For men who own and run a business

Twelve months of pushing harder, with four men doing the same

The one room where you do not have to hold anything back.

Five men, one circle, twice a month. Run by me, John Obidipe, in Milton Keynes.

Start with a free hour
5men in the circle
2meetings a month
6hours a month
12month term, not rolling
What it is

Four men as serious about their business as you are about yours

Five men who own and run businesses, meeting twice a month with a whiteboard and me, to work through whatever each of them is actually stuck on.

You have been moderating yourself in every room you are in, for years, and you probably stopped noticing. Ambition in front of your team sounds like pressure and they start worrying about workload. Full intensity at home reads as not being present. So you turn it down, everywhere, all week.

Nobody here needs protecting from your ambition

None of them works for you, buys from you or lives with you. So you can say the whole thing at full size, and watch what four men do with it.

You stop being the most driven man in the room

Probably for the first time in years. It is quietly humbling and it makes you faster.

Nothing leaves the room

That is not there to make it comfortable. It is what makes the rest possible, because you cannot go flat out somewhere you have to be careful.

Ask anyone who has done a HYROX why they went quicker on the day than they ever did in training. It was not the programming. It was the man beside them.

Five in the circle, not thirty. Your challenge gets its own hour, everyone knows what you are carrying, and somebody asks you next month what happened. Nobody trains properly for a race they have not entered. That is what the twelve months is.

A month in the circle

What you turn up to

We walk
60 to 75 min, any weather
Coffee is waiting
Delivered to the room
One man on the board
1 hour
Accountability, then the board
90 min online, 2 weeks later
Just you and me
90 min, every 2 months
In more detail
01

We walk, whatever the weather

All five of you and me, outdoors. You change who you walk beside so you speak to everyone. Saying the hard thing is easier when nobody is looking at your face.

60 to 75 min
02

Coffee is waiting

It is ordered ahead and delivered to the room, so nobody loses twenty minutes to a queue. The walk loosens the thinking, the room finishes it.

On arrival
03

One man on the whiteboard

His challenge goes up and stays there until it has a shape and something he can do on Monday. Your turn comes round every other month.

1 hour
04

Two weeks later, online

The first half hour is accountability. What you said you would do, what you actually did, what you could not do and why. Then a second man takes the whiteboard.

90 min
05

Just you and me

Ninety minutes with the whiteboard, for whatever you are not ready to say in front of the other four yet.

Every 2 months
Two men walking a wooded path, mid-conversation.
The walk · Milton Keynes
14.03
The record

Everything you commit to goes on the board

In your handwriting, with your initials next to it, in front of four other men. Next session it gets checked. Not by me, by them.

Circle One · Session 0414.03
DMput the price up, top ten accounts✓
RJtell the ops lead, properly✓
SKhand the Fletcher job over Friday✓
TBget out of the vannot yet
AHthree days off, booked✓
Four of five carriedInitials only. Nothing else leaves the room

“Not yet, and here is why” counts. Saying why is the rep.

Whatever the weather

A business does not stop for a bad quarter

Your company goes through seasons. Good months, thin months, the quarter where three things go wrong at once. You do not get to sit those out, and neither does this.

So we walk in the rain. We walk in January. If it is coming down hard we take the shorter loop and get wetter, and the session happens exactly as it would have done.

You do not miss a meeting. That is not strictness for its own sake. It is the only way four other men can rely on you being there.

Why the circle is five

Small enough that you cannot hide in the middle

A group of thirty
This circle
Your turn once a year
Your turn every other month
Four minutes, if chosen
A full hour on the whiteboard
Faces you barely know
Four men who know your business
Nobody follows up
Somebody asks you next month
Easy to go quiet
You cannot disappear
Why men join

Nine things you do not have today

An honest read on how you are doing

No appraisal since the day you started, and the accounts lag a year. Four other owners is the first real calibration most men get.

Four more businesses to learn from

You have run one company, through one downturn, from one seat. Everything you believe about pricing and hiring comes from a sample of one.

Somebody going at it as hard as you

Staff want security, customers want service, your family wants you off the phone. Name one man you spoke to this week who wanted nothing from you.

Men who will tell you when you are wrong

Being the most capable person in your own building is comfortable and it has made you slower. Nobody has properly disagreed with you in years.

Somewhere the bigger plan is taken seriously

You had one and stopped saying it out loud, because saying it invites the question of why it has not happened. Here it gets said, then tested against what it would take.

Men who understand what it took

Best month in the firm’s history and nobody to tell. Not the staff, who would ask about pay. Not at home. Four men know exactly what that month cost you.

An explanation of your own instincts

Every member does CliftonStrengths on joining. Why you keep hiring the same man, and why some decisions stall for months.

A year of watching men unlike you

Four owners built completely differently. That does more for handling the difficult person on your team than any course.

And one built exactly like you

You hear your own reasoning come out of another man’s mouth, and see what it is doing to his business, with none of your defensiveness in the way.

The method

What happens at the whiteboard

You start talking about the challenge, however it comes out. As you talk I write it up on the whiteboard, so the things that matter are out of your head and where you can see them. Then the real work starts.

01

Find the connections

Most of what looks like six separate challenges turns out to be two.

02

Find what is missing

The information or the numbers you have been deciding without.

03

Find your blind spots

Where your own way of leading is sitting inside the challenge, causing part of it.

04

Get to the real cause

Not the version at the top, which is usually a symptom.

05

Work out what will hold

Which solutions survive all of the above, and which quietly will not.

A session room, the whiteboard covered in working notes.
At the whiteboard
Session 04

By then I know how you are wired, so the questions are aimed at the way you think. The other four must ask you a question before they offer an opinion. That is a rule of the room.

FrameworksModelsHomeworkSlides
Why the circle is local

Near each other, on purpose

Meeting twice a month for a year is long enough that these stop being four men you meet and start being four men you know. Which is when the useful part starts.

One of them rings you on a Tuesday because he has just been offered something and wants a view before the end of the day. One passes you a name worth having, a bookkeeper who is actually any good or a solicitor who answers the phone. None of that happens if the five of you are scattered across the country and the only contact is a booked session.

Milton Keynes, running nowLondon, coming soon
Two men talking as they walk a tree-lined path.
On the walk
09.08
The standard

What the room asks of you

Five obligations, and they are the reason it works. Every man signs up to the same ones.

You turn up

Twice a month, for twelve months. Not when it suits, and not only when the weather is good.

You bring something real

Not the summary. The thing you have been going round in the car.

You do what you said, or say why not

The first half hour of every online session is exactly this.

You ask before you advise

Nobody offers a view until he has asked a question. House rule, and I enforce it.

You keep it in the room

All of it. That is what makes the rest possible.

Four men who will hold you to what you said, and never repeat a word of it outside the room.

The question nobody asks out loud

“Will I be the one who is behind?”

Almost everybody wonders it. Almost nobody says it.

Circles are not built by size of business. They are built by whether five men are stuck on challenges they can usefully think about together. Nine staff and a partnership falling apart is more use to twenty-four staff and no successor than any matching turnover would be.

You will be ahead of the others on some things and behind on others. That is the arrangement, and it is the only way to find out where you actually are.

A man taking a call outdoors, on his own.
Deciding it alone, again
06.02
John Obidipe at a laptop, looking up from the screen.
John Obidipe
Milton Keynes
Who runs it

John Obidipe

Fifteen years across organisational consulting and executive coaching. Gallup-certified in CliftonStrengths and a FITT16 practitioner. Clients have included leaders inside Toyota, Convatec and the University of Oxford, and owners running businesses from £500,000 to £5 million.

I will not tell you how to run your business. What I will do is bring what I have seen work and fail in other companies, large and small, and then find the answer with you rather than hand you one.

There is no good reason to solve something with one mind when you can put six on it.

Who the circle is for

Men who own and run the business

This is you
  • You own it and run it day to day
  • Turnover £500,000 to £5 million
  • Five to twenty-five staff
  • Still doing the work yourself
  • Going at it, not coasting
This is not you
  • Looking for men to sell to
  • Looking for a speaker or a conference
  • Want somebody to tell you what to do
  • Would not say the real thing in front of four others
  • Would coast for a month and let the others carry it

The hour is free and open to anybody. A place in a circle is not. I build these rather than fill them, because in a circle of five, one man coasting costs the other four their year.

How the year ends

Month thirteen, away

Twelve months of this should not simply stop. The first week after the year is done, the five of you go away together.

Your twelve boards, on the wall

Every commitment you made and every tick, printed and up in the room. It is the only record of the year that exists.

Each man’s year, out loud

What he said in session one and what actually happened. Twenty minutes each, and the only time the circle looks backwards.

Another twelve months, or not

Decided in the room, face to face, rather than by email in month eleven.

Priced separately and at cost, because I make nothing on it. Named at joining so it is part of the shape of the year rather than something sprung on you in month eleven.

If you want to move faster

Three ways to go further than the circle

The circle is the spine of it. These are open to members only, and none of them is pushed at you.

One to one with me, fortnightly

Instead of the ninety minutes every two months. For a year where a great deal is happening at once.

Coaching your second in command

Six sessions over three months with the man who could run things when you are not there.

A day with your whole team

All of them in a room with the whiteboard, working the decisions that currently reach your desk by default.

If it turns out not to be right

Three sessions, then you decide

Membership runs for twelve months, because a circle men drift in and out of stops being a circle.

But you cannot tell from one hour whether these four are the right four. So your first three sessions, roughly six weeks, are yours to walk away from. Say so and we stop, with nothing to pay for the rest and no conversation about why.

The detail

What membership includes

Circle sizeFive men
Long sessionMonthly, half a day, in person
Short sessionMonthly, 90 minutes, online
One to one with meNinety minutes, every two months
On joiningCliftonStrengths 34, plus two hours
WhereMilton Keynes. London coming soon
TermTwelve months
LeavingFree to leave in the first three sessions
Month thirteenA night away, priced separately at cost
Next intakeCircle Two, January

The fee is discussed on the call, because it depends on which circle you join and when. Founding members hold their rate for as long as they stay.

The way in

An hour at the whiteboard. Free.

It goes on the whiteboard

Whatever is genuinely live this week, in your words, not the tidy version.

You leave with something to do

We stay with it until it has a shape and something you can act on Monday.

No pitch afterwards

Free whether you join or not. No follow-up sequence.

I say what I think as we go rather than saving it up for the end. That includes telling you if what you have is a process problem rather than a judgement one, in which case I will say so and send you off to fix the process. That happens, and it costs me the work, which is fine.

So I can call you rather than start an email chain.

Or skip the form and put the hour straight in the diary.