ABOUT
Your craft is one quadrant of a business. You shouldn't have to figure out the other three on your own.
You built a skill. You built a business around that skill. At some point, running the business started taking as much energy as doing the work — and nobody warned you that they're different disciplines entirely. That's not a failing. That's just the gap between being great at what you do and being great at running what you do.
The consulting industry's answer isn't built for you.
The consulting industry has an answer for this, but it's the wrong answer for most independent businesses. Enterprise frameworks built for companies with 500 employees don't translate down. MBA playbooks assume a team of specialists you don't have. Tech platforms promise to solve everything if you'll just configure all 47 modules.
None of that meets you where you actually are — which is running a real business, with real customers, where every hour spent learning new software is an hour not spent doing the work that pays.
How I got here.
My background was in finance, but every role I ever took on was an operational mess. Before I could do the job I was hired for, I'd end up spending 60% of my time asking "can we do this better? Why are we doing this? What do we actually need?" Eventually that became my profession — director of operations, operations consultant, or whatever title the role required. I've done that work for finance firms, fintechs, media businesses, designers, resorts, and independent shops. Building and fixing businesses where needed.
Why the approach works across every kind of business.
The pattern held across all of them. That's because the service or product a business sells is only one piece of the business itself. A resort can have a beautiful pool area, but if guests aren't informed and guided there, the value is lost. A maker can have a great product, but if the process to produce it isn't defined, quality drifts. A business can be growing, but without the right metrics, the owner can't tell if the growth is healthy or about to break something.
The specifics change. The operational layer doesn't. Every business needs documented processes, working systems, and managers who can actually manage — whether that business is five people or five hundred.
Why independent businesses. Why Vermont.
When I moved to Vermont, I realized this work matters more at community scale than at corporate scale. A Fortune 500 company has options. An independent business owner at a turning point — scaling up, preparing for a transition, trying to finally take a week off — has fewer, and the stakes are more personal.
Top Ops exists to give those owners the operational support they need at the moments they need it. Not a full-time Director of Operations they can't afford. Not a consulting engagement that ends with a 60-page deck and a handshake. Practical work, delivered when it'll make the most difference.