You have a team.
So why does everything
still come back to you?
I help founders find out why their business still runs through them, and what to change.
Book a conversation →You keep telling yourself it'll get easier.
Once I hire someone.Once the team's trained up.Once this busy period is over.Once we hit that revenue goal.
And then you go home, and part of you is still at work.
The business might be doing well. So why can't you switch off?
Maybe the problem isn't what you think it is.
You've chased more revenue, hired someone, switched tools and tidied processes, and some of it helped, a little.
- Customers still come to you when something goes wrong.
- Your team asks you before deciding.
- You still catch the things that should have been handled by now.
There's a team, but the decisions still end up with you.
How I work.
Listen
I start with what's actually happening: with you, your team, and the problems that keep finding their way back to your desk.
Understand
I trace those problems back to what's underneath them. Not the obvious explanation, but what's actually creating the pattern.
Change
Then we agree what needs to change, whether that's responsibilities, decisions, processes or something else entirely, and you make the call.
Your involvement should be a choice, not a requirement.
The goal isn't to get you out of your business. It's for you to know what needs your attention, for your team to know what's theirs, and for you to have room to think instead of constantly reacting.
I won't promise you a number. I don't know your business yet. What I can promise is that I'll find what's really in the way.
In their words.
We started by explaining our business model, to sharing problems within our business we find hard to overcome.
He challenged us with questions that really had us thinking about our whole business, this really helped us to see the bigger picture of our business and the goals we need to achieve to move forward. His advice was great and realistic and left us with changing the way we should be thinking in order to get closer to our targets and goals.
We are looking forward to working with him and having him on board with us to help us take our business to the next level.
This review doesn't do the conversation justice.
When I first mentioned my interest in a talk with him, I didn't know what to expect. What to ask for, nor what I wanted to do with my business. By asking the right questions, he knew what I actually wanted.
It was a discovery for me as well.
His advice intrigued me and made me think differently about my business and myself.
Had a great conversation with him.
Received clear and, most importantly, pragmatic guidance on how to get my business to the next level. Great to talk to, comes very prepared, develops a deep understanding of what drives you, and caters his advice accordingly.
If you’re not sure whether or not to go for it, take that leap and have a chat.
Had a great conversation with him.
I had a great time talking with him. I can tell he’s a professional in his field, just by the way he talked me through everything. On top of that, he gave me the feeling that we knew each other for years.
In short… I’m sold. And I’m sure with him on my side, my business and I will have a great future ahead! If you’re not sure whether or not to go for it, take that leap and have a chat.
If this sounds familiar, let's look at what's actually going on.
A short call. We'll talk about what's going on in your business, and you'll leave knowing whether I can help.
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Who you’d be talking to.
I’m Malik, and I run Obi Consulting.
Before starting Obi, I worked across customer-facing roles, marketing, e‑commerce and my own businesses. I ended up seeing the same kinds of problems from very different positions: dealing with them, fixing them, and eventually being responsible for the business itself.
Seeing it from those different positions made me realise how easy it is to misread a problem when you’re too close to it.
When you’re close to the customer, you see where the experience actually breaks. Move further inside and you start seeing what sits behind it: a process that technically exists but still depends on one person, a customer problem that looks like a support issue but is really an information problem, or a team member who seems like the problem until you look at what they’ve actually been given to work with.
Running my own businesses taught me what that feels like when you’re the one responsible for everything.
You’re close to everything. You know why a decision was made, why someone does things a certain way, what happened three months ago that nobody else remembers. That doesn’t mean you don’t see the problems. Usually, you see more than anyone else does. It’s just difficult to step outside something you know so well and see why the same things keep finding their way back to you.
A business can look busy, functional and even successful from the outside while being held together by a handful of people on the inside.
- What keeps coming back to you?
- Where does your team still get stuck?
- What decisions only you seem to be able to make?
- What has everyone accepted as “just how things are”?
Those are the things I want to understand with you.
Because somewhere in there is usually a clearer picture of what the business actually needs from you, and what it doesn’t.
Before you book.
How do I know if this is actually for a business like mine?
You're probably a good fit if you've built a business that's working, have a team around you, and still find that too much of the business depends on you.
Maybe your team comes to you before making decisions. Maybe customers, suppliers or problems keep finding their way back to you. You don't need a huge company. You do need enough going on that your involvement has become a problem or is starting to become one.
If you're still trying to find your first consistent customers or doing almost everything yourself, I'm probably not the right person for you yet.
But if you're thinking, “I have a team. The business is working. So why does so much of it still come back to me?” that's exactly the kind of problem I help founders solve.
What if I spend an hour talking to you and get nothing useful out of it?
That's a fair concern. Your time is valuable, and I don't expect you to spend an hour with me just because the conversation is free.
I won't pretend I can guarantee you'll walk away with a solution. I don't know your business yet. What I can promise is that I won't fill the hour with generic business advice. I'll ask questions, challenge what we're assuming, and look for the reason the same problems keep coming back to you.
You may leave with a clearer understanding of what's actually getting in the way. You may discover the problem isn't what you thought it was. Or we may find that I'm not the right person to help.
Any of those is more useful than pretending I have an answer before I've understood the business.
Is this secretly a sales call?
No.
The first conversation is about understanding what's actually going on in your business and deciding whether there's a problem I can genuinely help you with.
If I think I can help, I'll tell you how. If I don't, I'll tell you that too. And if there is a fit, you don't have to decide anything on the call. You can take what we discussed and decide what you want to do.
I'd rather have an honest conversation that goes nowhere than turn a useful conversation into a sales pitch.
Are you just going to tell me what I already know?
Maybe you already know the obvious problem. You know your team asks you too many questions, you need to delegate more, and certain things should be running without you.
But knowing what's happening isn't always the same as knowing why it keeps happening.
That's where I come in. I'll look at what's underneath the pattern: how decisions are made, where responsibility sits, what your team has access to, and what you've unintentionally built around yourself.
I'm not there to give you advice you've already heard. I'm there to help you understand what's actually keeping the problem in place, and what needs to change.
What if you judge me?
You built the business, so of course some of its problems can feel personal. If things aren't working the way you'd like them to, it can be uncomfortable to have someone else come in and look at them.
I'm not there to decide whether you've been a good or bad founder. I'm there to understand what's actually happening and why. Businesses change as they grow, and things that worked at one stage can become problems later. Responsibilities get blurred, people get used to coming to you, and you can end up holding things together simply because that's how it has always been done.
That's not something I need to judge. It's something I need to understand.
And if I see something that isn't working, I'll tell you. The point isn't to make you feel good about the business. It's to get an honest picture of what's going on, so we can work out what needs to change.