The Optional Owner · a small-group programme

Make your involvement
a choice.

For owners who have already built something that works, and now want it to work without them: the day to day handed over, the business run from wherever you like, your presence a choice rather than a requirement. Small groups. A defined start and finish. By enquiry.

The Optional Owner grew out of the remote local model: first a way to run a cleaning company from another country, then, once Inova Local made the delegation layer available to any owner, a question about any business at all. It has broadened since, into more business models, more paths and more philosophy. The practical work underneath has not changed: build it, systemise it, step back from it.

Who this is for

Four things need
to be true

01

A foundation already built.

Customers come, invoices get paid, there is some kind of team. This is a capstone, not a starting point. If you are at zero, start with the VA Agency cohort or the school.

02

An owner still in the middle of everything.

The phone only you answer. The decisions that queue behind you. The customers who ask for you by name. You can point at it.

03

A wish to step back, or step away.

Some want their evenings. Some want to run it from another country. Some want to sell it one day without the buyer needing them. All of those are the same work, done in the same order.

04

A willingness to hand things over.

This is done-with-you, not done-to-you. If you would rather keep the keys, the work will not take, and I would rather say so now.

Not for

Three honest exclusions

Starting from zero: see above. Done-for-you services: I am piloting some implementation work privately with founding clients; ask, but it is not on the menu. And anyone who wants a promise that the business runs itself by graduation. Nobody honest can make that promise, so I will not.

How the cohort runs

Diagnose. Transfer. Test.

First

Diagnose

Where the business actually needs you, measured rather than felt. A map of the decisions, knowledge and work that still route through you, and the order to move them in. Your 90-day roadmap is written here.

Then

Transfer

Knowledge into documents, decisions into rules, work into people. The Delegation Stack in practice, on your real operation, one handover at a time, alongside owners doing the same.

Finally

Test

Absence tests. You leave parts of the business on purpose and we watch what holds. What breaks gets fixed; what holds becomes permanent. Then you go somewhere nice.

FormatA small group of owners, live calls with me, written support between calls within agreed boundaries, and a room of peers doing the same handovers at the same time.
The planA practical 90-day implementation roadmap, written for your business in the first weeks and revised as we go.
Yours to keepThe diagnostic and the implementation checklist, reusable long after we finish.
DurationA defined start and finish. You graduate.
PriceBy enquiry. Cohort terms are shared when we talk, and recorded in writing before any payment.
Private workOne-to-one advisory is closed for now. What it looks like when it is open.
The philosophy behind it

Teaching that is designed to end

Most programmes are built to continue. This one is built to finish: you graduate from it. A programme that never ends is a dependence problem of its own, and I have spent a decade designing against exactly that.

I also think remote should be an outcome of a well-run business, not a first step, and that optionality is the real freedom. Not running the company from a laptop on a beach; being able to choose whether you run it at all this week.

Where the ideas came from
10 years
building businesses
Four
businesses built and exited
2017
operating remotely since
8 years
running a U.S. local business from Japan

Built in practice, not in theory. None of the four needed me in the building.

“I love Chris’ emphasis on rebuilding your foundation. The momentum you gain with small, consistent bites is REAL. My family has started to dream about moving to London once my business can be run remotely.”
Candice Hamilton · business owner and student
Enquire

Enquire about
the next cohort

Five questions, read personally. If it looks like a fit, you get the details and a short call. No payment before either.

Read personally. You will hear from me within the week.

Received. You will hear from me within the week, and if it looks like a fit, the details and a short call follow.

Not sure this is the right door? Start here instead.