John Cobb

Most advisors hand you a deck. I hand you a working system.

A decade of independent work: governance, go-to-market, and the systems that hold once you actually scale, for organizations across the Americas and beyond. No pretty deck, no handoff, no theater. You talk to me. I build what runs.

I don't hand it off. I own it until it's fixed.

Decks die in drawers. Systems get results.

I build the second one.

Write me if you need

  • Governance that doesn't instantly collapse the second you look away
  • A board that asks the question nobody wants to
  • A go-to-market plan that actually works, not guessed at from a spreadsheet in another country

Skip me if you want

  • A big agency deck
  • A junior after the intro call
  • A strategy nobody owns
  • Someone who will play office politics with you

How I Work

Diagnose

I get close to the real operation to find what's actually stuck, a governance gap, a stalled go-to-market motion, a risk nobody has named yet.

Build

I design the system, board structure, or go-to-market plan the situation actually needs, built from what's real, not a generic framework off a shelf.

Own

I stay through execution, no handoff to a junior, no deck and a wave goodbye. You talk to me, and I own the outcome.

I also built and run ROI Wire. Outbound and paid visibility for recovery, audit, tax credit, compliance, specialty finance, and contract resolution. When I say a go-to-market plan will hold, it is because I still run them. Details at ROI Wire.

You get the person who does the work.

Cross-border fluency

I speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Nothing gets lost in translation because there's no translation happening.

Governance & go-to-market

I build structures that don't implode the second things get hard. A decade doing it in the Americas and wherever else the job takes me.

Proven under pressure

Vendors walk. Competitors threaten. Clients panic. None of it fazes me. I've been the person in the room when everything's on fire. I don't leave until it's out.

A few things I've fixed.

An e-commerce brand headed for a processor ban

Chargebacks hit 8%, well above the threshold that triggers termination. I traced the cause to checkout confusion, not fraud, redesigned the order flow, and cut chargebacks 75% in four weeks. The processor rescinded its warning, and paid traffic never stopped.

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A board one bad meeting from falling apart

A founder's absence during a family crisis had the board on the edge of resignations. I translated what was actually happening and redesigned how the board met. Trust came back with nobody leaving.

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A founder who went dark

An investor's founder stopped answering. Burnout, not betrayal. I got them talking again, rebuilt the cadence, and kept the relationship from detonating.

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A department that had to close without a scene

Underperformance forced a shutdown in a jurisdiction with strong labor protections. I ran the legal compliance, the vendor exits, and the messaging. Forty-five days, zero lawsuits.

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A vendor threatening to walk on $5M in annual revenue

A vendor's risk department misread the client's business model and moved to terminate. I got the right people in a room to correct the record. The termination was reversed in 72 hours.

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Ready to talk?

Fifteen minutes, or a short note. I read every one and take a limited number of engagements each month.

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