Build a stronger business without every decision depending on you.
Founder & Growth Advisory
The strengths that helped you build your business can also make it difficult to step back. Customers want your involvement, your team looks to you for answers, and important decisions compete with everyday demands.
Cummins Business Ventures helps founders and CEOs assess their growth priorities, strengthen leadership responsibilities and build a business that can operate with greater independence.
When growth starts to depend too much on you…
You may have a capable team and a successful business, yet still find yourself involved in almost everything that matters.
This support may be relevant if:
• Decisions stall when you are unavailable.
• Key customer relationships sit primarily with you.
• Your leadership team’s responsibilities overlap or leave important gaps.
• You have several growth opportunities but no clear way to prioritize them.
• Day-to-day demands leave little time for longer-term decisions.
• You want to change your role without losing what makes the business successful.
The starting point is understanding which issues are genuinely holding the business back—and which deserve your attention first.
Growth Priorities
Assess the opportunities competing for your time and capital. We help you examine commercial assumptions, compare options and identify where management attention is most likely to make a meaningful difference.
Leadership & Decision-Making
Clarify who owns the important decisions and what your management team needs to take greater responsibility. This can include reviewing leadership roles, escalation points and the decisions that should remain with the founder.
Founder Independence
Identify where the business relies on your personal knowledge, relationships or approval. We help you consider practical ways to reduce that dependency while preserving your contribution to strategy, culture and key relationships.
What You Can Expect from an Engagement
We agree the outputs around the question you need to answer. Depending on the scope, an engagement can include:
• A founder-dependency assessment identifying where decisions, relationships and knowledge are concentrated.
• A review of growth opportunities, their assumptions and the resources they require.
• Recommendations for clearer leadership responsibilities and decision ownership.
• A prioritized action plan with agreed owners and review points.
• Ongoing advisory conversations to work through decisions and assess progress.
The aim is to give you a clearer basis for action: what deserves attention, who should take responsibility and what needs to happen next.
Working With You and Your Team
We begin by understanding your objectives for both the company and your own role. You may want to accelerate growth, give your leadership team more autonomy or prepare for a future transition.
Where useful and agreed, the work can include conversations with key managers and a review of relevant commercial information. We then work through the findings with you and establish practical priorities.
Your team’s involvement, implementation responsibilities and any ongoing support are defined in the engagement scope.
Advice Informed by Business Ownership
John Cummins brings the perspective of an entrepreneur who has built and exited a business, alongside his experience as an angel investor and strategic advisor.
That background informs an approach grounded in the realities of ownership: limited time, competing demands, personal investment and decisions that rarely come with complete information.
What still comes back to you?
If your business is ready for its next stage but too much still depends on your involvement, let’s discuss where the pressure sits and what you would like to change.