I've Always Bet on Relationships in Business

The work can be good and the relationship can still feel wrong. A client says everything is fine, but the conversation has changed. Shorter answers. Less openness. Something you cannot see in the project report. That is the layer I have always paid attention to.

Everyone is asking what technology is going to do to relationships in business.

I have been watching it go the other way my whole career.

What a business built on relationships actually looks like

I started in marketing and sales over twenty years ago. I built a business from nothing to approximately $10 million in revenue and a team approaching 50 people before its sale in 2023. Across my career, I have worked with many hundreds of clients, businesses and founders across industries.

The quality of the work and the strength of the relationship both mattered. One did not replace the other.

What the next person needs to understand

A good handover is more than a name and a status update. What has been promised? What matters to this client? What did they hesitate on last time? How do we follow through when nobody is watching? Shared knowledge gives the next person somewhere to begin; they still build trust in their own way.

I spent twenty years watching businesses underinvest in that layer and overinvest in everything built on top of it. Getting the strategy right. Getting the marketing right. Getting the offer right. While the actual reason things weren’t working went unexamined.

Technology has always been in service of the relationship

The business I built used technology throughout. Not to replace the relationship. To serve it. To free up time and attention so the people in the room could be more present. To capture what mattered so nothing important got lost between conversations.

That principle has not changed. What has changed is how powerful the tools have become.

At Two Icons Consulting, I bring that experience to founders using the OVERSIGHT methodology. The work looks at commercial priorities, leadership, ownership and the relationships that sit beneath them.

I look for the relationship layer.

What is the founder actually carrying? What are they not saying to their team, to their partner, to themselves? What is the weight that has been sitting underneath every decision and making everything harder than it needs to be?

That is where I start. Every time. Because if I get that wrong, everything built on top of it is built on the wrong foundation.

What founders who break through have in common

The founders I work with are smart. They know their business. They know their market. Most of them already know what the problem is.

What founders often need is space to look clearly at the relationship layer: what clients experience, what the team holds and what needs to become more visible in the business.

That is the work. That has always been the work. The tools just help me do it better.

Further reading: Grow Client Relationships Beyond the Founder and What I Got Wrong About AI.