Growth Partner for Founder-led BusinessesOnline or in-person
I'm Paula, a business growth partner. I find the blind spot that's slowing your business down, and stay alongside you until it's put right.
I've spent years helping founders and entrepreneurs sell better, and the ones who come to me are rarely struggling. They're good, often brilliant, at what they do. But every one of them has had something stopping the next stage of growth that they simply couldn't see from where they were standing.
That's why Your Growth Code exists.
Paula Richardson
Your Growth Partner
Why you can't see it yourself
Think about a racing driver, mid-lap. Everything feels fast, smooth, flawless, exactly how a great lap should feel. From inside the car, there's no way to tell that one tyre is wearing unevenly and costing half a second every single lap.
The driver isn't wrong. They just can't feel the one thing slowing them down. That's why every top team has a pit crew watching the numbers. Not because the driver isn't skilled enough, but because some things are only visible from outside the car.
Your business is no different.
You might be certain it's your pricing, when it's actually the way your offer is structured. You might think you need more leads, when you're actually losing the leads you already have. You might believe you need to work harder, when the real block is that nobody else in the business can do what you do.
None of this is a sign that you're not good enough. It's a sign you need someone outside the business who can spot what's blocking your growth, and help you clear it.
What type of founder are you?
Over the years, I've noticed that founders whose growth has stalled tend to fall into three types. I've given each one a name, and I think you'll recognise yourself in at least one of them, if not more.
You've grown fast, and the business has outgrown the systems and processes holding it up. Things are getting missed, nothing quite joins up. Not because you're not capable, but because what got you here was never built to run at this size.
You've built a business that genuinely depends on you, which means you're doing something right that nobody else can replicate yet. Your block is that the very thing making you successful has also become the ceiling.
You're doing well. Genuinely, comfortably well. The block here isn't visible in the numbers yet. It's subtler, sitting in your ambition, your offer, or your team, and easy to miss because everything still looks fine on paper.
How it works
1
A short, personalised diagnostic built around what's actually true for your business (not a generic checklist that assumes something's broken).
2
A free, no-pressure call with me, where we talk through what the diagnostic identified and what it means for you specifically.
3
If it's a fit, we go deeper with a proper audit and a partnership built around your specific block, personalised to your needs and priorities.
My sales lens
Selling confidently and competently matters enormously, it's how good businesses get to help more people. But great sales skills don't create growth on their own.
Growth has to be built on the right foundations (your offer, your team, your capacity, your pricing). If any one of those is off, it shows up in your sales numbers before it shows up anywhere else.
My sales lens isn't about teaching you to sell better and harder. It's my unique way of looking, strategically, at your business, so I can quickly identify exactly where the block is sitting, and what needs fixing first.
Then I'll partner with you over 4–6 months, working closely to implement the changes. In my experience the implementation is always the hardest part, that's why I don't just identify your block, I give you the tools and help to make things happen.
Your questions answered
A growth partner works alongside you to find what's holding your business back, and then helps you fix it. I'm not a coach who hands you a plan and leaves you to it, and I'm not a consultant who writes a report that sits in a drawer. I look at your business from the outside, spot the block you can't see from where you're standing, and work with you for 4 to 6 months to put the changes in place.
I work with founder-led businesses that are already successful and want to grow further. My clients usually have a team behind them, anywhere from 1 to 30 people, whether they're employed or outsourced. They're very good, often brilliant, at what they do, But growth has slowed, stalled, or started to feel much harder than it should.
You absolutely do know it best, and that's exactly why the block is so hard to spot. When you're inside the business every day, the things slowing you down start to feel normal. It's a bit like trying to read the label from inside the jar... a different perspective brings different insights.
Not in the way you might expect. I've spent over 25 years in sales and delivering training to hundreds of people, and sales is where I always start looking, because it's easy for me to see the problems from there. But the real cause is often somewhere else, in your offer, your pricing, your team or your capacity. I use my 'sales lens' (my own unique approach) to trace the problem back to where it starts, and then we fix that, rather than just pushing harder on selling.
I'm based in County Durham and I work with founders right across the UK. Most of my work happens online, so it doesn't matter where you are, and I'm also happy to meet in person across the North East and North Yorkshire.
No. If it looks like I can help, I'll explain how, and if I'm not the right fit I'll tell you honestly. There's no pressure and no hard sell. Making selling feel human is at the heart of everything I do, so I'd hardly do it any other way myself!
Partnerships start from £1,000 a month. That includes my audit, our regular sessions, and the tools I have developed to support our work together. We'll talk through exactly what's right for your business on your Growth Conversation.
Start with the diagnostic, or go straight to a free Growth Conversation... either way, you'll leave knowing more about your block than you did today.
