For founders of scaling companies

The company outgrew the way you run it.

Private, one to one coaching for founders, owners, and the leaders who carry the business with them. The company outgrew the way it was run. These conversations are about the person at the center of it.

Apply for a conversation

20+ years: coaching leaders
8,000+: paid coaching sessions
36 months: average engagement
6 companies: coached through exit

If any of this sounds familiar

Founders of growing companies tell me versions of these in our first conversation.

Everything still runs through you.

Decisions stack up on your desk. The team waits for you, then wonders why things are slow.

Your early people have hit their ceiling.

The ones who got you here are loyal and working hard. Some of them are in seats they can no longer fill, and you owe them a conversation.

You are still the best salesperson and the best fixer.

It is how you built the company. It is also why you cannot step back.

Your number two relationship is strained.

You hired someone to run operations. You keep stepping back in, and you can both feel it.

Your own money is on the line.

No investors to absorb a bad quarter. A personal guarantee on the line of credit. You carry it home every night.

You are thinking about what comes next.

A sale, a recapitalization, or stepping back in a few years. Right now the company is worth less than it should be, because it depends on you.

What this is, and what it is not

What it is

Private, one to one, twice a month
About you as a leader: how you decide, delegate, and handle pressure
Built around the commitments you already made with your team

What it is not

Not consulting. I will not tell you how to run the business.
Not therapy, though we will talk about more than work when it matters

What we work on

Getting out of the middle.: Which decisions are yours, which belong to your number two or your team, and what it takes to stop taking them back.
The conversation you owe.: Telling a loyal early employee the seat has changed. Saying it plainly and with respect.
From doing to leading.: Leading people who are better than you at their jobs, and letting them be.
Carrying the weight.: Running a company on your own money without letting the pressure run you, or your home.
You and your number two.: You hired someone to run the business day to day, and you keep stepping back in. We work on why, and on what it takes to stay out.

Selected engagements

Twenty years of leaders, in very different rooms.

Most of these are venture backed companies you may know. The patterns I work with do not change with the cap table. A founder who cannot let go looks the same at a software company and a distribution company. The difference in a privately held business is that the stakes sit closer to home.

All relationships are held with full discretion.

An illustrative scenario

Illustrative scenario

A founder and CEO, $40 million services company, 180 people

The situation. Twelve years in, no outside capital, and growth of twenty percent a year. He hired a president eighteen months ago and still approves most decisions over a certain size himself. His first two hires lead departments that have doubled. He has a personal guarantee on the credit line and has not taken more than three days off in two years.

What we worked on. A written agreement with his president: which decisions are hers, which are his, and when he can step in. The conversation with one of his first two hires about a new role. What it would take for the company to run a month without him.

What changed. Decisions moved off his desk. His first hire took a role that fit, and stayed. He took two weeks off, and the company had one of its best months.

A composite example of common situations, not a specific client.

How it works

1
The start.
Onboarding interviews, a day watching you lead, and a clear look at the pressure on you and the business.
2
The work.
Two calls a month around a development plan we write together, with a structured 360 review between months six and nine.
3
The long arc.
Some leaders complete the work and move on, and many stay on a lighter cadence for years.

How an engagement works

Confidential

What we talk about stays between us. If someone referred you, they hear only that we are working together, and only with your permission.

From leaders who have done this work.

I have been working with Ray for over a year. When I started, I struggled to let go of early-stage founder and CEO responsibilities and patterns that held me back as a leader and, subsequently, the growth of our product and team. Ray allowed me to recognize and appreciate outdated protocols that were part of my older operating system as a leader. This mindset shift created a rapid adoption of new processes and allowed me to embrace the necessary evolution to relentlessly improve leadership as a craft.

Phil Wagner, CEO and Startup Founder

As CTO and Co-Founder of SEVENROOMS, I faced several key challenges: carving out time for introspection, motivating my team while delivering constructive feedback, building a high-performing management team, and establishing clear communication channels to ensure company-wide alignment. Ray's guidance helped us gain leadership clarity and improve our product development process. We're now shipping faster with increased velocity and significantly less rework.

Kinesh Patel, CTO and Co-Founder, SevenRooms

Ray's guidance and expertise provides a platform which allows leaders to adapt their leadership style to drive performance and strategic execution.

Eddie Mendivil, President, Elevate Health Sciences

About Ray

Ray Brejcha is an executive coach. For more than twenty years he has coached CEOs, founders, and the leaders around them, across more than eight thousand paid sessions.

Before coaching, he spent twenty four years in sales and leadership, founded two companies, and carried revenue responsibility for teams of up to forty five people. He has sat in the leadership meeting, carried the number, and felt the pressure of a payroll that depends on his decisions.

For six years he was a partner at Neuberg Gore, an executive coaching firm that has worked with more than twelve hundred CEOs and their executive teams. Today he works one to one with a small number of leaders each year.

If this sounds useful, let us talk.