A fixed-fee, three-week diagnostic of what’s actually holding your business back — structure, leadership, and decision-making. Evidence, not opinion. Written down, so you can act on it.
Sent here by your accountant? They can see something in your numbers that isn’t solvable from the numbers. This is the next step they meant — and they’ll stay in the loop throughout, if you want them to.
Revenue has plateaued, despite good people working hard. Decisions still find their way to your desk — all of them, eventually. The leadership team is capable, but somehow the business only moves at the speed you personally push it.
You’ve stared at the management accounts. The answer isn’t in them — because by the time a problem shows up in the numbers, the numbers are the symptom. The cause lives in structure: how decisions actually flow, whether your senior people are in the right seats, and how aligned they really are about what matters. And structure has one inconvenient property — it is almost impossible to see from inside.
Three weeks, three lenses on the same business — because the finding is almost always in how they connect.
How decisions actually flow, versus how the organisation chart says they do. Which decisions only you can make. What the meeting load is compensating for. The real operating model, mapped against the intended one.
CliftonStrengths across you and your senior team — read as collective capability, not personality. Where the team’s talents cluster, what’s genuinely missing, and which strengths are sitting in the wrong seats.
A confidential, structured interview with each senior person: what they believe the priorities are, where they think growth is stuck. The gaps between their answers are usually the finding.
Most reviews do only the middle one. The combination is the point.
Eight to twelve pages of plain-English prose: the three structural risks holding growth back, ranked and evidenced, and a sequenced 90-day plan — at least half of it actionable without spending another pound with me. Written to be re-read, and to be forwarded to the one person you trust.
Ninety minutes, you and me — bring one trusted co-director if you like. The first genuinely outside-in view of your business you’ll have had since you started it. It is not always comfortable. It is always useful.
Every assessed leader — up to six — gets a personal CliftonStrengths debrief. Your team experiences direct value from the audit, not just a report about them.
A 90-minute kickoff where you state the question this audit answers — in your own words, on page one of the report. Documents in, assessments out.
Confidential interviews with your senior team, strengths assessments, and structural analysis: decision flows, dependencies, the four-weeks-without-you test.
The report, written; the working session, delivered; the plan, in your hands within 24 hours.
Fixed at three weeks — deliberately. A diagnosis that drifts becomes a lodger.
Credited in full against the first quarter if we continue working together within 30 days — most commonly as your board advisor. The audit becomes free; the clarity you keep either way.
There are no proposals, no scoping calls that become sales calls, and no negotiation — the price is the price because the product is the product. That’s also why it’s safe for your accountant to put their name to.
The walk-away promise: if the qualifying call shows you need something else — a bookkeeper, one difficult conversation, a different specialist — I’ll say so, point you there, and charge you nothing. You’ll leave that call with something useful either way. That’s the deal.
I’m John Obidipe. I spent years leading business transformation inside large organisations — reading operating models, decision flows, and the gap between how companies think they work and how they actually do. I’m also a Gallup-Certified CliftonStrengths coach, which means I read people with the same rigour I read structure.
“The Growth Audit exists because almost nobody does both — and the answer to a stalled business is almost never in just one of them.”
A three-part series for leaders who privately feel they should understand the finances better than they do. No jargon, no shame — the words, the story they tell, and the questions that let you lead the conversation. One email gets all three — plus the Learning Hub: audio versions, flashcards, and a quiz for each part, so you can digest it however you think best.
The series is on its way — check your inbox.
One short series, then the occasional essay. Unsubscribe any time.
Never. Comments are unattributed from the moment of note-taking; strengths profiles are shared within the group, sources are not. Candour depends on it, and it’s in writing before any interview starts.
One of three things, all fine: you act alone — the report is designed for it; we continue with me alongside you; or you take one specific piece. There’s a follow-on call 7–10 days later, and I don’t chase.
Not inside the audit. Implementation, workshops and coaching are separate engagements, priced separately, if and when you want them. The audit’s crispness is the point.
So has every team, and the reports live in a drawer. The assessment here is one of three inputs; the audit is about how your structure, capacity and priorities line up. The drawer report is what this replaces.
A qualifying call is thirty to forty-five minutes, free, and useful whether or not we go further — that’s a promise, not a pitch. Worst case, you leave with one good insight and my honest view that the audit isn’t what you need.
Book the qualifying call