Rolls-Royce

- Led transformation from a low-performing Scrum team to a highly collaborative, performing team using Kanban.
- Product Owner and Agile Coach of two Software teams developing a Data Platform for the business, initially focusing on maximising engine availability which has currently saved over £9 million for the customer. Created roadmaps and led stakeholder reviews to maintain alignment across teams.
- Coached the team to use a Minimum Viable Product approach in line with the Lean Startup methodology. This resulted in delivering a bespoke software solution in 4 months which saves £70k/year and reduces the manufacturing time of a component by 12%.
- Supporting the wider business adopt a more agile approach to product development, facilitating workshops, writing strategy documents and coaching teams in their transformation.
- Qualified Professional Scrum Master and trained SAFe Practitioner.

Agile Delivery Lead

- Technically lead three component teams through New Product Introduction - developing the component method of manufacture and managing the technical risk.
- Managing the programme management for those components, updating project plans (P6), technical risk burndown using PFMEAs and being accountable for delivery of the production technical packages.
- Specialised in Design for Manufacture - balancing the Design ideals against realistic Manufacturing considerations to meet delivery commitments.
- Responsible for building the team. Hiring, performance management, personal development and coaching.
- Built a culture of continuous improvement, hosting retrospectives to reflect and learn from mistakes before the components went into production. Applied Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma principles such as value stream mapping and statistical process control to reduce waste and variation within our manufacturing methods, improving quality and delivery.

Manufacturing Engineering Technical Lead

- Responsible for managing the existing components through manufacture including managing non-conformance and reworks to maintain Design intent.
- Co-ordinated and led major design improvements with stress, thermal and materials engineers as we re-introduced components into manufacture. Reduced non-conformance by over 50% through these improvements.
- Managed operations stakeholders as the primary contact for Engineering as we balanced the risk of progressing with manufacture vs performing detailed analysis on defects. Strong communicator.
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Attained.

Mechanical Design Engineer

Blueprint Leadership Academy

- Coached clients of Small-Medium Enterprises on Transformational Change and business development. Specialised in getting the leaders to empower their teams to achieve ambitious outcomes.
- Focused on setting meaningful goals, using OKRs and aligning the team to collaborate together to achieve them. Supported the planning and execution of these goals through workshops and coaching.
- Devised a goal-setting planner, now available on Amazon.co.uk to help others set personal goals and track progress.

Leadership Consultant

BAE Systems

Spent 4 months on placement in Mechanical Engineering Support. This involved producing solutions to problems with the product. Skills used include; Problem Solving, Engineering Design, Mathematical Analysis and Report Writing.

My second placement on the GDF was in Cost Engineering began in January 2013 and involved working on the bid process for various projects and pricing the labour within the business.

GDF Engineer

Worked as a design engineer as part of the High Integrity Pressure Vessels team within the Nuclear Marine sector. Assisted in the design of a number of components, writing technical reports, working on the design and manufacture of the pressure vessel following ASME codes III and VIII. Techniques used included Design for Assembly/Manufacture, TRIZ and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis. SC Security Clearance attained.

Over my time in the Engineering sector, I have witnessed many examples of both good and bad leadership. In 2021, I started working with clients to help improve their leadership, based on empowering team members with effective goal setting, determining where they decide to focus their efforts and developing a framework to support others to get higher performance.

My background, working in some of the best engineering firms in the world, has given me great exposure to "Operational Excellence" - which is what I can work with you to achieve. Operational excellence is the perfect balance of People, Process and Purpose. I have the tools to help you with all three!

People are at the heart of any good business, but you need to get the right ones, develop them and keep them around. I can help you preparing for interviewing new employees, empowering them to love their role and develop them so they can be at their best more often.

Process is often overlooked in leadership, but a great leader understands their outputs and helps their team by removing obstacles so they can deliver. Are your team bogged down or have inconsistent ways of working, with limited tangible results? I am experienced in Agile, Scrum, Lean, Six Sigma, Quality Management Systems and more to help you fix these problems.

Finally, purpose! Tell your team what you need to achieve and let them figure out how to get there. I can help with goal setting, planning for the future and delivering the mission to your team. Without understanding purpose, your team will never be able to reach high performance.

If your organisation is struggling to develop a high performing culture, get in touch and let me help you achieve your goals.

Dan Webb

I work with owner led service businesses that look successful on the outside but feel fragile underneath.

The kind where growth has happened fast, the team is busy, clients are demanding, and the business relies on one exhausted person holding everything together.

Usually, the founder.

I recognise this pattern because I’ve lived it, and I’ve seen what happens when organisations depend on heroics, memory, and goodwill rather than clarity, ownership, and structure.

My work is focused on one thing:

building organisations that are stable by design, not dependent on their founders.

I don’t start with technology.
I start with reality.

I read between the lines, surface where fragility is hiding, and design clarity into how the business actually runs, so decisions don’t bottleneck, issues surface early, and leaders can step back without everything wobbling.

This is the thinking behind PULSE™, the operating model I use to stabilise growing businesses, and Oriana360™, the visibility layer that shows leaders what’s really happening before problems become expensive.

I lead calmly, human first, and without theatrics.

Experience, grief, and hard lessons have shaped how I show up.

I no longer chase perfection or scale for its own sake.

I work with leaders who are committed to building something that lasts, without sacrificing people, values, or themselves.

I don’t work with everyone.

Just the right few.

That’s enough.

If you want to be among the few, then take my quiz and see if we are a match. 🙌

https://equinoxpulse.scoreapp.com/

Dawn Coupe

I'm really pleased to officially welcome Chris Broadhurst to the Equinox team. 👋

Chris joins us as Senior ERP & Integration Consultant, bringing a exceptional depth of technical expertise in Unit 4 ERP and integrations that will genuinely strengthen what we can deliver for our clients.

There's a leadership principle I believe in strongly, surround yourself with people who are brilliant at what they do, and give them the space to do it. Chris embodies exactly that.

His understanding of how ERP systems really work in practice, not just in theory, and his ability to see the bigger picture is something I am confident our clients will feel immediately.

As Equinox continues to evolve and grow into PULSE and Oriana360, having experienced, trusted people alongside me makes all the difference.

Chris's expertise will play an important role in that journey.

Welcome to the team Chris. Really glad to have you with us. 🙌

Founder/CEOs come to me when they’ve forgotten what it feels like to dream about the future. I fix that.

Chris

Growth nearly broke my business.



Time for a reintroduction, I’m Dawn.

I’ve worked for myself for 11 years.

I’ve grown a business.
Nearly lost it.
Scaled it too fast.
Watched growth look impressive on paper while feeling dangerously fragile underneath.

Here’s what no one tells you about scaling.

It’s not the market that exhausts you.

It’s the dependency.

😰 Cash flow that keeps you awake
⛓️ A business that routes everything back to you
💻 Decisions that stall without your oversight
📈 Revenue rising while your nervous system absorbs the pressure

For years, I thought this was leadership.

It wasn’t.

It was structural fragility disguised as growth.

I wasn’t struggling because I lacked effort.
Or talent.
Or ambition.

I was struggling because the business was built around me instead of designed beyond me.

That’s the difference.

Over the last year, I stopped trying to optimise harder.

I redesigned the model.

Decision flow.
Accountability.
Information architecture.
Financial visibility.
Operational rhythm.

That thinking became PULSE™.

Not a service.
Not a framework bolted on at the end.

An operating model designed so growth doesn’t rely on burnout.

This is the work now.

Helping service-based founders move from reactive expansion…

To stability by design.

If you’ve been building for years and it still feels heavier than it should,

You’re not failing.

You may just be running on an outdated structure.

#femalefounders
#FounderLeadership
#SecondStageGrowth
#BusinessDesign
#ServiceBasedBusiness

Growth without chaos, delivered with grounded ambition and quiet precision | Founder & CEO, Equinox | PULSE™ | Oriana360™

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Three new clients since January.


Zero last year. Or close enough to zero that it felt like zero.

Same business. Same service. Same team.

What changed?

I did.

I can't fully describe what a shift in energy feels like. But you know it when you see it in others. Someone walks into a room in a bad mood, you don't need them to say a word. You just know.

It works the other way too.

In January something clicked. I'd been questioning whether any of this was working. Whether there was any point. And then I just decided, that's it. This is working. I am good enough. I am a good founder.

Not the best. But good. And good enough to back myself.

Here's what I know categorically after everything I've been through building Equinox:

You will never be successful thinking that you are unsuccessful.

You turn up to a meeting believing you're rubbish, nobody in that room is going to think you're great. It doesn't matter how good your product is.

The mental work isn't separate from the founder journey. It IS the founder journey. There's no 9 to 5 switch. No holiday where you fully leave it behind. Because it isn't a job. It's a way of life.

And part of living that life well is doing the inner work. The mindset. The belief. The decision, made and remade every single day, that you are worth backing.

Two new clients don't sound like much written down.

After everything last year, they feel like everything.

This one's for my mum...


Hey Mum,

It’s been a while, but I still remember the lessons you taught me every single day. 

You made me laugh, you taught me to love and you were there to support me every moment you were here on this planet as my Mum.

Your laugh 😊🩷
Your love 😊🩷
Your fiery temper 😉

We are so alike. 🤣

I am proud to be able to call you my Mum, and I thank you for kicking me up the arse and doing something about being bored. 

A lesson I will never forget. 

I hope you are proud of me, and as I look at your picture on my desk, I smile as I remember one of the two most amazing human beings I have ever met. 

You made me the woman I am today, no questions, and I thank you.

Happy International Women's Day to every woman shaped by another.

“It’s good to see happy Dawn back.”


Someone said that to me in a meeting this week. I didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it.

This time last year our SLT barely existed. 

Everything was on my shoulders. In my head. I was the plan, the memory, the glue, the worry. 

All of it.

This week we sat together as a team and planned a future that genuinely excites me.

No undertone of terror. No one person holding it all together. Just a room full of amazing female leaders who care about where this is going, and the energy to match.

This is what the other side looks like. Not a dramatic moment. Just a Friday. A good meeting. A team that’s found its feet.

And a version of me I’d almost forgotten existed.

Happy Friday. 🙌

There’s a version of growth no one really prepares you for....


The stage where the stakes stop feeling theoretical.

For me, it sounded like this:

What if I’m not good enough?
What if I make the wrong call?
What if I drop the ball?
What if this is the decision that costs someone their job?

When you’re responsible for payroll, mistakes don’t feel abstract.

They feel personal.

So you stay close.

You read everything.
Review everything.
Make the final call on everything.

Not because you don’t trust your team.

But because you’re scared of letting them down.

As the business grows, that weight doesn’t disappear. It increases.

You tell yourself it’s leadership.
You tell yourself it’s care.

And it is.

But it’s also fear.

Fear keeps you central.
Keeps you hyper-vigilant.
Keeps you tired.

This is the stage no one talks about.

Where success brings pressure, not relief.
Where ambition expands, and so does responsibility.

That’s when the real work begins.

Not scaling.

Designing something strong enough that it doesn’t all sit on your nervous system.

#femalefounders #FounderLeadership #FounderJourney #SecondStageGrowth

Last year I was running on adrenaline from a place of fear....


This year I'm running on excitement.

They are not the same feeling. Not even close.

Right now Equinox is the busiest it has ever been. New starters. New clients, four in two months after a year of hardly any. New proposals. New products. Legal contracts. Branding. IT transitions. Client delivery. All of it, all at once.

I'm still at my desk at 8, sometimes 9 o'clock at night.

And I'll be honest, it's stretching me. The responsibility of a growing wage bill. 

Employment laws changing. Making sure every client gets what they need while we build the team around it all.

But here's what's different.

Last year busy was crisis management. It was, how do we pay this? What's on fire today? Who's leaving? The stomach crunching, relentless horribleness of survival mode.

This busy is growing pains. Good problems. The kind of stretched that comes from demand rather than disaster.

I keep coming back to one thought when it gets overwhelming:

This is a passing phase. In two months this business will look completely different because of the people coming on board. The noise will reduce. The team will find its feet.

The difference this time is that we're not flying blind. The systems, the visibility, the clarity on where we are and where we're going, that's what's holding this together while we scale. A year ago I didn't have that. Now I do.

And I'll look back at this season the same way I look back at last year, grateful for every hard lesson, and proud we kept going.

Four new clients in two months. A growing team. A future worth building.

I'm not complaining. I'm just being honest about what growth actually feels like from the inside.

It's a lot. And it's everything I worked for.

Don’t. Just don’t.


Taking on new clients without the right foundations in place, don’t do it.

I know because I’ve been there.

Last year a new client came with a stomach clenching moment. Did we charge enough? Will this actually work? I hope this doesn’t end up costing us more than we make.

I was winging it. Fully and completely winging it.

The truth is if the level of growth we’re experiencing right now had hit us last year it would have crippled us. I wouldn’t have known if we could afford to bring extra resource in. I wouldn’t have known our margins. I wouldn’t have known if we were actually making money or just making ourselves busy.

This year is completely different.

Four new clients in two months and I know exactly what gross profit margin we’re making on each one. I know what we can afford to invest in delivery. I know where we have flex and where we don’t.

That’s not luck. That’s having the right visibility in place before the growth arrived.
It’s given us a real edge. The ability to plan with confidence rather than hope. To say yes to the right opportunities and know exactly why.

To any founder about to take on their next client without that visibility…. the calamity doesn’t announce itself. It arrives quietly, in the gap between what you thought you were making and what you actually were.

Get the foundations right first. Everything else gets easier.

For the first time ever, our client could see the wood for the trees.


Not a vague feeling that things weren't working. Not a gut instinct that something was costing them time and money. 

Actual visibility. Clear as day. Traffic lighted. Prioritised.

This is our first PULSE Automation Priority Matrix, a dynamic tool (not pdf) delivered to a client this week after auditing 20 processes across 5 operational zones.

What it shows: every process scored against time cost, cash risk, and effort to fix. 

Critical priorities in red. Quick wins sitting right alongside the bigger fixes.

And when I showed it to them the reaction made me smile.

Because one of the critical priorities, number one on the list, was someone manually entering data from Xero into Revolut. Every single time. Duplicating effort, creating human error risk, eating time that should be going elsewhere.

Exceptionally easy to fix once you can see it.

That's the thing about operational fragility. It's rarely dramatic. It's a hundred small things nobody has ever mapped, prioritised or connected together.

PULSE makes the invisible visible.

And watching a client see their business clearly for the first time, that's why I built this, and now the fun begins. 

Making this all a reality 🙌🏼

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Dan Webb

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