection question" — there are plenty of those. Go find one.I work with founders who want the truth more than they want reassurance.That's a short list. It should be.

Sometimes the Business Isn't the Problem.Some of the founders I work with don't have an operations problem at all.They have a life problem dressed up as a leadership problem.The revenue is real. The title is real. The team respects them. And something is quietly, persistently wrong. They can't name it in a board meeting. They won't say it to their spouse. They've been running on fumes and calling it leadership for so long they've half-convinced themselves that's just what this costs.That's when they find me.Certified Professional Coach since 2007. I work with founders and senior leaders at genuine inflection points — burnout, identity drift, business plateaus, post-crisis reconstruction.Not therapy. Not motivational content.Honest work with someone who won't lie to you.

Why I Can Say ThatTwenty years inside the same pressure chambers you're sitting in right now. Not advising from a textbook — advising from pattern recognition built in the exact rooms you're in.Here's where that pattern recognition came from:

  • PwC — Led enterprise-scale transformations for F500 clients. Learned that the gap between Big Consulting strategy and actual execution is always human, never technical

  • Cognizant — Managed multi-million-dollar global delivery portfolios. Watched how leadership behavior either accelerates or undermines every operational initiative, regardless of how well it's designed

  • Earn & Learn (Techstars '25) — Fractional COO for a high-growth EdTech startup preparing for scale. Translated visionary chaos into executable infrastructure

  • Xceede, ForceIQ, Qvest, and others — First in. Built from zero. Left things better than I found them

  • Managing Editor, The Fiske Guide to Colleges (1995–2015) — Twenty years building one of the most trusted guidance publications in the country. Taught me the same thing every engagement since has confirmed: the clearest guidance is always the most honest — not the most polished

Certified Professional Coach since 2007. Nineteen years working with founders and senior leaders at genuine inflection points.I'm not advising from a textbook. I'm advising from pattern recognition built in the exact rooms you're sitting in right now.

Here's What Happens Next.You book a 20-minute call. No pitch deck. No discovery theater. No "let me send you my calendar link" runaround.I'll ask you 10 questions.If I can't identify three specific margin leaks in your business inside that conversation — I'll tell you directly that we're not a fit and point you somewhere better.If I can — and I will — we'll talk about what fixing it is actually worth to you.Ten questions. Straight answers. Either we go to work or we don't.That's the whole process.Book a 20-Minute Call Below.Prefer LinkedIn? DM me here.

The Salty Consultant™ is a brand of
Shawn Logue | Clariti Consulting, LLC