CEO coach
Get back to the work only you can do.
There is a moment every founder hits, usually somewhere north of 30 people, when the company stops being something you run and starts being something that runs you.
Nothing has gone wrong. That is the confusing part.
Revenue is up. The team is bigger. And yet every week you find yourself further from the work you are actually good at, buried in decisions other people should be making without you.
You do not need another leadership tip. You need the company to stop needing you for everything.
200+ founder-CEOs. 12 client exits. Built on the Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint™. Since 2014.
No pitch. Leave with one clear action.
CEO coaching is private, founder-level work on the decisions, operating rhythm and leadership team around the CEO seat. A CEO coach helps you decide what only you should own, what the team must carry, and how the company keeps moving when you are not in every meeting. With Dominic Monkhouse, that work is built around the Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint, drawn from scaling Rackspace UK and Peer 1 Hosting UK to £30m ARR each.
Founders we have worked with
Clients include Actionstep, Ask Bosco, Clearview, NearForm, Orthene, Pego, Qualio, Smaller Earth, Sunday and Time Etc.
What is CEO coaching?
Now, most people hear “CEO coaching” and picture something quite gentle. A supportive conversation. Someone asking how you feel about it all.
That is not this. This is work on the job itself. Who decides what. What your leadership team is actually allowed to own. Where your week goes. Which hires matter. How the company moves when you are not in the room.
And here is the bit almost everyone gets backwards. The aim is not to get you out of the business.
The aim is to make you matter more, in fewer places.
You keep the calls only you can make. Everything else moves to a team and a rhythm built to carry it.
Which is why this page talks about your company as much as it talks about you.
If the whole place still waits on you by default, no amount of work on your confidence, your communication or your presence will shift it. Those are not the problem. The way the company is built around you is the problem.
You cannot coach your way out of a structural fault.
CEO coach vs CEO mentor: which do you need?
A CEO coach changes how the company works around the CEO seat. A CEO mentor helps you think through a judgement call using lived operator experience. Dominic blends both, whenever the work actually needs both.
You need a coach when the company has flat out outgrown the way decisions currently move. The leadership team needs to carry more weight. The weekly rhythm needs to surface the right issues earlier, not two months too late. Your calendar needs to go back to CEO work.
You need a mentor when the issue is judgement. A board conversation. A senior hire. A capital decision. A founder-shareholder tension. An acquisition, or an exit. You are not after a textbook answer here. You want someone who has already seen this exact pattern.
For longer-cycle mentor work, see CEO mentoring. If the company itself needs to behave differently, start here.
| If the work is… | You probably need… | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The company still waits for you by default. | CEO coaching | The operating rhythm, decision rights and leadership team need to change. |
| You are facing a board, capital, senior hire, acquisition or exit call. | CEO mentoring | You need judgement from someone who has seen the pattern before. |
| A senior leader needs to improve presence, communication or impact. | Executive coaching | The person needs development, but the company model may not need redesigning. |
| A function or growth system needs building. | Business coaching | The issue is sales, hiring, cadence or management infrastructure rather than the CEO seat itself. |
CEO coach vs executive coach: where the line falls
Executive coaching usually develops one individual leader inside an organisation. Presence, communication, influence, confidence, the step up into a bigger role. Useful work. Just narrower scope than what you need.
CEO coaching starts with the company, because the CEO seat touches everything. Strategy, people, capital, culture, valuation, pace. If the same brief would work for your sales director or your COO, it is executive coaching. If it only makes sense because you are the founder-CEO, that is CEO coaching.
If the same brief could be run for your COO, it is executive coaching. If it only makes sense in the CEO seat, it is CEO coaching.
CEO coach vs business coach: where the line falls
A business coach often works on the mechanics of growing a company. Sales process, hiring cadence, management rhythm, accountability. Good business coaching is genuinely valuable. It is just not the same thing as CEO coaching.
CEO coaching starts with the founder’s role instead. What only you can do. What the leadership team must carry. Which decisions should stop waiting for you. How the company keeps moving when you are not even in the meeting.
If the whole company still orientates around your judgement, that is CEO coaching. If the problem sits inside one function, or one foundational growth system, business coaching may be the better label for it.
CEO coaching for UK scale-ups: £3m to £50m
Most CEO coaching gets sold as personal development.
Scale-up CEO coaching is not that.
You are past product-market fit. That fight is won. The problem now is that the operating system is still you.
Somewhere between £3m and £50m, most founder-CEOs are quietly doing three jobs at once. Running the business. Building the leadership team. And protecting the handful of things only they can do.
Guess which one gets dropped first.
The calendar fills with other people’s decisions, the strategic work slides to next quarter, and the company stalls at what we call the Founder CeilingTM.
This is built for that exact stage. Decision rights, real ownership in the leadership team, and the Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint™ underneath it. The company carries more. You stop being wedged inside it.
How to choose a CEO coach
Good CEO coaching is not a certification search.
It is a fit decision.
Look for four things:
- Operator experience. Have they run the kind of company conversation you are now facing?
- A working system. Can they explain how decisions, rhythm and accountability will change?
- Founder-CEO relevance. Do they understand equity, board pressure, capital choices, senior hires and the odd psychology of still owning the thing?
- Proof you can inspect. Named clients, specific outcomes, visible testimonials, useful writing and a clear point of view.
Who is a CEO coach for?
This is for founder-CEOs with meaningful equity, usually running UK businesses somewhere between £3m and £50m.
Size is not the test. The test is simpler than that. Can one calendar still carry every decision this company throws at it?
It is likely the right fit if:
- You want the next version of the company, not just relief from this one. You are ambitious about the next stage, but you know the way the company works now will not carry it there.
- The leadership team needs to carry more weight. The wrong move is trying to scale without upgrading the leadership team. That does not mean swapping everyone out. It means closing the horsepower gap so the right people step up, own outcomes and make the calls they were hired to make.
- Your calendar needs to move back to CEO-only work. Strategy, capital, senior hiring, partnerships, big clients, culture and the decisions nobody else can make.
- A real inflection point is coming. A raise, refinancing, acquisition approach, exit window, board shift, chair appointment or senior hire needs clearer judgement than a busy diary can give it.
Two of those true? Book the call. 45 minutes, private, no slide deck in sight. You leave with one clear action whether we ever work together or not.
No pitch. Leave with one clear action.
What CEO coaching should change
Good CEO coaching should leave the company behaving differently. The signs are practical:
- Decisions move to the right level. The team knows what it owns, what it recommends and what must come to you.
- Meetings expose constraints earlier. The weekly rhythm surfaces trade-offs before they turn into emergencies.
- The leadership team owns outcomes. People stop waiting for founder approval on work they are paid to lead.
- Your week shows different work. More strategy, capital, senior people, partnerships, major clients and future-company thinking.
- You can read the company without being in every conversation. Scorecards, priorities and meeting rhythm give you line of sight without dragging you into every room.
The Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint™
The Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint is the operating model behind all of Dominic’s CEO coaching. It turns a coaching conversation into an actual system. Decision rights, leadership-team ownership, meeting rhythm, founder calendar design, and the scorecards that let you read the company without being physically in every room.
The Blueprint installs three things:
- A leadership team that owns outcomes. Clear decision rights, sharper meeting rhythm and priorities that do not fade once everyone is back on the farm.
- A founder calendar split. Two days for business as usual. Three protected days for strategy, capital, senior people, partnerships, big clients and the future company.
- A measurement layer that gives you line of sight without being in every meeting. The company becomes easier to read without every conversation needing you in the room.
Founder mode. Not manager mode.
Paul Graham’s 2024 essay on founder mode named this exact tension. You should not vanish into manager mode. But you also cannot have every operational decision sat waiting for you either.
Dominic Monkhouse keeps the work grounded in proven operating systems, not generic coaching language.
Probably the most certified business coach in the UK. Definitely the most committed to keeping it current. The work is grounded in Scaling Up, Metronomics, Table Group, Gallup, Six Conditions and Kolbe, with new learning added every year.
What happens when the operating model changes
Enable Network Services came to Monkhouse & Company with a leadership team that needed to carry more of the work. Within five months of installing the Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint, the business grew 500%.
Why Dominic Monkhouse on CEO coaching
Before Dominic coached anyone, he was the one wrestling with the same shift. At Rackspace, and then again at Peer 1 Hosting UK, he had to build leadership teams, protect strategic time, and work out which calls were actually his to make.
He did not start coaching because he had a neat theory. He started because he had spent a decade making the mistakes at scale. Twice. And he wanted to compress that experience for founder-CEOs building the next version of their company.
He was Managing Director at Rackspace, scaling the EMEA division from zero to £30m ARR in five years and building a 150-person team, before Rackspace IPO’d a few years after he left. Then he did it again at Peer 1 Hosting, taking the UK business to £30m ARR in five years. Peer 1 globally was taken private by Cogeco in 2013, at an enterprise value of about C$635m.
Since 2014, Dominic Monkhouse has coached more than 200 founder-CEOs through Monkhouse & Company, and worked alongside 12 client exits. Four are named publicly. Wirehive, ClearVision, New Signature, and QCS.
200+
Founder-CEOs coached since 2014
12
Client exits worked alongside
2×
Businesses scaled to £30m ARR as operator
None of which is the point.
The point is that he has made this exact shift himself. Twice, with his own money and reputation on it. And then watched more than 200 other founders make it since 2014.
That is a different thing from having read about it.
The work is to build a company that can scale without every serious decision passing through you.
What CEOs Dominic has coached actually say
“Dominic’s more than a coach, he’s a mentor. His experience helps me stay on track and make the right calls.”
CEO, Agilitas
“We now have a team that is all facing in the same direction, getting to a conclusion in a much quicker time.”
CEO, XCD
“Dominic is really making us think about how to 10x our thinking and be more ambitious, whilst enjoying the process.”
Co-Founder, UP3
How a CEO coaching engagement works
It starts with a 45-minute Founder Freedom Call. Private, with Dominic. No sales team, no deck. You name what you are trying to build, where the company is not yet carrying enough weight, and what needs to change so you can spend more time on the CEO-only work.
If there is a fit, the work usually moves through three loops:
- Diagnose the CEO constraint. Where do decisions wait, which meetings are too late, what work should only sit with you, and where does the leadership team need to step up?
- Build the operating model around the CEO seat. Decision rights, priorities, meeting rhythm, leadership-team accountability, founder calendar design and the scorecards that show whether the company is actually changing.
- Work the live judgement calls. Senior hires, board conversations, capital choices, client calls, acquisitions, exits and the next version of your role.
The engagement can include strategy sessions at The Management Lab in the New Forest, execution check-ins, CEO coaching and CEO mentoring, coaching for other members of the executive team, Kolbe and Table Group assessments, and unlimited business books for the whole executive team.
We cannot make you learn. What we can do is remove the excuse that the opportunity was never there.
No pitch. Leave with one clear action.
Key takeaways
- CEO coaching for UK scale-up founder-CEOs running £3m to £50m businesses.
- The work is structural. Decision rights, leadership-team ownership and founder calendar design.
- Built on the Two-Day-Week CEO Blueprint™. 200+ founder-CEOs coached since 2014, 12 client exits.
- Different from Scaling Up, which is a framework, and Vistage, which is a membership peer group.
Frequently asked questions about CEO coaching
What does a CEO coach actually do?
A CEO coach works on the decisions and operating rhythm around the CEO seat. In practice that means decision rights, leadership-team accountability, founder calendar design, strategic priorities, senior hiring, capital choices, and the calls nobody else can make.
The work is not to make you less involved. It is to make your involvement count.
How is CEO coaching different from CEO mentoring?
CEO coaching changes how the company works. CEO mentoring helps you think through a judgement call from someone who has already seen the pattern. Dominic blends both where needed, but the core CEO coaching work is structural. The team, the rhythm, the calendar, the decisions.
How is CEO coaching different from executive coaching?
Executive coaching usually develops one individual leader inside an organisation. CEO coaching starts with the whole company, because the CEO seat touches everything. Strategy, people, capital, culture, valuation, pace. If the work only makes sense at the CEO seat, that is CEO coaching.
How do I choose a CEO coach?
Choose for fit, not just certification. Look for operator experience, a working system, founder-CEO relevance, and proof you can actually inspect. Named clients, specific outcomes, visible testimonials, useful writing, a clear point of view.
The wrong choice just makes you feel better, while the company carries on behaving exactly the same.
How much does CEO coaching cost?
Monkhouse & Company does not publish a rate card, because the engagement is scoped to what you are actually trying to move. Low-cost hourly coaching exists out there. This is not that. The Founder Freedom Call is where you find out whether there is a fit, and what the investment would actually look like.
How do I know if I need a CEO coach?
Three tests. Are serious decisions still coming back to you? Does the leadership team need to carry more weight for the next stage? Are you spending less than half your week on the work only the CEO can do?
Two yeses out of three, and the call is worth having.
Has Dominic actually been a CEO?
Yes. Dominic Monkhouse scaled Rackspace UK to £30m ARR, then did the same at Peer 1 Hosting UK. Peer 1 globally was taken private by Cogeco in 2013, at an enterprise value of about C$635m. Since 2014, he has coached more than 200 founder-CEOs and worked alongside 12 client exits.
Ready to get back to the work only you can do?
The Founder Freedom Call is a 45-minute conversation with Dominic about the next version of the company, the leadership team around you, and the work only you should actually be doing.
You leave with one clear action whether we work together or not.
No pitch. Leave with one clear action.