Business Advisory That Looks at the Whole Business
How Michael & Team Help
Most business problems don't neatly fit into a box.
Michael's job is to help work out what is really causing the problem, rather than immediately selling a predefined solution.
Michael's Framework
The Opening Challenge: Make a Bet With Yourself
At the beginning, we work out where the business really is now and what would constitute meaningful progress.
Then we start with the first two things that matter most.
1. Prioritise Profit
Before chasing more growth, we need to understand the real financial health of the business.
What actually makes money? What quietly drains it? Which services, clients or activities deserve more attention, and which ones are keeping everyone busy without producing enough return?
We look at the numbers closely enough to make useful decisions, without turning you into an accountant.
That includes:
- Understanding where your profit really comes from
- Improving profitability by knowing your numbers
- Looking for underused advantages already sitting inside the business
- Finding higher-margin opportunities
- Reviewing pricing where it needs attention
- Building additional sources of revenue
For NDIS and government-funded businesses, this also means deliberately looking beyond price-capped income. The goal is to build a stronger business without relying on one funding system forever.
2. Solve This Week’s Big Focus
Most businesses have dozens of things they could improve.
That is exactly the problem.
Each week, we identify the biggest challenge or opportunity facing the business right now and put our energy there.
We ask:
What, if we solved it this week, would make the biggest difference?
Then we create a practical action plan and do something about it.
It might be a profitability problem, an overloaded team member, a sales bottleneck, a communication issue, a missed opportunity or something completely unexpected.
We are not trying to fix everything at once.
We are trying to keep solving the thing that matters most.
3. Build Your 12-Month Business View
We look at your business as it is today and compare it with the business you want to be running 12 months from now.
Not a vague vision statement.
A practical picture of what needs to be different.
What does revenue look like? What does profit look like? What does your team look like? What are you doing each week? What are you no longer doing?
From there, we work backwards.
You set 3 KPIs that actually matter to you. Not vanity metrics. Numbers that tell us whether the business is moving towards the future you want.
Then every week, we make small decisions that move those numbers.
The 12-month view gives us direction. The weekly focus keeps it practical.
4. Get the Owner Out of the Way
One of the biggest limits on a growing business is often the owner.
Not because they are doing a bad job.
Because too much still depends on them.
We look closely at what you spend your time doing and divide it into two groups:
Things only you should be doing.
And everything else.
Admin, approvals, inboxes, small decisions, problem solving and tasks that have simply accumulated around you all need to be questioned.
We remove, delegate, automate or redesign as much of that work as we reasonably can.
The goal is not for you to disappear.
It is for the business to stop needing you involved in everything.
Eventually, we pressure-test that by having you step away for a proper period and seeing what happens when the team cannot automatically turn to you.
That usually teaches us more than another month of meetings ever could.
5. Become a Helpful Expert
Marketing gets much easier when people know exactly who you help and what you are useful for.
Instead of trying to look impressive to everyone, we work out where you or your business can become genuinely helpful to a specific group of people.
Then we make that expertise visible.
That might mean:
- Sharing useful knowledge
- Building stronger professional relationships
- Helping people before they are ready to buy
- Creating useful content
- Developing referral or partner relationships
- Investing either time or money into creating future work
The objective is not to become louder.
It is to become known.
When the right person has the right problem, your name should be one of the names that comes to mind.
6. Put Everything You Can Into a System
Growth exposes quirks and inefficiencies very quickly.
Someone has their own spreadsheet.
Someone remembers an important task because they have done it for six years.
A process only works because one talented employee knows how to rescue it.
An inbox has quietly become an operating system.
We find those things and start turning them into systems.
The aim is to:
- Reduce dependence on individual people
- Make work easier to repeat
- Improve consistency
- Reduce avoidable mistakes
- Make communication clearer
- Improve efficiency without creating unnecessary bureaucracy
And when something goes wrong, we try not to simply patch the immediate problem.
We ask what needs to change in the system so the same problem is less likely to keep coming back.
7. Make Leaders Responsible
As the business grows, the owner cannot remain the person who notices every problem, makes every decision and holds everyone accountable.
Your leaders need to lead.
We work on role clarity, expectations, accountability, communication and decision-making.
That means helping leaders understand what they actually own and giving them enough authority to solve problems without constantly escalating them.
Some people will thrive with that responsibility.
Others may need more support.
And occasionally someone will need a reality check about what happens if nothing changes.
The aim is to develop leaders who can take ownership of results and build a team that increasingly solves problems independently.
Build Your 7 External Allies
Leadership can also become surprisingly isolating.
So we deliberately build a group of people outside the business who you can speak honestly with.
People who challenge your assumptions, offer another perspective and tell you things your team sometimes cannot.
I can be one of those seven.
But I should never be the only one.
8. Get a Life
The final measure of a better business is not simply a bigger business.
It is whether the business gives you more of the life you actually wanted when you started it.
We look at what work is doing to your time, relationships, health and energy.
Then we deliberately protect the things outside the business that matter.
That might mean:
- Time with family
- Relationships that have been neglected
- Health and exercise
- Hobbies
- Travel
- Personal growth
- Doing something each week purely because you enjoy it
As the business becomes stronger, your working week should become more intentional too.
One of our targets is to find ways to remove around 10 hours from the working week of each key leader, without sacrificing the results the business needs.
Because if the business gets healthier but your life still sucks, we have another problem to solve.
Growth should eventually give you more choices, not simply more work.
Five Problems Michael and Team Help Solve
Michael focuses on diagnosing core business challenges and applying a results-driven framework to address them effectively.
Growth & Profitability
Systems & Operations
Leadership & Team
Growth Strategy
Numbers over feelings
Profit over vanity revenue
Fix causes, not symptoms
Growth before unnecessary polish
Test ideas
Give the director ownership
Advice is useless unless implemented
How Michael Thinks
What Working Together Is Like
Michael engages directly with clients, using real advisory conversations to uncover core business challenges. His approach involves questioning assumptions and exploring practical solutions tailored to each director's unique situation.
Who This Isn't For
This probably isn't for someone looking for Michael to run their business for them, someone unwilling to change anything, someone who wants every decision validated, or someone looking for a magic formula.