For founders, C-level and boards who can feel the strategy that built the company is no longer the one that will carry it forward.
Serotonin is an executive advisory for strategic reinvention.
Introduction
Optimization is great at improving the business you have. Unfortunately, growth rarely comes from doing more of what you already do. It comes from firsts.
A new market. A new category. A better business model. An idea big enough to change what the company is here to do.
That’s what strategy should be about.
I’m a fresh pair of eyes and a no-bullshit sparring partner for founders, CEOs and boards who want to see what they can’t see from inside the business.
I look at what you already have - your unfair advantages, particular capabilities, reputation, history and ideas - and ask what else it could become. I confront what is true, question what has become unquestionable and push the thinking until there is something worth betting on.
The work ends in a direction clear enough to commit to and consequential enough to transform the business. So money, talent and attention can go behind the few things that can actually change its trajectory.
The result might look surprisingly different from the company you started with. And strangely obvious once you see it.
I call that Return on Courage. The braver decision can also be the better economic one.
The next reason your business wins is still yours to invent.
Five questions that make it interesting
The three outcomes:
A New Reason to Win
Find the bigger economic opportunity hiding beyond optimization.
Shift The Capital
Money, talent and attention move behind the few things that can change the company's trajectory.
Make The First Move
Turn the new direction into its first real consequence: a decision made, an offer built, a market entered, something stopped.
I believe in the minimum effective dose of strategy.
Most consulting economics reward more people, more workstreams and more time. I’m interested in the opposite: how little strategy can we get away with if it’s the right strategy?
No army of consultants. No methodology looking for a problem. No dependency disguised as transformation. Just enough outside thinking to make a much bigger move possible. And enough conviction inside the business to carry it without me.
I don't think Return on Courage should only apply to my clients.
Fixed fees against named outcomes. Equity when I’m helping build something deeper. If I’m asking you to make a bet, I should be willing to make one too.