David Roberts

Directions Website

David Roberts Business Advisor To 8 Figure Owners | Helping Owners Build Businesses That Run Without Them | DM "TEAM" For The Free Briefing

02/10/2026

A cautionary tale.. A few years ago I sat down with my leadership team and we agreed our priorities for the quarter. We were at about £15m.. going for a growth year..

Clear, focused, everyone bought in. I was really pleased with it.

And then without realising I became a bit of a thorn in the side of progress.. within two weeks I'd sent them four or five emails asking them to look into things that looked interesting to me.

New ideas. New opportunities..

My sales director came in and shut the door and told me to stop. Polite and all that but straight up.

And he was right because every one of those emails sent mixed messages and diluted the focus on what we'd agreed ..

I was the biggest distraction in my own business.

Looking back I'm very grateful we'd built a culture where someone could say that to the boss. Not every business has that.

The thing is, most CEOs and business owners don't see this part of themselves. It feels like energy and leadership.

From the other side of the desk it can look like a person who’s always moving the goalposts.

So can I just ask.. if you were sidetracking distracting and diluting the energy in your business, who in your team would tell you to stop?

If the answer is nobody, that might be worth a look.

DM me SCORE if you want the owner dependency scorecard.

01/10/2026

If your team's favourite phrase is "we'll have to ask [insert your name]".. it’s costing you time and money.

Commercial judgement is probably the most valuable asset in the business.

How you price, sales mix, when to walk away, priorities, problem solving, what good looks like..

If you’re increasingly being asked to approve or peruse then that means the ability to judge and to decide is locked inside your head.

Not because the team can't think. Because they don't have your context.

And if this sounds a bit basic to you please look again.. every new level you reach brings a new set of decisions that become part of your routine.

The answer is to turn your best thinking into a few simple rules the team can own..

So run this with your team on Monday:

"What are the ten questions you most often bring to me.. and what rule would mean you'd never need to ask again?"

Assess for risk, implement the new rules, notice the difference, repeat the process again in 6 months..

DM me the word SCORE for my owner dependency scorecard. It helps you notice what's stuck in your head.

Cheers!

30/09/2026

When you come to sell your business, here is a key question a buyer will want to answer, probably in the first meeting..

What happens to your business when you leave?

I've sat on both sides of that table. Buying businesses and selling them.. more than 20 times.

And I've seen owners becoming noticeably uncomfortable when that question is asked.

I’ve also seen the decision not to go ahead being taken without the question even being asked.

If you know now that you’ll want to sell in a few years, why leave yourself in the position of having to offer to stick around for a year.

Even if you want to do this, making it an option and not a necessity is by far the best strategy.

Any form of dependency on the owner or founders is a red flag.

Whether it’s a risk to product development, sales, customer relationships, leadership, decision making .. if your presence makes future revenue more predictable it doesn’t matter.

The problem is that a buyer sees it as risk. And risk shows up in the deal.. a lower price, a longer earn out, more of your money tied to you staying on.

Which is normally highly undesirable at the end of ten or twenty years work.

So here's one to mull over this week. List all the things you do that makes your business work. How would that stuff happen if you weren't there?

Check out my owner dependency scorecard. It’s 5 questions only and highlights how much of the value of your business relies on you.

If you lead a 5-50m business and want to know who really runs things don’t look at the org chart.. Look at your inbox. C...
28/09/2026

If you lead a 5-50m business and want to know who really runs things don’t look at the org chart..

Look at your inbox.

Can I just check with you before we..?
What do you think about this one?
Happy for me to go ahead?
Let me know what you think..

These are all decisions that still need you.

And the problem is that each one feels small. It only takes two minutes and it’s quicker just to answer it.

So that’s what you do.. Fifty times a week.

Without meaning to you've become the sign off in your own business.. which means nothing moves faster than you can reply.

I've done this. I thought I was being helpful, available, supportive and on it.

What I was actually doing was teaching the team that the decision lived with me.

I didn’t realise that I was creating a punishing bottleneck.. and holding people back..

So whether you think this is you or not, here’s one to try this week.

Every time someone asks you to approve something, write it down.

On Friday, look at the list and ask yourself.. which of these should never have come to me?

That list is your starting point.

If you want to see where else decisions are stuck with you, DM me the word SCORE for my owner dependency scorecard.

D.

27/09/2026

If you stepped away for 60 days, what would break first?

DM or comment SCORE and I'll send you my owner dependency scorecard.. four minutes to see where your business still depends on you.

Follow for more..

25/09/2026

The highest value work available to an owner of an established business is often on themselves.

And without it I’ve seen business owners rapidly become the binding commercial constraint in the business and the blocker to growth.

Why the owner is the ceiling:
• Your business will not consistently exceed the level of the person at the top
• Your leadership team will not out own an owner who can't fully let go
• Your culture will not out perform the behaviour you model
• The business cannot grow past you until you grow past the patterns that built it.

When you raise your ceiling, your level, you create the space for your people to push you up and out of the way.

The patterns holding you back are often excess reliance on your strengths..

Example.. Being across everything is vital at £2m but a choker and bottleneck at £15m.

Being the final decision is faster and safer when you were small but a massive constraint now you have a capable team.

Stepping in to save a situation was almost heroic once and now it’s exactly why your team never fully owns it.

Almost all the owners I’ve met who reclaim their time while still building and go on to sell well when the time is right? They all work on themselves..

Grow the owner, and everything downstream of the owner grows with them.

DM me the word STORY for the briefing.

24/09/2026

If you're worried you’re leaving margin on the table this is the fastest fix available.

Stop pricing what you do. Price the transformation you create.

Yeah right I hear you say.. but if you can suspend your disbelief and just read on for a sec there’s something that every business can do below..

Your customers don't want your product or your service. They want what's on the other side of it.

The risk removed, the growth, the status, the problem solved, the comfort, the time or money saved..

In fact, your customers probably don’t even care about your product or service. That’s just a deliverable.. a vehicle to get to the transformation or result.

Price the vehicle and you compete on cost, where there's always going to be someone cheaper (unless that’s you).

Price the destination and you compete on value, where there's always far more room..

Also, to price on value you actually have to care about what your customer cares about – to work out what it’s worth to a customer to get where they're trying to go and how they want to get there..

Run this prompt with your team: If we had to put our prices up by 20% what would we have to be able to promise about our product and service so customers would happily pay that and still think they’re getting great value.

Putting a little time into this is the best way of working out what sets you apart.

So it’s not just about pricing.. it’s about how how position and package what you do..

I've seen a sharper proposition, priced around the transformation rather than the task, lift margins 38% on the same volume inside a year. Nothing else changed.. Just pricing and positioning at true value.

At scale this compounds quickly and often carries next to no new delivery cost, moving profit and improving your multiple on exit. Double bubble..

Price like the category leader you already are.
DM me the word STORY for the briefing.

23/09/2026

If you’re a business owner or CEO and feel like you can’t let go or you’re frustrated because your team can’t or won’t own it..

You've probably got a capable team. Turning it into one that owns outcomes is the next move..

I’ve seen owner dependency trash growth potential and exit value in so many businesses..

And this comes down to one change and one hard decision.

The change: stop handing your leaders tasks. Start handing them outcomes.

A task keeps the thinking with you. An outcome shifts both doing and thinking to them. The moment that the thinking moves, is the moment you stop being the constraint.

The thing is that you have to make it work.. and for a successful owner of an established business, this is where the hard decision is made.

You have to decide you’re going to let your leaders determine how the result gets delivered.

Set the mechanism that keeps you hands off but hands ready initially..

And decide you’re going to resist stepping in when it isn't exactly how you'd have done it..

Then let them do it differently, be wrong every now and then, own it, and learn.

Because I see a lot of owners of good businesses hand over the outcome and then hover like a helicopter parent..

They review, they correct, they take it back.

That isn't ownership and a capable senior team can feel it.

So they hold back, and stay put.. and so does your business.

Give the outcome. Give the authority. Then hold your nerve.
That's what turns senior people who wait into senior people who make it happen..

A team that owns it is exactly what makes a business both better to run and more valuable to sell.

I sold a business for £27m on the back of this. I didn’t get it straightaway but when I did, the outcomes belonged to the team not to me.. and the team delivered.

DM me the word SCORE to get my owner dependency scorecard.

22/09/2026

If too many decisions still funnel back to you despite your capable team, the fix is probably not more delegation but more precision.

When you define your destination and it’s a bit vague.. eg grow the business, exit in a few years.. your leadership team has nothing concrete to align to. So the judgement calls have to come to you, because you're the only one with the full picture.

When you define it precisely.. turnover, margin, sales mix, outcomes, valuation, the date.. things change across the whole business.

What precision does that delegation alone can't:
• Your team can check their own decisions against specifics, so they stop bringing them to you and you can let go
• Cross functional priorities become clear because destination outranks loudest voice
• People can be trusted with ambiguity, because the end game resolves it
• You're removed from decisions unless you’re really needed..

Precision about your end game isn't just a direction, it sets a frame for decision making that over time becomes the engine / battery / energy source for the business..

If you’ve got a bottleneck you may have a vagueness problem that will only get worse if you delegate more without improving precision first..

And a business where good decisions happen without the owner having to get involved is worth more than one where they don’t.

Define your destination.. make it sharp.. Then see what good stuff starts happening without needing you to push it..

The first step is knowing where you are right now ..

DM me the word SCORE for the free owner dependency audit

21/09/2026

The reframe that shapes how a business owner builds from here:

The goal was never to be the owner that the business depends on. It's to become the owner who built a business that runs and grows independently of them.

It’s the difference between building a job for life and building an asset of value.

And for someone running a 7 or 8 figure business, this is not about caring less, or checking out.

It's about building deliberately towards a business that can run without you.. so that your involvement becomes a choice you make, rather than a sentence the business hands you.

That distinction between the trapped owner with no choice and the owner who does the work they love, at the level they want pays out three times:

• Now: you get time back, and you invest it in the work only you love and are brilliant at, instead of the ambiguity that just lands on you
• Along the way: the business gets stronger, because a business deliberately built to run without its owner is, by definition, lower risk and better run.. clearer, more accountable, more resilient
• At exit: it sells for a higher multiple, because "runs without the owner and a great management team" is one of the key things that a buyer pays a premium for

Your destiny in your own hands while you build. A stronger business as you go. Wealth when you exit. It's one project.

I’ve built a quick audit tool so you can see where you are on this right now..

DM me the word SCORE and I’ll send you the link..

Address

London

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when David Roberts posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category