Notebook of a COO
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New and early-stage operator?  Join The Small Business MBA for $19.99/mo →
For new and soon-to-be o Notebook of a COO

The Small Business MBA.

Everything they should have taught you about running a business. $19.99 a month.

If a fractional COO is not where you are yet, start here.

Most of the operators we work with one to one are running $300k to $5M+ businesses. Plenty of people who find us are earlier than that. New owners, side hustles going full time, first real revenue. You do not need a $5,000-a-month engagement. You need the education and the systems first. That is the gap this fills.

Start here

The Small Business MBA

$19.99/month. Learn the operating playbook and apply it yourself. Built for new and early-stage owners getting the foundation right.

When you are ready

90-Day Operating Audit

$2,500 one time. We map your whole business and hand you a 90-day plan to install the operating layer. The bridge to fractional.

When you scale

Fractional COO, CMO, CFO

From $5,000/month. We embed and install the operating layer for you. The done-for-you tier for operators in growth mode.

What's inside.

The full operator curriculum, 98+ lessons across 14 pillars, organized into four parts. New lessons added regularly. No theory for the sake of theory. Every module is something you can put to work in your business this week.

Part One

Foundation

The four-box business model, your offer, positioning, and the operating fundamentals most owners skip. Get the base right so everything you build on top of it holds.

Part Two

Market and Revenue

Lead generation, pricing, customer profiling, offers that sell, and conversion. How to bring in revenue on purpose instead of hoping it shows up.

Part Three

Operations and Systems

SOPs, delegation, hiring scorecards, KPI dashboards, and the operating cadence that lets the business run without living on your shoulders.

Part Four

Scale and Exit

Capacity planning, financial command, sellability, and building a business that is worth something whether you keep it or sell it.

98+ operator lessons

The full library, available the moment you join. New lessons added regularly.

Operator Readiness Assessment

Find your archetype and get the custom guide that tells you what to work on first.

The operator community

A private space to ask questions and learn alongside other operators. Opening soon, included with your membership.

Business Essential Tools

The operator toolkit, included.

Live tools your business actually needs, built into your member dashboard. Auto-saved. Auto-calculated. With operator-class insights that flag what needs attention before it becomes a problem.

Live tool

Monthly P&L

The monthly financial audit every operator should be running. Enter revenue, COGS, and operating expenses one time per month. The tool calculates gross margin, net margin, and rolls up to your annual P&L automatically. Plus operator-class insights: payroll ratio alerts, expense spike detection, cash runway calculation, and trend warnings. No spreadsheet wrestling.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Keyword Strategy

Pick the words your buyers actually search. Track up to 10 keywords from Google Trends, see month-over-month interest change, get automated suggestions tailored to your industry and location, and catch any keyword that’s losing steam before it costs you traffic. Built on real Google Trends data, not guesswork.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

13-Week Cash Flow

See the week you run out before it hits. Enter your starting cash and your weekly money in and out, and the tool projects thirteen weeks ahead, flagging your lowest cash week, your runway, and your burn rate. Operator-class insights surface the danger weeks early, while you still have options to act.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Hire or Outsource?

Know the true cost before you make the call. Compare a W-2 employee, a 1099 contractor, an agency, and a virtual assistant side by side, with payroll taxes, benefits, tools, and ramp time all baked in. The tool shows the real monthly cost of each path and the breakeven hours, so you hire the way the numbers actually support.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Price and Margin Builder

Stop guessing at your prices. Enter what it costs to deliver one unit or one project plus a target margin, and the tool returns the price to charge, your true markup, profit per sale, and break-even. It even shows what a small price increase is worth per year, so you price off margin instead of leaving money on the table.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Owner Pay and Tax Set-Aside

Decide how much to pay yourself and exactly how much to set aside for taxes, with Profit First style buckets and a realistic quarterly tax reserve.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Unit Economics

Know what a customer is really worth, what you can afford to spend to win one, and how long until it pays off. LTV, CAC, and payback in one view.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

KPI Dashboard

Pick the handful of numbers that matter, log them each month, and watch the trend, the change, and anything off target at a glance.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Revenue Goal Planner

Set your income or revenue target for the year and work backward to the exact monthly revenue, clients, and leads it takes to hit it.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Business Valuation and Sellability

Estimate what your business is worth and score how sellable it is, with the exact levers that raise the multiple before you ever go to market.

Open in dashboard →
Live tool

Operator Asset Map

Could it run without you? Map every function on the documented-vs-delegated grid, get an owner independence score, and a ranked 90-day plan to buy your time back.

Open in dashboard →
Coming soon

More tools shipping monthly

more operator tools, shipping regularly. Members get every new tool the moment it ships, no upcharge, no upgrade tier.

Members only
Free · 3 minutes · The Disappearance Test

Could your business survive 30 days without you?

Take the free Disappearance Test and get your owner-dependency score from 0 to 100, plus the exact next moves for your stage. The Small Business MBA is the playbook that raises it.

Take the Disappearance Test →

What operators say

Real operators. Real results.

Rated 4.2 out of 5 on Trustpilot  

Unprompted reviews from members inside the Operator Hub.

I needed actual systems, not more advice about mindset. Did the Lead Generation course, then Elevator Pitch. My close rate on discovery calls is noticeably better. The membership price is very reasonable for what you actually get inside.
Leon Hass
Bookkeeping business owner
For people tired of business content that is just repackaged inspiration with no substance. The Customer Profiling course restructured how I think about my client base entirely. The biweekly implementation calls keep me moving forward.
Angelina Bender
HR consulting firm
The AI Automations course alone is worth the membership. I have saved six to eight hours a week since implementing what I learned. It does not assume you are technical, which I appreciated.
Marc Boettcher
E-commerce operator
Finally stopped winging it on lead gen. The module on qualifying leads before they get to a quote changed how I run my whole intake. Good value. Solid content. No fluff.
Gretchen Harrison
Landscaping, 9 years
The Elevator Pitch framework is three parts and genuinely simple. I used a version of it in two proposals this month and won both.
Caroline Wilkins
Consulting practice
Thanks to the Operator Hub I pinpointed where the bottlenecks in my business were and learned how to actually make it scalable. Exactly what my business needed.
Isabelle
Digital Bliss

Members only

Pick your plan. Start today.

Same full library, toolkit, and community on both plans. Go annual and get almost three months free.

Best value · Save $90

Annual

$149.99/ year

Just $12.50 a month, billed once a year.

Get a year for $149.99 →

Monthly

$19.99/ month

Month to month. Cancel anytime.

Start monthly for $19.99 →

Secure checkout through Stripe. Cancel in two clicks anytime. No contract, no phone call.

The math is not close.

There are a lot of ways to learn how to run a business. Most of them cost a fortune or waste your time. Here is how this stacks up.

A traditional MBA

$100,000+

Two years out of the game, heavy on theory and case studies, light on what it actually takes to run a small business day to day.

A business coach

$500 to $2,000/mo

Helpful if you find a good one. Often generic advice, rarely backed by real operating experience, and the meter is always running.

The Small Business MBA

$19.99/month

The operating playbook from 15 years in the C-suite, built for small business, ready to use this week. Cancel anytime.

Taught by someone who has actually run the business.

JT spent 15 years in the C-suite as a COO, CMO, and CFO, scaling companies from $500k to over $1B in revenue across multiple industries. The Small Business MBA is the operating playbook from that career, translated for owners who are earlier in the journey and want to get it right.

This is the stuff I wish someone had handed me when I was starting out. Not theory. The actual operating moves that decide whether a business runs you or you run it.

Questions, answered.

What do I get the moment I join?

Immediate access to the full operator library: 98+ lessons across 14 pillars spanning Foundation, Market and Revenue, Operations and Systems, and Scale and Exit, plus ten bonus courses, the Operator Readiness Assessment, and the workbooks you fill in inside the platform. New modules are added every month. You log in, you start, you are using it the same day.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. $19.99/month, month to month. Cancel in two clicks inside your account. No contract, no minimum term, no phone call, no email to chase. We would rather you stay because it is working than stay because cancelling is hard.

How is this different from your fractional services?

The fractional services are done-for-you. We embed in your business and install the operating layer ourselves, starting at $5,000/month. The Small Business MBA is do-it-yourself. You learn the same playbook and apply it yourself for $19.99/month. It is the on-ramp for operators who are not ready for a fractional engagement yet, and the playbook reference for the ones who eventually are.

Who is this for, honestly?

New operators, soon-to-be operators, and operators running businesses under $1M who feel like they are figuring it out from scratch every day. If you have already built an operating layer, hired well, and your business runs without you, you do not need this. If any of those are still in front of you, this is the most affordable way to get the playbook in your hands this week.

Is this a real, accredited MBA?

No, and we will never pretend it is. The Small Business MBA is a practical operator education. It is not an accredited academic degree and does not confer a Master of Business Administration. It is the real-world version: what running a business actually requires, taught operator to operator.

When does the community open?

We are building the member community right now. It opens soon, and every member gets access the moment it does. Your $19.99/month membership includes it at no extra cost.

The Small Business MBA is a practical business education program offered by Notebook of a COO. It is not an accredited academic degree program and does not confer a Master of Business Administration or any academic credential.

Twenty bucks. Start this week.

Get the full operator library today, and be in the community the moment it opens. $19.99 a month, cancel anytime.

Join for $19.99/mo  →