The same three levels the coaching works on.
Performance on Purpose builds the person, develops the leader and improves the business. There is a book for each, and each one carries the mechanism explained plainly, a worked example in real pounds, the traps, and scored self-assessments you fill in rather than read about. They are paperbacks on Amazon, priced so that a leadership team can have one each without a conversation about budget.
You 2.0
The Founder’s Personal Operating System
In a business under fifty people the founder is the biggest single variable in the system. Your energy sets the pace and your standards become the ceiling — and most owners file that under the soft stuff, to be dealt with when there is time. This treats it as the highest-leverage part of the business, because it is.
- Twenty-four chapters on principles, values, beliefs, standards, attention, habits, energy and people skills
- Six scored self-assessment instruments, so you start where you are weakest rather than where you are interested
- A closing chapter that assembles the lot into a one-page personal operating system
Pairs with Personal Coaching and the You 2.0 workshop.
Leadership 2.0
The Founder’s Leadership Operating System
Nobody taught you to lead. You were promoted into it by your own company registration, and the instincts that built the business are now quietly in the way. There is a point where the owner’s effort stops being the answer, and past it working harder produces a fuller diary and a flatter business.
- Eighteen chapters on the job nobody trained you for — direction people can steer by without you, decisions put at the right level, delegation that transfers outcomes rather than errands
- Accountability that actually holds, and the conversations you have been avoiding
- A version of the role you could still be doing in ten years
Pairs with Leadership Coaching and the Leadership 2.0 workshop.
Business 2.0
The Business Operating System That Runs Without You
Busy but not making money. Growing but not scaling. Profitable, but only while you are in the building. This one is about the machine itself — strategy, numbers, customers, delivery, systems and team, built so the firm performs without consuming its owner.
- Seventeen chapters, each with the mechanism, a worked example in real figures, and the traps that quietly cap most owner-managed firms
- Thirteen self-diagnostic tools you run on your own numbers
- The 90-day Business Performance Plan, and the rhythm that keeps it honest: the weekly meeting, the scoreboard, the quarterly review
No growth-hacking and no five-year vision exercises. Pairs with Business Coaching and the Business 2.0 workshop.
How the books, the workshops and the coaching fit together
Three rungs, same material, different amount of help. The book explains a mechanism and hands you five things to do this week, and whether you do them is entirely up to you — which is why a book changes a business about as often as a gym membership changes a body. The workshop takes the same mechanism and makes you apply it: twenty minutes of teaching, forty minutes working on your own figures, and something written by the end of the session that did not exist that morning. The coaching programme is the one that survives contact with a bad quarter, because somebody is expecting an answer on the thing you committed to last time.
Most people do not need all three. Owners who read widely and act on what they read should buy the book and save the fee. Owners who have a shelf of business books and no changed habits should skip to the workshop or a discovery call, because another book is not the missing piece.
What is actually inside them
Every chapter is built the same way, because the format is what makes them usable rather than inspiring. The mechanism gets explained in plain words — what causes what, and why the obvious fix often makes it worse. Then a worked example with real pounds in it, because a principle without arithmetic is a slogan. Then the traps, which is where most of the value sits: the specific, common ways the thing goes wrong in a firm of eight people. Then five things to do this week, small enough that a busy owner can actually start.
The scored instruments are the part people come back to. Rather than telling you where owners generally struggle, they make you put a number on your own position, and then they compare it against your own average rather than an invented benchmark. Several of them exist as free interactive tools on this site, which do the arithmetic for you and print a result you can keep.
Who they are not for
They assume you run something. Not necessarily something big — the examples sit in the range of two to fifty staff, which is where the coaching practice works — but somebody employed by a business they do not own will find much of it academic, because half the content is about decisions only an owner can take. They also assume you want the business to be better rather than bigger. There is no chapter arguing you should scale, and nothing in any of the three suggests you need to want a larger firm than you actually want.
If you want to see how the method holds together before spending anything, the Performance on Purpose page explains the quadrant and the three freedoms the whole thing is built on, and the resources library carries the guides and thinking models for free.
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Frequently asked questions
Do I need to read the books to be coached?
No, and nobody will test you on them. The coaching works from where you actually are, and plenty of people arrive having read nothing. What the books do is save session time: if you have already scored yourself on the instruments and know which chapter describes your problem, the first conversation starts at the work instead of the background. Read the one that matches the area you know is weakest, or run one of the free tools first and let the result point you at a chapter.
Which of the three should I start with?
Whichever describes the thing currently costing you most. The order they are written in — person, leader, business — is the order the problems usually have to be fixed in, because a business cannot be systematised by an owner with no attention left and a team nobody is holding to account. But that is a tendency, not a rule. If the business is genuinely the constraint and you are fine, start with Business 2.0 and ignore the sequence.
Are they the same content as the workshops?
The same material, used completely differently. A book explains a mechanism and hands you five things to do this week; you decide whether to do them. The workshop takes the same mechanism, spends twenty minutes on it and then forty applying it to your own figures in the room, with everyone else’s questions in the mix and something written by the end of the session. People who have read the book get more out of the two days, not less, because they spend none of it catching up.
Why are they self-published?
Because a publisher would have taken eighteen months and asked for the numbers to come out. These are working books with worked examples in real pounds, scored self-assessments and tools meant to be written in, which is not what a trade publisher wants on a business shelf. Independently published means the price stays low, the content stays specific to owner-managed British firms, and a correction can be in the next printing rather than the next edition.
Can I buy them in bulk for my team?
Yes, and for a leadership team it is usually the cheaper way to start. Amazon handles quantity orders directly, and there is nothing to arrange with us. If you are running the in-house version of a workshop, copies for everyone attending are included in the fee rather than charged separately, so do not buy them twice — say on the call that you want the in-house version and they come with it.
Is there an ebook or an audio version?
Paperback only at the moment, and that is deliberate for two of the three. The books carry scored instruments, tables and one-page plans designed to be filled in, and those do not survive being read on a phone or listened to in a car. If a digital edition appears it will be the one where that matters least. In the meantime the interactive versions of several of the instruments are free on this site, and they do the scoring for you.