Start with a Growth Assessment
This is you every month.
Most coaches hand you a PDF, sell you a book, and wish you luck. Fuck that. We find where the money is actually going, what you're already doing right, and what you suck at — then we fix the real problem instead of decorating it with motivational posters.
Shawn Duncan
Fuck the noise. Find the signal.
Signal-to-noise ratio is the only thing that matters in a small business. The signal is the two or three levers that actually move profit, freedom, and growth. The noise is everything else — notifications, opinions, vanity metrics, new tactics, employee drama, and the shiny shit that feels productive but changes nothing.
Every successful owner I know can see through the noise and bet on the signal. They don't chase trends. They don't treat busy as proof of progress. They know that labor, pricing, follow-up, owner dependency, and a handful of customer-acquisition channels are what actually build the company — and everything else is just a distraction wearing a good headline.
That's what we do together. Strip out the noise, identify the handful of real signals in your business, and fix them in the right order.
Twenty years of real business. Not a certification.
Most business coaches spent 30 years in corporate America, got a certificate, and decided they know how to run a small company. They don't. They never had to choose between making payroll and buying groceries. They never bought a business at 2 AM because the numbers worked and the seller was desperate. They never sold one, lost money on one, or operated three at the same time while raising a family.
I have. I've bought, sold, and operated multiple small businesses. I've had the sleepless nights. I've paid employees before I paid myself. I've dealt with bad managers who somehow made every problem sound like it was my fault. I've fired customers, raised prices, and walked into a Monday not knowing if the week would end in the black.
That's the difference. When I tell you what to do, it's not from a workbook. It's from already making the mistake, taking the hit, and figuring out what actually works when the shit hits the fan.
Real advice from someone who's been there.
A 30-year HR manager can't teach you what to do when your best employee walks out with half your book of business. A former VP with a corner office can't teach you how to make payroll on Friday when your biggest customer is 60 days late. I can — because I've been there.
Established owners, $500K–$3M
Profit, ops, owner freedom
Month-to-month. No contracts.
Real conversations. Real decisions.
No slide decks. No motivational speeches. We sit down with the numbers, the schedule, the payroll, and the customer list — and we decide what gets fixed first, who owns it, and how we'll know it worked.
- Straight talk about what the numbers actually say
- Decisions made in the room, not "circled back" later
- You leave knowing the next three moves
What's it worth to fix it?
Three levers. Real math — labor comes off your actual labor cost, a price increase costs you some volume, and new work only pays what's left after materials and labor. Change your numbers and see what your business could actually put in your pocket.
Where you are today
Top line for the last 12 months.
Payroll as a share of revenue — about $360,000 a year.
Everything you buy to deliver the work.
What you actually keep — $96,000 a year. Everything else ($444,000) is fixed overhead.
What we'd go fix
Tighten scheduling and productivity. Labor goes 30% → 27% of revenue. Floor is 15%.
Assumes you lose a quarter percent of your jobs for every percent you raise.
More jobs from follow-up, Google and reviews. Each new job costs you materials and labor.
Profit today
$96,000
Profit after the fixes
$235,536
+$139,536 a year · $11,628 a month
Estimates, not promises. In the Strategy Session we run these numbers off your actual P&L and tell you which lever is worth pulling first.
Not advice. A system.
Every client runs through the same framework. I don't wing it, and I don't dump a 47-page plan on you. I teach you the operating system that turns an established small business into a better-run, better-marketed, more profitable machine — and I show you exactly what to fix next.
Step 1 of 12
Business
What are you actually building? We get the real picture — revenue, structure, how the thing runs day to day — before we touch anything.
The Growth Assessment is where we find your biggest constraint.
Then we run the framework on it — in order — so you're not guessing what to do Monday morning.
You're not broke. You're leaking.
Underpriced jobs. A crew running at 60%. An agency billing you for reports nobody reads. Customers you should have fired two years ago. None of it feels like a crisis — it just quietly flushes six figures a year.
We find the leaks first. Then we fix them in order.
The shit that actually matters
Nobody hands you a "good luck" document. This is the working knowledge owners usually never figure out — the difference between being self-employed and actually running a company.
Is the agency you hired actually screwing you?
Most owners can't read the reports they're paying for. I'll show you the three numbers that tell you whether they're earning the check or cashing it.
Your employees trained you, not the other way around
If standards slip the second you're not looking, you've built a culture that teaches the owner to accept less. Here's how you flip it back.
When to raise prices — and how without losing the book
You're not 'being fair.' You're undercharging because nobody ever showed you the math. There's a right moment and a right way. I'll show you both.
Some customers need to be fired
The chronic complainer paying late at your lowest rate is costing you your best jobs. Knowing who to cut — and how — is a skill. Most owners never learn it.
Self-employed vs. actually running a company
If the business stops when you stop, you don't own a company — you own a job with extra paperwork. Closing that gap is the entire point of the framework.
The stuff that never shows up in a course
No PDF, no webinar, no '10x mindset.' This is the operating knowledge that separates the guy with a truck from the guy with a company. Taught straight.
Let's diagnose the business first.
You don't need another package to choose from. You need to know what's actually holding your business back.
Assess
We look at the business as a whole — money, sales, marketing, operations, people, and where you sit inside all of it.
Identify
We determine what's actually limiting growth right now, not the forty things you could theoretically improve.
Prescribe
I recommend the strategy and the level of advisory support that fits the stage and complexity of your company.
Execute
We work the plan together, in order, and measure progress against the numbers that move the business.
Recommended, not chosen.
After reviewing your business, we'll recommend the level of support that makes the most sense for where you are and where you're trying to go. Month-to-month, no long-term contracts.
Growth Advisory
For owners still close to the work who need the fundamentals of the company built right — margins, pricing, people, and a business that stops running through them.
- Profitability and pricing
- Operations and business systems
- Hiring and team management
- Sales systems and KPIs
- Owner accountability and leadership
- Reducing owner dependency
Scale Advisory
For established businesses with more moving parts or aggressive growth goals — leadership structure, financial strategy, and the decisions that come with getting bigger on purpose.
- Scaling operations and capacity
- Leadership and management teams
- Multi-location and expansion strategy
- Financial strategy
- Sales organization and org structure
- Executive-level accountability
The difference between the two isn't a longer feature list. It's the complexity and stage of your company. Tell me about the business and I'll tell you which one fits.
Need more than advice?
Business advisory identifies what needs to change. Our marketing division can help execute the customer-acquisition side of the strategy.
- SEO
- Local SEO
- Google Ads
- Meta Ads
- Website design & optimization
- Landing pages
- Conversion optimization
- Content strategy
- Lead generation
- Marketing strategy
Marketing services are separate from Shawn Duncan Business Advisory and are quoted separately. Marketing execution is never bundled into an advisory engagement.
When the fix is infrastructure.
Sometimes the assessment reveals a bottleneck no habit can fix — a sales process running on texts, spreadsheets and sticky notes. The Systems & Automation division designs and builds custom internal software around how your business actually operates: CRMs, dashboards, quoting, scheduling, portals and workflow automation.
- Custom CRM
- Employee & task management
- Lead tracking
- Sales dashboards
- Quoting systems
- Scheduling tools
- Customer portals
- Automated workflows
Custom software projects start at $5,000 and are scoped separately from advisory through a paid Systems Discovery & Blueprint. You're buying the system, not the hours it took to build it.
Last stop
Stop guessing. Get the system.
You've got the business. You've got the customers. What you don't have is the operating system that runs it without you holding it together. That's the whole job — and every client goes through the same framework to get there.
Shawn Duncan — Profitability / Ops / Owner Freedom