Growth systems for owner-led businesses
Getting found is hard. Getting chosen is harder
Most advice is about getting more attention. Almost nobody looks at what happens once it arrives — the enquiry that sits unanswered, the booking taken over the phone, the follow-up that waits on someone remembering. That's where customers get lost. I find those gaps with you, fix the ones that matter, and leave you able to run it yourself.
Brand. Website. Ads. AI.
And the systems between them.
01
The problem
Your business grew. The way you run it didn't
None of it is dramatic. It's what happens when a business grows faster than the way it's run. Every one of those is a small job that waits on a person remembering, and there are only so many of those anyone can hold at once. It costs you hours, and quietly it costs you customers.
Most of them can be handed to something that doesn't forget. Before you spend more on getting attention, it's worth making what you already have work properly.
What I'd take off your list
02
Where this comes from
We had every system. None showed us the whole journey
Plenty of tools, and still no answer to the simplest question: which euro brought which customer. So I took the chain apart and rebuilt it one link at a time.
The line holds as far as the enquiry. After that, most businesses are guessing.
40%
In August, 40% of recorded test-ride bookings were matched to a completed sale or a deposited order.
This is a measurement of what became visible, not an improvement. Before the records were joined, the number couldn't be produced at all.
Source: the business's own booking, CRM and sales records, joined customer by customer. One month, one business, own data.
The business
A specialist retailer I co-founded. Three stores, real demand, and years of records with no way to join them up.
What was separate
Ads brought people in. The website took the bookings. The CRM held the enquiries. The sale was recorded somewhere else entirely. Every system worked. None of them spoke to the next.
What we joined
Ad → landing page → booking → CRM record → completed sale. Matched one customer at a time, rather than totted up.
What changed
We stopped judging channels by how many forms they produced and started asking which ones brought buyers. Then we stopped paying for the rest.
Built with you. Kept by you
Nothing happens somewhere you can't see it. No monthly fee you're nervous about cancelling, and nothing that only works while I'm the one operating it. We work on the real business together, and when I'm gone you know how it runs.
- You watch it being built
- Every account stays in your name
- The prompts and the process are written down
- Nothing is held back to keep you paying
03
The Setup
Two weeks together. Then you don't need me
€3,500Founding rate, first five. €5,000 after.
A €195 first session comes off the price.
Everything made is yours. No retainer, and nothing held back to make one necessary. I don't rebuild things because I can — if your website is working, I leave it alone. And if a fortnight is more than you need, I'll say so before you pay for one.
Start with one session
€195
Ninety minutes to find what your business shouldn't still be doing by hand
If it isn't worth it, I'll say so — and the written read is yours either way.
04
Who you'd be working with
Twenty years building and running businesses
I'm Lisa Vander Elst. I started in advertising at Viacom in London, and for the twenty-odd years since I've built and run companies rather than advised them from the outside.
What I've been drawn to is businesses doing some good in the world and doing it properly — real commercial businesses that have to perform, not gestures. An organic Ayurvedic cosmetics company. An agency helping European businesses source responsibly in India. An organic café and coffee shop alongside a tour business. In 2008 I co-founded an electric-bike retailer that trades today from three stores. I also sit on the board of a property investment company.
The same thing happened in every one of them. The business collects websites, agencies, software and processes until nobody can see how it all fits together, and the cost turns up as customers who never quite buy. I've been the owner in that position myself.
- Experience
- 20+ years in business, marketing and design
- Founded
- Clean cosmetics, organic café, tours, sourcing
- Co-founded
- Electric-bike retail, 2008 – three stores today
- Board
- Private property investment
- Training
- MSc Marketing, UCD Smurfit · Diploma in graphic design
- Works with
- Owner-led businesses, Ireland, Belgium & Spain
- Format
- Remote, one at a time
05
Before you ask
I don't think branding is my problem.
Sometimes it is. Plenty of sites are the reason people don't buy — dated, or built for a customer the business has outgrown, and no amount of advertising fixes that. Just as often the look is fine and the break is somewhere between someone finding you and someone paying you. The first session tells us which, and I'd rather fix what's costing you customers than whatever is easiest to redesign.
Tech has never been my strong point.
It doesn't need to be. You won't be asked to learn a platform or keep up with anything. You'll be shown the two or three things you'll use, with the steps written down in plain English. I'd rather leave you something simple you'll open than something clever you'll avoid.
Do I need to know anything about AI?
No, and that's rather the point. What you need is the handful of things that save you a day a week, set up around your own business, with the prompts already written. That setting-up is the part everyone skips, and it's why AI feels underwhelming to most people who try it on their own.
Why with me rather than for me?
Because you've probably already paid someone monthly and couldn't tell whether it worked. This way you watch it being done and you can judge it yourself. It costs you a bit more time over the fortnight, and saves you both the money and the not-knowing afterwards.
I already have a website.
Then the answer is usually to fix rather than rebuild, and the first session is where that gets decided. If what you have works and just needs the visibility and the systems around it, that's smaller and cheaper — and I'd rather say so than sell you a rebuild.
What happens if I get stuck afterwards?
Ask me. There's no retainer and nothing is held back to force one, but I'd rather answer a question than watch something good go unused.
06
Start here
Send me the list
The things that aren't working. The agency you're unsure about. The website problem. The job you do by hand every week. The thing that's been on the list since spring. Send me the lot and I'll tell you where I'd start.
I'll read this myself and come back to you within two working days. If you think of anything else in the meantime, [email protected] reaches me directly, or ring +353 1 265 6505.