For Founders Who Carry the Weight of the Business

A large part of my job is helping clients make better decisions. Sometimes the right answer is already somewhere in front of them. The problem is that when you are inside a business every day, surrounded by the same people, the same numbers and the same problems, it becomes very easy to miss what somebody from the outside can see in ten minutes.

I ask a lot of questions. I notice patterns quickly, and I pay attention when something does not quite add up. Quite often, the problem a client brings into the room is not the problem we end up working on. We keep pulling at the thread until we find what is actually going on.

And I will tell you what I think. If you are making a bad decision, I will tell you. If you are wasting time on something that does not matter, I will tell you. If somebody in your business is in the wrong seat, we will talk about it. And if the bottleneck turns out to be you, I am not going to pretend it is somebody else.

Quite often, the answer is less complicated than it first appears. Make the decision. Have the difficult conversation. Put the right person in the right seat. Stop spending six months trying to rescue something you already know is not working. A lot can change when you stop circling the problem and deal with it.

I have spent more than 22 years building businesses myself, so I care about what happens in the real world after our conversation. I want you to make better decisions, avoid mistakes that did not need to happen and spend more of your time on the things that genuinely require you. I want stronger people around you and a business that does not need your fingerprints on every decision before anything can move.

Success Stories

Real Clients. Real Success. Real Results.
From feeling stuck professionally to landing a role far beyond what he expected. This is Egis’s story:

“Within the first couple of months of coaching, I achieved several incredible outcomes. I found an amazing, well-paid job, far beyond what I had expected, all with Jake’s support. I also entered a happy relationship, moved into the flat I had always dreamed of, started travelling the world, and gained a deeper understanding of myself. The journey has been truly transformative.”

Egis — Business Change Manager at London’s Leading Law Firm

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The Operating System for Winning

Jake Smolarek, business coach and entrepreneur based London UK

Over the years, I’ve developed a number of frameworks that I use repeatedly with clients. They give us a way to take a complicated situation apart, see what actually matters and decide what happens next.

I like frameworks for one reason: they make complicated things easier to see. A framework earns its place if it helps us make a better decision faster. If it doesn’t, I bin it. Sometimes the best tool in the room is still a whiteboard and one uncomfortable question.

The sequence I come back to most is:

**Learn → Practice → Master → Become a F*cking Legend**

There is an order to becoming good at almost anything. Learn the fundamentals. Practise them until they become reliable. Master them. Then you have earned the right to improvise.

Three other frameworks I use a lot are:

Vision GPS:

Vision GPS gives us direction when too many things are competing for attention. We define where you are actually trying to get to, what matters now and what can wait. It also gives us a simple filter for decisions: does this move you closer or not?

The 10–80–10 Rule:

Starting something is usually exciting. Finishing it feels good. The difficult part is everything in between. The middle 80% is repetitive, occasionally boring and full of opportunities to stop. This framework is about staying with the process long enough for the work to compound.

No 0% Days:

No 0% Days is exactly what it sounds like. On a good day, you may make a lot of progress. On a bad day, you make less. The rule is that you still move. I have used this principle for years because consistency solves more problems than occasional bursts of motivation.

These frameworks have developed through years of coaching and running businesses. If you want to know more about where they came from, read the full story of Jake Smolarek.

The Coaching Library of Alexandria

I have spent years building the coaching library below. Each guide goes deep into a specific area of coaching and is available to read in full.

I don’t write short articles just to have something new to publish. If I cover a subject, I want to cover it properly. Some of these guides are longer than books. That is deliberate. Pick the one that is relevant to the problem in front of you and use whatever helps.

Business Coaching: What Is Business Coaching: The No-BS Operating System for CEOs and Founders (55,000+ words)

Executive Coaching: What Is Executive Coaching: The No-BS Operating System for Leaders at the Top (31,000+ words)

Accountability Coaching: What is Accountability Coaching: The No-Excuse Operating System for High Performers (52,000+ words)

High Performance Coaching: What Is High Performance Coaching: The System for Relentless Execution and Engineered Results (46,000+ words)

Team Performance Coaching: What Is Team Coaching: The Operating System for High-Stakes Teams (65,000+ words)

Coaching For Coaches, Be a World-Class Coach: The Coaching Architect: How to Be a World-Class Coach, Engineering Human Systems (80,000+ words)

My Clients Say

Don’t Take My Word For It. Read the Receipts

I’m often the only person in my clients’ lives who will tell them the brutal, unfiltered truth. Because once you’re in the arena, as a founder, an executive, or a high-stakes professional, the honest feedback stops.

The examples below show what that standard has looked like in practice.