Michael Wakeham, Founder of Brynley Knight
Michael Wakeham
Founder, Brynley Knight
For Founders & Business Owners

You've built something that works. Getting it to the next stage is a different problem.

Brynley Knight works alongside founders who have built a successful business and are now facing the roadblocks to the next stage of growth. One trusted partner, across Strategy, Operations, People and everything between.

Helping founders and their businesses reach their full potential.

What we help with

Three pillars. One trusted partner.

Owner-managed businesses do not need a different specialist for every problem. They need one senior person who can move across all of them. Direction, Structure and Team are the three pillars Brynley Knight works across.

Pillar 01
Direction

Where the business is going, and where you are going with it. Strategy, founder development, and how you exit when the time comes.

Pillar 02
Structure

The operational infrastructure that lets the business deliver. Systems, finance, technology and governance built for where you are heading.

Pillar 03
Team

The people layer that makes Direction and Structure actually work. Your team, your culture, and the engine that brings in customers.

Nine areas of help

The concrete things we work on.

Under each pillar sits a set of capability areas. These are the day-to-day topics any engagement with Brynley Knight will tend to move across.

Direction
Strategy

Clear direction, growth priorities, and the commercial decisions only you can make.

Direction
Coaching & Mentoring

Founder development, leadership growth, accountability and honest reflection.

Direction
Exits, Mergers & Acquisitions

Readiness, value drivers, planning and execution when the moment arrives.

Structure
Operations

Systems, processes and ways of working that scale beyond the founder.

Structure
Financial Management

Management accounts, KPIs and reporting cadence you can actually use.

Structure
Technology, Data & AI

AI adoption that works requires more than a strategy — it requires understanding how your people respond to it. The technical and the human have to move together.

Structure
Compliance & Governance

Risk, regulation and governance handled properly, not relying on luck.

Team
People Strategy

Structure, culture, key hires, performance and leadership development.

Team
Sales & Marketing

Building the engine that consistently brings in customers, not just referrals.

How we work together

Three ways to bring
Brynley Knight into your business.

Every engagement starts with a conversation about what you need most. From there, one of three models will be the right fit. Sometimes the engagement evolves between them as the business changes.

Ongoing partner
Engage

Fractional support, embedded with you, week in and week out.

When what you need is a trusted senior partner alongside you on a regular basis, not for a single project, but for the ongoing complexity of running and growing the business. Move across Strategy, Operations, People and the rest as priorities shift.

Typical structure Agreed days per week, rolling monthly retainer, 30 days notice. No long-term lock-in.
More on Engage →
Defined project
Sprint

A specific outcome. A defined timeline. Done properly.

When you have a clear project that needs senior attention from day one. A strategic review, a key hire, an operational overhaul, or exit preparation. We agree the outcome, the number of days and the end date before we start.

Typical structure Fixed scope, agreed outcome, defined timeline. Priced on scope. End date in the diary from day one.
More on Sprint →
Personal partnership
Coaching & Mentoring

A monthly conversation with someone in your corner.

When you want a business mentor working with you each month on your strategic objectives, personal growth and the live challenges in front of you. Less about doing the work inside the business; more about helping you do it better.

Typical structure Monthly sessions, ongoing relationship. Calls between sessions for the urgent stuff. Built around you, not a programme.
More on Coaching →
The Founder Roadblock Scorecard

Find out where your roadblocks really are. In about three minutes.

Ten short questions across the things that most often slow founders down: strategy, operations, finance, people, tech, sales, governance, and exit-readiness. Honest answers, instant results.

10 questions, around 3 minutes Instant on-screen result + full PDF report by email No obligation. Useful even if we never speak.
Take the Scorecard →

Question 4 of 10

Our systems and processes scale without me being the bottleneck.

Strongly disagree
Disagree
Agree
Strongly agree
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About
Michael Wakeham
Michael Wakeham
Founder, Brynley Knight

The person behind
Brynley Knight.

Mike has spent over twenty years as a director and operational leader inside SMEs, not as a consultant parachuted in from outside, but embedded in leadership teams, making decisions and doing the actual work. Across recruitment, franchising, corporate healthcare, medico-legal and logistics.

The pattern he kept seeing was consistent: the operational problems were rarely operational. They were human. An MSc in Psychology confirmed what two decades of observation had already shown. Most business problems are people problems wearing an operational disguise.

Brynley Knight was built on that combination: senior operational depth, psychology-informed insight, and a genuine understanding of what founders are trying to build and why.

Read the full story →
Let's talk

A 30-minute call. No pitch deck. No obligation.

Tell me what's going on in your business and where you want to get to. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help, and if so, how.

Book a free discovery call →
30 minutes Phone or video No obligation You'll leave with something useful