Business Growth and Leadership Advisory Services
Business is a craft.
Make your climb to mastery.
Professional consulting, executive coaching, and strategic advisory for owners and executives of small to mid-sized companies. For those who know the best don't do it alone.
Working With
Business consulting and executive coaching for three kinds of leaders:
Business Owners
Who...
- Feel they could be more profitable and growing faster
- Find themselves doing other people's jobs too often
- Need better control over their business and their time
Executives
Who...
- Want decisions made faster and responsibilities clearer
- Need more teamwork and accountability from others
- Feel the weight is heavy and it is indeed "lonely at the top"
New Leaders
Who...
- Want to be better prepared for new responsibilities
- Need clarity on people and how best to lead them
- Feel pulled in too many directions with too little time
About
About Zack Tomlin
Zack Tomlin is a business growth and leadership advisor based in Raleigh, North Carolina. His work blends business consulting, executive coaching, and strategic planning for owners and executives of companies from 10 to 200 people, nationwide.
Before becoming an advisor, Zack spent more than a decade building, running, and eventually exiting his own company. He's been the founder making payroll, the CEO making hard calls with incomplete information, and the operator dealing with the kind of problems no business school case study covers. That experience is the foundation of his work today.
He is the founder of Your Craft Your Climb (YC²), the author of Craft: The Expedition of Business — winner of the Readers' Favorite five-star review — and a member of Pinnacle Business Guides, a national network of more than one hundred independent business advisors.
What to Expect
A Typical Business Growth and Leadership Engagement
Most engagements begin with a focused three months of structured work designed to diagnose what's actually happening, define where you're going, and start moving the company in the right direction. That's followed up by routine monthly and quarterly meetings, with support and access to Zack in between.
Step 1: Diagnostic
Assessments, 360-degree feedback, and a holistic review of the organization. The goal is to identify the real gaps — in strategy, leadership, operations, systems, and people — not just the symptoms you've been managing. You leave Step 1 with a clear-eyed picture of what's working, what isn't, and where the leverage is.
Step 2: Strategy
Define the destination. Build the roadmap. Identify the resources, decisions, and structural changes required to get there. This is where business strategy and strategic planning move from abstract to actionable. You leave Step 2 with a written plan your team has helped create and has agreed to execute.
Step 3: Execution
Implement the plan. Sanity-check the early work. Hold the team accountable to commitments. This is where most engagements break down elsewhere — the strategy gets written and then nothing happens. The third step is built to make sure that doesn't happen here. You leave Step 3 with measurable progress, a working rhythm, and clear direction on what comes next.
Onward and Upward
After an intense start, the cadence lengthens, but the work continues with monthly one-on-one advisory sessions and quarterly leadership team meetings. Monthly meetings keep individual leaders sharp, accountable, and supported between quarterly checkpoints. Quarterly sessions create alignment across the leadership team and set priorities for the next ninety days.
Payment Model
No retainers. No deposits. You pay only for the value delivered. The structure protects you from paying an advisor who isn't earning the work — and it forces every engagement to actually be worth the investment.
The Destination
What Better Looks Like
Yes, it's an investment of money and time—but it's a high-leverage move. When you get clear on where you want to go as a company, develop a better understanding of people, establish a regular cadence for improvement and accountability, increase the leadership capacity of key players, and strengthen the systems and routines essential in business—good things happen:
Better Performance
More Consistency
Better Profitability
Faster Growth
Feeling in Control
Engaged Employees
Less Turnover
Individual Improvement
The Terrain
Why Business Is Hard
Businesses and expeditions are both intended to push into new frontiers, where there is no clear path. As a result, the default for each is failure. Most expeditions are forced to turn back before reaching their destination, and most businesses fail or flounder before ever becoming great. For each, there are forces that provide the headwinds any business owner or executive must contend with:
Competition
There will always be someone willing to do the same work for less, cut corners, or favor the short over the long run. It makes doing quality work to your standards more difficult, but also creates opportunity.
Human Nature
We make assumptions. We fail to communicate. We get defensive. And our minds and bodies have natural limits. These aren't flaws—they're part of the human design. But left unchecked, they're enough to knock any business off course.
Limited Resources
Money, time, talent, information—you could always use more. Constraints force prioritization and creativity, but they also mean the margin for error is thin.
Entropy
Systems decay. Clarity fades. The plans from last quarter's strategy session feel like a dream a few months later. Without robust systems and reliable routines, things will always drift toward disorder.
The Path Forward
A Holistic Approach to Strategy, Leadership, and Operations
Like the expeditions that take men and women up tall mountains and across vast oceans, the journey of business requires a holistic approach:
Destination
The goal that is sought. A clear vision that aligns your team and guides decisions. Where you are going, but also why, the challenges that stand in the way, and how success is measured.
Crew
The heart of any organization. No business can truly succeed without a deep understanding of people and creating an environment where they can be at their best.
Leader
The one they follow. It's the leader that sets the capacity of an organization. They are the one who must unify the energy of the crew and provide the clarity and structure that is required for success.
Expedition
The journey itself. The systems, decisions, and execution that overcome the headwinds that stand between you and your intended destination.
The Process
Why the Best Don't Do It Alone: Hiring a Business Advisor
Most of the great expeditions in history had outside help. Sherpas to climb tall mountains. Natives to lead the way through parts unknown. And the mentors, sages, and counselors we all meet along the way. Business is no different. The right addition to your team can help you get where you want to go.
What an Outside Advisor Brings
Outside Perspective
The right advisor sees your blind spots. Points out the dynamics you're a part of. And spots opportunities that are easier to see from the outside looking in.
Strategic Relief
Most executives benefit from another peer. Someone who knows the pressure they're under and the trade-offs they have to make. The right guide provides the space and support to make the most challenging decisions.
Political Advantage
You have to live and work with your team every day. An outside consultant has greater latitude to push back, ask the uncomfortable questions, and hold people accountable for the commitments they've made.
Network & Resources
A business consultant brings new connections and resources. Their network becomes your network. They provide access to information you don't have, nor the time to obtain yourself.
How a Business Advisor Actually Helps
Many people are skeptical of business advisors, and rightly so. But there are poor examples of individuals in every profession. It doesn't change the fact that all top performers know the value of having an experienced business consultant or advisor in their corner.
The difference is in how the work gets done.
Executive Capability
The goal isn't dependency, it's capacity. The wrong advisor solves your problems for you. The right guide teaches you mental models and frameworks that become your own. The focus is on building your executive capacity, so that you are left more capable long after the engagement ends.
Full Presence
It's difficult to facilitate a meeting and participate in it at the same time. A good advisor manages the process—the planning, the agenda, and the productive pressure—so you can be fully present to listen and think. A consultant brings their best, so you can bring your best.
Velocity
Most good businesses eventually figure things out on their own. The question is, how long does it take? And what is the cost of going slower? A good business advisor accelerates the process, prevents missed opportunities, and keeps you and your organization from plateauing.
The Approach
On the Climb with You
Some advisors are like pigeons. They swoop in, strut around the room, crap on everything, and then fly away. Others are expensive cheerleaders. They get you all fired up, provide a few "rah-rah" moments, but no guidance on what to do next.
What business owners and executives really need is a business advisor who's on the climb with them.
In the Work
Only so much can be done sitting in a conference room. There's value to be had in actually seeing the work. With a new set of eyes on the processes, routines, and people of an organization, new ideas for improvement emerge.
Consistent Rhythm
Quarterly sessions may be the cornerstone of any good advisory engagement, but interim monthly meetings and calls ensure that progress never stops, and support isn't far away.
The Scout
On any expedition, someone goes ahead for intel and resources. Businesses benefit from outside help that gets them ahead of problems, discovers new resources, and finds better paths forward.
Part of Something Larger
Pinnacle Business Guides: A National Network of Business Advisors
Zack is an independent advisor, but knows the best don't do it alone. He is part of a network of over one hundred other business advisors based around the country who serve a wide range of industries. When you work with Zack, you're getting his experience and expertise, but also the collective insight of dozens of other professionals who have navigated challenges similar to yours.
What Clients Say
"Zack provides the type of professional guidance that you must experience to appreciate. The results for our company are already paying dividends."
— President, Current Client
"Business leaders of all levels will benefit from the sensible and clear dive that Zack will help you take into your company."
— Owner & Founder, Current Client
"Our company knows who we are, knows who we want to be and is moving in a better direction thanks to Zack. We were operating very well before. Now we are operating even better."
— CEO, Current Client
The Book
Craft: The Expedition of Business
The Framework Behind the Work: Proven Tools and Insights for Business Owners and Executives
Many of the frustrations leaders experience — stalled progress, constant firefighting, and reliance on individual heroics — trace back to a single issue: the organization itself is not designed to produce the desired results without excessive effort. This is the diagnosis behind every engagement, and the foundation of Craft: The Expedition of Business.
Craft: The Expedition of Business is written for leaders who want to build organizations that work better. It explores how clarity of direction, leadership, people, and operational systems work together — and why lasting improvement requires attention to all of them.
The book equips business owners and executives with principles, not prescriptions. It helps them craft more self-sufficient organizations — businesses where hard work and good decisions are rewarded with the success they deserve. The same principles guide every advisory engagement.
"Built from executive experience and extensive research, especially valuable for readers responsible for leading teams and determining the future direction of a business"
— Readers' Favorite
"A breath of fresh air because it completely ditches the standard corporate buzzwords"
— Readers' Favorite
"Intellectually substantial and clearly aimed at founders, directors, and senior managers"
— Readers' Favorite
"An excellent combination of technical strategy and deep understanding of human organizational dynamics"
— Readers' Favorite
"A timely resource for the modern entrepreneur"
— Readers' Favorite
"A grounded way to look at leadership that feels a lot more honest than your typical management book"
— Readers' Favorite
Prepare for the Journey Ahead
Take Stock of Your Current Business
Where are you succeeding? Where is there room for improvement? Take this free 15-minute business assessment to see how well prepared your organization is for the expedition to come.
Take the Assessment