Brendan & Lisa

Brendan and Lisa had built their steel fabrication and structural engineering business together over eleven years. twenty-four people. Brendan ran the fabrication floor and the technical work. Lisa ran the administration, finance, and client liaison. the division of labour had worked when the business was smaller. at $5.8m with twenty-four people, the informal arrangement had developed cracks that both of them felt but neither had fully named.

Brendan was still approving every weld specification above a threshold and signing off on every significant fabrication job before it left the floor. his senior fabricator had been with the business for seven years and was technically the equal of Brendan on most standard work. Brendan had never formally transferred authority because he had never had to, he was always there. Lisa had been carrying the client relationships that should have been moving to an account manager, while also doing the bookkeeping, the invoicing, and the payroll. she had been asking for administrative support for two years. the request had never been actioned because there was never a clear moment to prioritise it.

the business had a concentration risk that Brendan understood intellectually but had never looked at in numbers. three clients represented 68% of revenue. all three relationships ran through Brendan personally. the business had no formal business development process. all new work came from referrals and repeat business. in a good market, this was comfortable. in a market where construction spending was tightening, it was a risk.

the senior fabricator managed fourteen fabrication jobs in month three independently. Brendan's floor time dropped from five days per week to two. Lisa hired and onboarded the administration coordinator within six weeks. the first time in three years she had headspace to run a proper hiring process. the business development outreach produced two new client jobs in month four and three in month five. they had been developed through deliberate outreach rather than inbound referral. revenue grew from $5.8m to $7.4m in fourteen months.

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the concentration risk had been visible for years. the partnership imbalance had been felt for years. both were structural problems with structural solutions. the business grew when both people were operating in their actual strengths inside a structure that let them do it.

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