The Seat

Most CEOs are running a good business. Somewhere in it is a gear they haven’t found, and they’re the reason. Every decision still comes to them. The week goes to the business, and the business never gets built.

The Seat is 6 months on getting you out of the day-to-day and turning the company into an asset: one that runs on a rhythm, not on you.

Are you winning or losing, and how do you know?

The Seat is built on decades of starting, acquiring, and backing companies, 20+ of them, and on years spent beside dozens of CEOs as counsel.

Across all of it, the same gaps showed up in every seat. Numbers nobody fully trusted. A calendar full of work only the CEO could do. Levers nobody was pulling, because nobody had named them. And the CEOs who moved fastest committed to a fixed stretch of time, with a beginning and an end, and did the work between the conversations.

Those patterns became The Seat.

The Seat is a 6-month program CEOs enlist in when they’re ready to get more out of themselves and their business. Call it an overhaul: a stretch of time you commit to going deeper on what it means to sit in the leadership seat, and how to get more from what you put in.

It covers six themes, with regular working time together. You come out stronger, clearer, and in a better spot, with the business running on instruments you built and own.

CEOs and owners of established businesses who still make most of the decisions, and suspect the business could run better than it does. Title doesn’t matter. Size matters less than you’d think. What matters is that the decisions come to you, and you can act on what you see.

They arrive from 3 places. A hard year: a lost customer, a bad hire, a path forward that isn’t obvious anymore. A strong year that cost too much: 60 hours a week, and rough edges someone keeps flagging. Or a fine year, and a suspicion that fine has become a habit.

It isn’t for businesses in their first 2 years, businesses in a sale process, anyone who wants it done for them, or a business where the person in the seat isn’t the one deciding.

6 themes, in order. Each one leaves an instrument on your bench: built in the program, filled with your numbers, and yours to run after. Every one of them is something a bank or a buyer would ask for. You’ll have them because you run the business, not because you’re selling it.

1. 1. The Table.
   10 seats at the table of your life. The business gets one. Before touching the company, you write down what a 10 looks like in each seat, pick the 3 signals that tell you where you stand, and score it monthly. It fixes the question underneath every other one: what is the business for?
2. 2. The Scoreboard.
   5 to 7 numbers, weekly, defined by you, that answer whether the business is winning or losing. Built first, because everything after it reports to it. It fixes flying blind.
3. 3. The Cash Forecast.
   13 weeks out, with the 3 uses of cash named and kept apart: operating cash, debt service, distributions. It fixes cash surprises, and the distribution that shouldn’t have been taken.
4. 4. The CEO’s Brief.
   A weekly page: the year’s priorities, where your time went against where it should go, this week’s 3, what’s drifting, and the one thing. 20 minutes on a Monday, built with AI so it stays that short. It fixes the week that gets eaten by the business. It’s a working tool, used weekly across the companies behind Patina.
5. 5. The Operating Rhythm.
   One page the company runs on: the 3 levers, the margin moves with a number on each, the growth you’re taking and the growth you’re declining, and the cadence that carries it, meeting by meeting, with decision rights the team can act on without you. It fixes “everything is a priority” and “every decision comes to me,” which turn out to be the same problem.
6. 6. The Board Meeting.
   Monthly, with a fixed agenda and a written pre-read from you. For 6 months you get the accountability of a strong board without assembling one: someone across the table who has sat in your seat, the Scoreboard and the Cash Forecast open, and the Table read last. It fixes the thing that undoes the other 5: nobody holding you to it.

It begins with a half-day kickoff. Your financials are reviewed beforehand, so the kickoff opens with a read on margin, benchmarks, and what the numbers say. Then 90-minute working sessions roughly every 2 weeks, with email and short calls in between. The program is individualized and one-to-one; there is no cohort, no group call, and nothing on a template that isn’t filled with your business.

By the end of the 6 months:

• You know whether the business is winning or losing, and you can show it in a handful of numbers you trust.
• You know where the cash is going 13 weeks out, and what’s yours to take.
• Your week has a shape. The work only you can do fills it. The rest has an owner who isn’t you.
• The team runs on a cadence you designed and don’t have to police.
• Margin has been found and named, and the moves are underway. You’ve decided which growth to take and which to decline, on purpose.
• You know what the business is for, in writing, and the business knows its place at the table.

That is what an asset is. A business that works without your hands on every part of it, and is worth more because of it.

Financials before the start, and a 2-week calendar audit. 2 or 3 books, chosen for you. A written update every 2 weeks for the full 6 months, which doubles as the pre-read for the board meeting: what moved, what stalled, what you’re avoiding, what you’re seeing. Monthly numbers so the scoreboard stays honest. About 2 hours a week outside the sessions.

The commitment is half the value.

$3k a month for the 6-month program, billed quarterly. One point of margin on a $2M business covers it.

It starts with a conversation. Share a little about the business.

It ends on purpose. You leave with 6 instruments, a business that runs on them, and a clearer sense of the game you’re playing. Some CEOs continue in CEO Counsel, the standing relationship. Most don’t need to.