Every firm runs two machines.
One is your systems, process, and structure. The other is how your people actually think, feel, and work together. Most help fixes one. I work on both at once, with your leadership team in the room.
Pick the one that stings.
Leaders usually arrive with one of these. Each one traces back further than it looks.
Build in the right order.
Most founders build in the wrong order. They hire too fast, scale too hard, and chase growth before they understand what they're actually good at. I did all three. It cost me companies.
TheMBP is the order I learned instead. You build it in sequence. You fix it wherever the pain shows up, then trace it back.
Self
The founder is the first system. Clarity about your gift, and the reactivity that keeps getting in its way.
Customer
Who your gift is actually for, and the promise you can keep for them.
Machine
Hard systems and soft systems, tuned together, so the work runs without you in every room.
Team
Built last, because the first three tell you exactly who belongs and where.
Culture
What people repeatedly experience inside the business. It holds when growth arrives.
The sequence is sacred. The path is not. Read the full paradigm →
Both machines. Same table.
Consultants tend to pick a side. One fixes process and leaves the people to sort themselves out. Another works on the people and leaves the operating system alone. In a real firm they're the same problem, and the leadership team is where it lives.
Systems
What you can write down. It runs without heart, and eventually that shows.
- Process, SOPs, and handoffs
- Roles and decision rights
- KPIs that measure outcomes, not activity
- The meeting rhythm that carries strategy
People
How the room actually thinks, feels, and works together. It runs without process, and eventually that shows too.
- Psychological safety and candor
- Shared language for hard conversations
- How conflict gets handled, or doesn't
- Founder and COO alignment
“Your operations will never thrive until you incorporate self, because that's what takes your machine from transactional to transformational.”
From The Two Machines · Travis Lee Howard
Built inside a firm I still help run.
In 2023 I took over operations at my brother's law firm. Revenue had been flat for two years. We worked the order: Self, Customer, Machine, then Team.
“When I started working with Travis, I was the bottleneck for everything. … Letting go was the hard part. … Today I'm focused on growth instead of buried in the day‑to‑day.”Gus AnastopouloManaging Partner, Gus Anastopoulo Law
“Working together is helping me get clearer on my goals, my message, and what I want my business to stand for. More importantly though, he has helped me see the value in bringing more of myself into my brand.”Marne PehrsonManaging Partner, Legacy Bridge Legal
“I came in with low expectations. I was blown away. I went back and shared every insight with the full staff the same day.”Kevin CheneyCEO, CGH Injury Lawyers · after a half-day Self and Customer session
Three ways in.
Same paradigm at every depth. What changes is how long I'm in the room.
Strategy session
Half day · founder and leadership teamWe go pillar by pillar, find where the pressure is leaking, and leave with the first specific move worth making.
Leadership team
Engagement · monthly retainer · weekly working sessionsI work with the founder and the leadership team on both machines at once, week by week, until the new pattern holds without me.
Operator-advisor
Selective · usually with equityA seat closer to the business: advisory, board, or operating. I take very few, and only where my own stake is in the outcome.
“The team comes last in the order, never in importance.”
Why a book called Your Team Comes Last is about leadership teams
The operator who's still operating.
I've built companies, broken a few, and watched good ones turn toxic. I teach the order because I learned it by getting it wrong, and I'm still applying it every week in a live business.
Your Team Comes Last.
How Conscious Founders Build Without Burning Out. The whole paradigm in one place, from Advantage Media.
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