01
Organisational design and people strategy
Structures and teams that scale with clarity, not just headcount.
Growing a successful business shouldn't cost you everything
An operator-led consultancy for owners who built something real, and want to keep going without burning out the thing they built, or themselves.
operator-ledUK-based, working globally35+ years in the work
Book a calla 20-minute fit call. we work with owners doing £250k+
not ready to talk?Runthe diagnostic
The owner's tax
We named it because you're already paying it. Nobody had put a number on it until now.
You built the business to run through you because, at the time, you were the only one there to run it through. That was the right call. The business kept the architecture. It just got bigger.
That is not a personality problem. It is a structural one: a decision made years ago, under different conditions, that nobody has gone back to redesign. Which means it can be. That is the job.
And it scales. A bigger organisation doesn't dissolve the dependency. It just gives it more surface area.
the owner's tax / noun
The price of running a business that still depends on you the way it did on day one.
paid in evenings, health, and the version of your life you keep pushing to later
Where you pay it
The owner's tax never appears on the P&L. These are the five places you feel it first.
The diary fills with the business's needs before yours. Weeks disappear into firefighting that someone else should own.
[cost: unrecoverable]Chronic load does not just feel bad. It quietly reduces your capacity to lead, decide, and sustain what matters.
[cost: compounding]Every decision routes through you, so every day starts in deficit. Momentum becomes something you push, not something you have.
[cost: daily]Somewhere along the way, you stopped being the person who built it and became the person it runs on.
[cost: hidden]Present at the table, still at work in your head. The people closest to you get what is left over.
[cost: borrowed]five line items, one acronym: THEIR. none of it was ever the business's to spend
how we help
Five working areas. Operator-led. Outcome-focused.
We look at your business the way an experienced operator would. Not to fix what is broken, but to find what is sitting untapped.
We look at your business the way an experienced operator would. Not to fix what is broken, but to find what is sitting untapped, and build the capacity to go after it. We don't start with a product. We start with your situation.
02
Business continuity and succession
So the business survives its transitions, including yours.
03
Financial performance and cash visibility
See the position early enough to act on it, not react to it.
04
Growth architecture
Structure, systems and decision-making that create capacity.
05
Leadership development and capability
Strength at the top, where it changes everything else.
Three ways in
Strategy Day
Work directly with a founder or an Executive Partner, matched to your business and what it needs. One day, all of it on your business: where the owner's tax is coming from, what to redesign, and in what order. You leave with the map.
Ongoing
An invitation-only accelerator, vetted so the room is worth your time. Weekly calls, straight advice, working tools, and our select business performance coaches. Guest speakers, in-person networking and curated social events, plus access to our exclusive network of business leaders, partners and practitioners. The diagnostic tracks what's actually changing.
Bespoke
When you want more than advice: NED, advisory and board appointments, speaking, and coaching built for one person or a whole team.
every engagement starts at the Strategy Day
founders
Steven and Claire have spent 35+ years combined inside some of Europe's most ambitious businesses, and the funds that backed them. Not advisors looking in. Operators working through the hard problems: scaling teams, building systems, making organisations perform at pace.
Steven Bianchi
co-founder | 30+ exits, 2 IPOs
Steven has been in the game since a comic book resale business at age ten. Since then: operator and executive through 30 plus exits and 2 IPOs, with around £2 billion raised along the way, in CPO, CIO and COO roles across some of Europe's most successful businesses. He sees the architecture of a business before most people know there is one. Investors have taken to calling him the "founder whisperer": the confidant behind many successful owners and business leaders. He built lifestack for the ones paying the owner's tax: profitable, capable, and unable to step away.
Claire Alvis
co-founder | operations, delivery
Claire specialises in the things businesses cannot see about themselves. A decade in operations, at Deliveroo, Vita Mojo, and as COO of a coldchain logistics scaleup, built one instinct: walk into a business running at full speed, find the constraint everyone works around but nobody has named, and fix it in the right order. She runs delivery, so what gets mapped actually gets done.
"The methodologies we spent careers developing are now available to the owners who need them most. Not watered down. Applied to your business, your situation, your next move."
who it's for
We work with a small number of owners at a time.
this is for you if
- You own a business doing £250k+ a year.
- The growth is real, but it still routes through you.
- You value substance over noise.
- You want an operator in your corner, not a deck.
this is not for you if
- You want a quick fix or a motivational push.
- You are not open to candid feedback.
- You want someone else to do the owning for you.
the first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing
In the community
Business owners are the backbone of their communities. We put our name where that belief is: on the ice, on the air, and around the table once a month.
Find out what it's really costing you
Book a calla 20-minute fit call. we work with owners doing £250k+
not ready to talk?Runthe diagnostic