A tech lead who started a business because they're good at tech. Usually an IT guru that clients just wanted to have fix their IT issues and business just happened that way.
What they look like: They have deep technical expertise and high client trust but are often "stuck in the business" rather than working on it.
Strategy Status: Highly reactive. Strategy is often dictated by the next big client request or a major hardware failure.
Strengths: Exceptional problem-solving and technical "heroics."
Major Gaps: * Sales/Marketing: They rely almost entirely on word-of-mouth. They often lack a formal sales funnel or lead generation engine.
Standardisation: A lot of clients have a custom setup, making it difficult to service at scale or automate efficiently.
The "Owner Bottleneck": No major decisions or complex repairs can happen without the founder's involvement.
Your numbers tell a story—but only if someone's watching them.
Track KPIs that matter: customer health scores, delivery bottlenecks, margin erosion. Monthly dashboards guiding planning & decisions.
COOP resource - reporting analyst
Catch issues before clients do. QA reviews tickets, projects, and implementations with fresh eyes. Reduces escalations, protects your reputation, and frees your techs from second-guessing their work.
Quality becomes systematic, not accidental.
COOP resource - QA coordinator
A pricing coordinator is an interesting service feature.
A lot of IT professionals are somewhat running blind when it comes to pricing and win or lose a deal how do you know you've got your price right.
A pricing coordinator is not only keeping on top of what the market is saying, they also help you price and cost your deals to stay competitive.
A technical owner can lean into the marketing capabilities of the COOP.
Updating your website and social media new content. Creating and updating client portals. Reporting and analysing marketing activities.
Marketing can move into the 'in progress' tray start to win you new leads.
Eliminate friction costing countless hours of wasted time in your business.
If you want to scale your business + exit at a high multiple - demonstrated and documented systems are priceless.
Eliminating waste equals cost savings and more profit.
COOP resource - Admin / SOP Support
Mapping the customer journey and improving what's within your control and managing the rest.
Sales training thought to PSA optimisation and streamlined billing. These are all roles and functions you can leverage to save time and money.
From time to time members may need legal guidance from someone who knows IT services.
Stay updated & informed: the COOP can keep you updated on relevant legal and regulatory changes impacting your business. And if ever you need some legal muscle the member group + outside legal assistance provides the confidence needed, when it's needed.
COOP resource - Group Legal Counsel (external)
#1. Objective - knowing technology continually changes and develops, so will the COOP resources - to stay ahead of the needs of members.
The more a member shares and is involved, the more value they can create for themselves and others.
A few simple questions will usually highlight the situation.
Important: whether you're a start-up or reaching $3m, the journey is similar for everyone. The specific time and situation will be slightly different but getting from A to B is nothing new.
People get so busy dealing with the day to day that they don't have key information at hand.
Effective planning and operations requires key business information. If you don't have clarity, it will cause delays and hurt your business, maybe not today but at some time in the future.
One example: How much team capacity is there to do more work? Most people will have some answer to this question. "they're really busy", "we can do more work with no new headcount", "a ticket takes 15 minutes" and so on.
If you don't know in detail all the elements that make up the data in this question, what's the plan to manage it all and grow?
Elements:
The issue is: without clarity you're running the business with one eye closed.
Knowing the 80/20 rule vs (prepared to apply the rule)
The 80/20 works. A few small changes move the needle — fast — in the right direction.
Start with clarity, then you can make informed decisions with quantifiable results.
How do you get clarity? You start to measure everything.
Benchmark your business today - see where you end up tomorrow.
Get real about where you are right now
Most owners know something's off. But they don't have clarity on what or how much.
The problem: not everything is quantifiable at first.
As time goes on, you can compare the scores + with good reporting you can analyse the cause and effect over time.
That gap in information? Fill that gap with a COOP reporting analyst. Get clarity.
Once you start to get clarity and reports are getting streamlined, you start to question cause and effect. At this stage, you ask for different numbers and metrics to score.
This is good. You're starting to build a repeatable system of reports that actually mean something to you.
With reporting, we're not talking about traditional management accounts.
The reports that will make a difference into the future contain the sort of information that drives results right now and into the future. This is not something only big companies can do. You have access as part of your membership.
Real compounding reports, covering key business drivers, including;
Whatever your business needs, start building that reporting capability today.
• Tighter controls over time allocations.
• No new headcount - 20% more service support each month (estimate) = from $3.5k to $10k more monthly revenue
• COOP membership: $2k/month
Payback period: less than 1 month
The full months investment is already recovered, and we haven't even touched marketing yet.
Growth Blueprint:
focus on - customers
focus on - delivery
optimal outcome = balanced resources.
Most small business owners, know what to do and those that don't can learn quickly. Ask yourself, if I know what to do, then what's stopping me?
The short answer; a lack of time and money.
The next step you take can change your life. Small steps before you start running.
"put the rocks in first"
The Big Rocks that build the foundations are the #1. priority. What matters to your business might be different from the person beside you but those big priorities are the same.
Sequence matters because diverting valuable cashflow to unimportant or right thing at the wrong time will hurt.
Small improvements stack up.
80:20 cleanup creates disproportionate positive returns.
Some quick research will illustrate a common thread when it comes to the #1 most important thing. I like the one below.
“revenue you can keep.”
That’s the overlap of:
Sales (create demand + close + repeat)
Delivery (build + retain + expand + repeat)
Or Happy Profitable Clients + Happy Efficient People Doing Great Work.
The COOP membership enables your business to put it's best foot forward.
