You have become the bottleneck.
Every decision that matters still comes to you. Not because your people cannot decide. Because it has always come to you, and nobody was ever shown another way.
One to one, ongoing, over months
It is hard to be objective about your own business.
This is the biggest challenge business leaders face. As your coach, I am the independent voice. I question your thinking, I am the sounding board when you want to work an idea through, and I hold you to account until it gets done. All of it aimed at achieving your goals and your vision, not mine.
Working the plan
Who this is for Owners, leaders and the partners beside them
Is any of this your reality?
Most leaders recognise one or two of these straight away. Read them honestly, and see which ones have been showing up in your week.
Growth came. Freedom did not.
Revenue is up. So are the headcount, the hours and the worry. The business got bigger, but your life did not get any easier.
Nobody says the hard thing.
Your father still has the last word, and telling him the way he built it has stopped working sounds like telling him he was wrong. So nobody says it. It gets discussed at every family dinner, but nothing moves forward.
What worked at five fails at fifty.
The way you built this is the way you are still running it, and it returns less every year. Nothing went wrong and nothing announced the change. The only advice on offer is to work harder, and you have already tried harder.
You and your partner are not aligned.
One of you wants to consolidate, the other wants to grow. So plans get agreed and never followed, decisions keep waiting, and the distance between you quietly grows.
None of this will force you to act.
Which is why it goes on for years. The business keeps running, the year keeps passing, and the cost only shows up when you compare where you are with where you thought you would be by now.
My approach The order matters
We work on the four S’s. Strategy comes last.
Synergy, Story, Success, Strategy. Most leaders come to me wanting a plan, but a new plan with the old thinking gives you the same result as last time.
Synergy
You, your partners and the business, aligned
Where you want your life to go, where your partners want theirs, and where the business is actually headed are often three different things. We start by bringing them together. That alone takes away a lot of the stress, because you stop working against each other, and against yourself.
Values · purpose · vision · one direction for all of you
Story
The narrative in your head
Every leader runs on a set of beliefs: what is possible, what your customers really think, and what your team is capable of delivering. Most were formed years ago and have never been tested since. This is where the shift happens, and it is the part nobody expects.
Beliefs · blind spots · how decisions really get made
Success
What success looks like, and feels like
Success is not only a number in the business. We define it across every part of your life: your health, your family, your time, the things you keep saying you will get to later. Those are what quietly get traded away while you chase the next business goal. Naming them is what stops it.
What you want · at work and at home · where your time goes
Strategy
The plan, and getting it done
Now we make the plan. Structure, systems and the right people to run them, so the business stops depending on you being in it. Then the part most coaching leaves out: I hold you to the plan, every session, until it is done.
Processes · team · marketing · the numbers · accountability
What we are working towards
I will help you build a bigger, better business that needs less of you.
How it runs No lock in, either way
Plain arrangements. Nothing clever.
I keep this deliberately simple, because a complicated agreement at the start tells you something about how the rest of it will go.
- 01We start with The AlignmentAlways, before any plan is made. A proper look at the business and at your life, so we are working on what is actually wrong rather than what is easiest to name.
- 02Then a fixed slot, every week or fortnightIn your diary, in mine, not rescheduled around whatever caught fire this week. The regularity is not administrative. It is most of the value.
- 03Work between sessionsYou leave each session with things to do and I ask about them in the next one. That is the difference between coaching and a good conversation.
- 04Four weeks' notice, either sideNobody is locked in. If it stops being useful, say so. My longest client started in 2018 and has stayed on those terms.
Proof What actually changed
Ask them what changed. Nobody names strategy first.
I worked with Kishore Dalvi and his partners at DCT for over two years, Navin Goyal for six, Rajesh Jain at Gurjar Gems for eight, and Leena Karia with eight of her managers for eighteen months. Ask any of them, or any of my other clients, what changed and they describe how they see the business, how they decide, and how they talk to each other. Not one of them names strategy first.
We were four of us running in four different directions with a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm. We knew we wanted to go fast, but we really weren't sure about where. The worst thing you can do is run in the wrong direction with a lot of enthusiasm, and that is what we were doing. Now we know where we are going, how fast we are going, and what we need to make this boat go faster.
Watch on LinkedInThe most important two things that it has given me is A) structure, B) someone who holds me accountable every single day to get those things done. People who are considering, don't consider, just start taking it. For the simple reason that you don't teach Virat Kohli how to bat, yet the Indian team has a coach, a full time coach. Because a coach looks at you in a different perspective, and he really wants you to win.
Sanjay helps you pause, challenge the story in your mind, and open yourself to possibilities you may not have considered. He doesn’t give you the answer, he guides you towards discovering it for yourself. That’s what makes the insight so powerful and lasting.
The first conversation No cost, no pitch
Message me. You will be talking to me.
Tell me where the business has stopped moving and what you have already tried. I will tell you what I see, honestly, including when the honest answer is that you do not need a coach yet.
WhatsApp meOr email hello@sanjaykanakia.com
- AMy passion is helping you succeedEven if that means I have to be a bit brutal sometimes. You will not get agreement from me by default. There is no shortage of that elsewhere.
- BI work with a small number of clientsBecause the work is weekly and it is real. If I do not have the room, I will tell you that rather than take you on badly.
- CI will expect full commitmentCoaching is for leaders who are serious about their own growth and ready to do the hard yards. If I do not see that, I will tell you in the first conversation rather than six months in.