Operator-advisor & fractional COO · Bath

Calm, profitable operations for founder-led businesses doing £1M–£10M.

You've built something real. Now the growth is outrunning the systems — and you're the bottleneck. We steady the operation so it runs without living in your inbox.

Built on the Steady-State Operating System™
Book a discovery call See the engagements

30 minutes, no pitch — we'll tell you honestly if we're not the right fit.

James Marlow Vale
17 years operating · ex-COO, two scale-ups
17 yrs operating inside founder-led businesses
40+ founder businesses steadied since 2014
If this sounds familiar

Revenue went up. Then the chaos went up faster.

The early scrappiness that got you to a few million is now the thing holding you back. The business depends on you to hold it together — and that's not a system, it's a single point of failure.

  • You are the bottleneck. Every decision, fire and hand-off routes back through you. The team waits; you can't take a clean week off.
  • Margin is leaking quietly. Turnover is healthy but profit is thinner than it should be — and nobody can tell you exactly where it goes.
  • You're working in it, not on it. Strategy keeps getting bumped by the operational scramble. The important loses to the urgent, every week.
Three ways to work together

Scoped engagements, transparent investment.

No open-ended retainers that drift. Each engagement has a clear shape, a clear owner and a clear thing you walk away with. Indicative pricing below so you arrive to the call ready.

ENGAGEMENT 01

Operations Diagnostic

For founders who suspect something's wrong but can't name it.

A focused two-to-three week deep-read of your operation — people, process, numbers and decision flow — against the Steady-State framework.

  • A written diagnostic of where the business actually loses time, margin and momentum.
  • A prioritised 90-day roadmap you could run with or without us.
  • A 90-minute findings session with you and your leadership.
from £6,500 fixed
Book a discovery call
Most chosen ENGAGEMENT 02

Founder's 90-Day Reset

For founders who need it fixed, not just diagnosed.

Diagnostic plus hands-on delivery. We install the core operating rhythm and clear the three biggest bottlenecks alongside your team over one focused quarter.

  • The Steady-State operating cadence installed and running, not just designed.
  • Three priority bottlenecks cleared with the people who own them.
  • Weekly working sessions; a calmer business by the end of the quarter.
from £18,000 / quarter
Book a discovery call
ENGAGEMENT 03

Fractional COO Retainer

For founders who need a senior operator in the room, ongoing.

A part-time COO without the full-time hire. We own the operating system, chair the rhythm and carry operational load so you get your strategic time back.

  • One to two days a week of senior operational ownership.
  • We run the weekly and monthly rhythm so it never drifts.
  • Rolling quarter, 30 days' notice. No lock-in, no surprises.
from £6,000 / month
Book a discovery call

Not sure which fits? That's exactly what the 30-minute call is for — no pitch, just a straight answer.

How it works

A system, not a scramble.

Four clear stages so you always know where we are and what's next. The work doesn't drift, because the process won't let it.

1

Discovery call

30 minutes. You tell me what's grinding; I tell you honestly whether I can help and which engagement fits. No pitch.

2

Diagnostic

I go deep on your people, numbers and decision flow to find where time, margin and momentum actually leak.

3

Roadmap

A prioritised 90-day plan with owners and sequencing — the few things that matter, not a wish-list of forty.

4

We run it with you

I work alongside your team to install the operating system and clear the bottlenecks — until it runs without me.

The method

The Steady-State Operating System™

A business doing £1M–£10M doesn't need more hustle. It needs an operation that holds its shape under load. Four pillars, applied in order, turn a founder-dependent scramble into something that runs itself.

Pillar one

Clarity

A single, honest picture of the operation: who owns what, what good looks like, and the handful of numbers that actually run the business.

Pillar two

Cadence

A weekly and monthly operating rhythm that surfaces problems early and makes decisions on time — so the founder stops being the escalation path.

Pillar three

Capacity

Removing the bottlenecks — usually you. We push ownership down to the people closest to the work and give them the room to carry it.

Pillar four

Compounding

Small, steady improvements locked in each quarter. Calm isn't a one-off cleanup — it's a system that keeps getting better without drama.

Results & case studies

What "steadied" actually looks like.

Real businesses, real names, real before-and-after numbers. Situation, what we did, and the measurable outcome — no vague praise.

Wetherbridge Foods Speciality food manufacturer · £6.2M turnover
+5.8pts
net margin in 9 months
from 7.1% to 12.9%
−60%
founder hours in operations
from ~55 to ~22 per week

The founder was the only person who knew how the whole thing fit together.

Situation

Growing fast on reputation, but every production hiccup and pricing call landed on the founder's desk. Margin was slipping and no one could say why. Two near-misses on big retail orders had shaken the team.

What we did

Ran the Diagnostic, then a 90-Day Reset: installed a weekly production-and-margin rhythm, rebuilt the costing model line by line, and handed three decision areas to named owners with clear guardrails.

Outcome

Net margin nearly doubled, the founder pulled back to two days a week in operations, and the team shipped its largest-ever order with zero escalations.

See if your numbers could move like this — book a call
Tamar Digital Agency · £3.4M turnover, 28 staff
+22%
project profitability
recovered scope leakage
2 days
a week handed back to the MD
previously firefighting daily

Busy, growing, and quietly losing money on half its projects.

Situation

Revenue up 40% in two years, but profit flat. Scope crept on every account, delivery deadlines slipped, and the MD spent her days resolving client escalations instead of running the business.

What we did

Fractional COO retainer: introduced a weekly delivery cadence, a simple project-health dashboard, and clear scope-change discipline. Coached two senior leads to chair their own accounts.

Outcome

Project profitability up 22% within two quarters, escalations down sharply, and the MD reclaimed two strategic days a week — the first in three years.

Stop the quiet leak in your margins — book a call
Holloway & Sons Family construction firm · £8.7M turnover
14 days
faster cash collection
from 67 to 53 days
3rd gen
handover de-risked
succession clarity

A 40-year-old firm running entirely in two brothers' heads.

Situation

Solid order book, but cash was always tight and the next generation had no clear way in. Everything important — pricing, supplier deals, scheduling — lived informally between the two owners.

What we did

Diagnostic plus an ongoing retainer: documented the core operating decisions, installed a cash-and-jobs rhythm, and built a phased plan to bring the third generation into real ownership of the operation.

Outcome

Cash collection improved by two weeks, the operation no longer depended on undocumented knowledge, and succession moved from anxiety to a concrete, sequenced plan.

Build a business that doesn't live in your head — book a call
In their words

Founders who got their evenings back.

2:14 · Eleanor's story

For the first time in years I took a proper two-week holiday and the business didn't wobble. That's what James actually changed — not just the numbers, the dependence.

Eleanor Wetherby
Managing Director, Wetherbridge Foods

No hype, no jargon — just a senior operator who'd clearly run the thing before. He told me on the first call he might not be the right fit. That honesty is exactly why I hired him.

Rachel Coombe
Managing Director, Tamar Digital

We'd had consultants before who left a thick report and disappeared. James rolled up his sleeves and ran it with us. The weekly rhythm he installed is still the heartbeat of the business.

David Holloway
Director, Holloway & Sons

Calm is the right word. He never made me feel behind or sold me a dream. He just steadily made the operation better, quarter after quarter, until I trusted it could run without me in every room.

Priya Mehta
Founder, Avon Health Logistics
About

I've sat in your chair. That's the whole point.

I'm James Marlow Vale. Before this practice I spent 17 years actually operating — not advising from the outside. I ran operations as COO through the messy middle of two scale-ups: a food manufacturer that grew from £2M to £11M, and a B2B services firm I helped take from chaos to a clean acquisition.

I know the specific loneliness of being the founder everything depends on, because I've worked next to dozens of them since 2014. The work isn't clever frameworks for their own sake — it's the unglamorous discipline of making an operation calm, profitable and able to run without one heroic person holding it together.

My style is quiet and direct. I won't flatter you, I won't sell you something you don't need, and on our first call I'll tell you plainly if I'm not the right person. Senior, calm, honest — sitting across the table from you, not on a stage.

Ex-COO, two scale-ups 40+ founder businesses Manufacturing, agency, construction Bath & the South West
Honest answers

The questions founders actually ask.

If you're a founder or owner running a real business turning over £1M–£10M, you have a team, and growth has outpaced your systems — yes, almost certainly. If you're pre-revenue, looking for motivation, or want a report handed over with nobody to help run it, I'm honestly not your best option, and I'll say so.
Transparently, and on the page above. The Operations Diagnostic is a fixed fee from £6,500. The Founder's 90-Day Reset is from £18,000 for the quarter. The Fractional COO retainer is from £6,000/month on a rolling quarter with 30 days' notice. No drifting hourly bills, no surprise invoices — you'll know the number before we start.
Less than you fear, and the point is to give you time back, not take it. The Diagnostic needs a few hours of access plus one 90-minute findings session. During delivery, expect a focused weekly working session of an hour or two. Within a quarter, most founders are spending noticeably fewer hours in day-to-day operations, not more.
Both. I'm based in Bath and regularly on-site with founders across the South West — Bristol, Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and beyond. For clients further afield I work remotely UK-wide, with periodic in-person sessions where they add real value. Most engagements are a sensible blend of the two.
It's 30 minutes, and it genuinely isn't a sales pitch. You tell me what's grinding in the business; I ask a few sharp questions; and I give you a straight read on whether I can help and which engagement — if any — would fit. If I don't think I'm the right person, I'll tell you and point you somewhere better. You'll leave the call with clarity either way.
Book a discovery call

30 minutes. No pitch. An honest answer.

Tell me what's grinding in your business and I'll tell you, straight, whether I can help and how. If we're not a fit, I'll say so — and point you somewhere better.

01225 447 180 hello@marlowandvale.co.uk

Prefer to write first? Email me — I reply to every founder personally, usually within one working day.

Discovery call · 30 min

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Concept demo · fictional business · FutureSite