1-to-1 Coaching for B2B Founders

Stop being the only one who can close.

Gary Thompson works 1-to-1 with B2B founders to build the sales playbook, hire the right people, and create a revenue team that doesn't need you in every deal.

70%
of first VP of Sales hires fail within 12 months — usually because the founder handed off before they were ready

"Gary gets you to where you need to be faster — and skips the mistakes that cost real time and money."

Mark Locker — Founder & CEO, Attractions.io
5–27×
what a failed first sales hire costs you. Salary is the smallest part — lost pipeline and wasted runway are the rest.
By the numbers
50+
B2B Founders Coached
26 yrs
In the Thick of Running Businesses
10 wks
To a Repeatable Sales Process
£0
Generic Frameworks. Ever.
The Problem

You've cracked the product. Now the sales model is the bottleneck.

Most founders hit a ceiling around £500K–£2M ARR. You're closing every deal personally, your network is running dry, and the team you've hired so far hasn't worked out. The problem isn't effort — it's that founder-led sales doesn't scale.

The answer isn't hiring a VP of Sales and stepping back. That's how 70% of founders burn six to eighteen months and hundreds of thousands of pounds on a hire that fails. The answer is building the playbook first — then building the team around it.

That's exactly what Gary does.

01
Hiring a VP before the process exists
No playbook means nothing for the VP to run. They're expected to build, hire, and close simultaneously. Result: they fail in nine months and you lose a year of momentum.
02
Promoting your best rep to manager
Closing deals and managing closers are entirely different skills. You lose your best rep and gain a manager who can't manage. One of the most common and avoidable mistakes.
03
Hiring for industry experience over fit
Enterprise-trained reps expect marketing budgets, SDR teams, and brand recognition. Without those, they can't perform — and they bring the wrong habits to an early-stage environment.
04
Stepping back too soon
Even with a great hire, the founder needs to stay involved in 50% of activity for the first six months. Disappearing on day one creates a vacuum no one can fill.
"Some founders figure it out. Not all of them make it that far. The ones who do get there fastest have someone who helps them skip the mistakes that cost real time and money."
How We Work Together

Three ways to work with Gary.

Whether you need a sharp thinking partner, a structured programme to build your sales engine, or someone embedded in your business — Gary works with a small number of founders at any one time.

Weekly · Flexible
Weekly Coaching Session
One focused hour every week to work through your biggest challenges — deals in play, hiring decisions, process questions, or whatever is keeping you up at night.
  • 60-minute session, weekly or fortnightly
  • Deal coaching and pipeline review
  • Playbook and process development
  • Hiring decisions and candidate evaluation
  • Async support between sessions
Book a Discovery Call
Embedded · Hands-On
Interim Co-Founder
Gary joins your business as an embedded operator. He works in your team, not on it — sorting resources, hiring, sales, marketing, and whatever the business needs most right now.
  • Part-time embedded, treated as leadership
  • Sales team recruitment and onboarding
  • Revenue architecture and GTM strategy
  • Fundraising preparation and investor comms
  • Marketing, growth, and customer success
  • Right-fit businesses only — limited availability
Let's Have a Conversation
The Transition Method

A proven path from founder-led to fully scalable.

Most founders skip straight to hiring. Gary's four-step method ensures you have everything in place before a single rep joins — so the transition actually sticks.

01
Capture & Document
Before anything else, Gary helps you extract what you know but have never written down — your ICP, your winning pitch, your objection responses. The playbook starts here.
02
Build the Engine
CRM architecture, pipeline stages, discovery frameworks, email sequences, compensation models. Every system a sales team needs — built before you hire, not after.
03
Hire Right
Using the WHO method and Gary's first-hire scorecard, you'll identify and recruit the right profile — someone who can execute the process, not someone who needs to invent it.
04
Transfer & Scale
A structured 90-day onboarding that moves from shadowing to guided autonomy to independent execution — with Gary coaching both you and the new hire throughout.
GT GARY THOMPSON Startup Coach · Operator · Mentor
Gary Thompson — Startup Coach

You don't need more advice. You need someone who's been through it.

Gary has spent over a decade building and scaling startups — as a founder, an operator, and a coach. He has been through the founder-led sales ceiling personally, made the mistakes, hired the wrong people, and eventually cracked the transition. That lived experience is what makes him different from a consultant who has only read about it.

Gary doesn't do generic programmes. He works with a small number of founders at any one time — post-PMF businesses looking to build their first sales team, and funded companies trying to scale revenue without burning their runway on the wrong hires. Every engagement is tailored, hands-on, and built around what your business actually needs right now.

Whether you need a sharp thinking partner weekly, a structured ten-week programme to build your sales engine, or someone embedded in your business as an interim co-founder — Gary is the person founders call when it matters most.

12+
Years in Startups
50+
Founders Coached
3
Engagement Formats
What founders say

Results that speak for themselves.

"

Gary has assisted Razor with clarity of thought, vision, and direction. He continually challenges us to question how and why we do things and how we can achieve better results.

PJ
Phil Jones
CEO, Razor Creations
"

Gary's been a fantastic mentor. He continually demonstrates the ability to make quick and accurate judgments across a range of business situations, providing thought-provoking questions and invaluable insight. His vast front-line experience, coupled with infectious enthusiasm and a real hunger to help businesses succeed makes Gary the ideal partner if you're looking to grow.

ML
Mark Locker
Founder & CEO, Attractions.io
"

After just one session, Gary had asked us the questions that meant we needed to look at our business from a different angle. After 3 sessions we had opened up a whole new business stream and have never looked back since. Gary is easy going, motivating and probing in all of the right measures.

DG
Dave Glenn
Founder, Synergy Agency
"

Gary has been working with Blu Sky for around 6 months and has already added significant focused value and assisted in changing our sales and marketing strategy. His practical, pragmatic approach has enabled him to be regarded as a key contributor by the Blu Sky team to our company's 5-year vision.

JD
Jon Dudgeon
Blu Sky

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Ready to stop being the bottleneck in your own business?

Book a free 30-minute discovery call. No pitch, no pressure — just an honest conversation about where you are, where you need to get to, and whether working together makes sense.

gary@startupcoach.co.uk
Manchester & Remote
Responds within 24 hours
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