We've spent years being selective about the companies we work with — and it's working. Here's what actually happened when business leaders stopped trying to do everything themselves.
Most of our best clients came to us feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or skeptical. They'd tried consultants, agencies, and software that promised to fix things — and nothing did. That's usually where our best work starts.
They had a growing team and no idea how to actually onboard them without burning out their one HR person. Their part-time HR manager was juggling recruiting, compliance, and employee relations with spreadsheets and hope. Offer letters went out with errors. New hires started before background checks cleared. The founding team was spending 15 hours a week on HR fire drills.
We embedded a fractional HR lead who mapped their entire hiring and onboarding workflow in the first two weeks. We rebuilt their offer letter process, set up compliant background check workflows, and built a 30-60-90 day onboarding framework for every new hire. Everything documented, everything consistent.
Offer letter errors went to zero. New hire drop-off in the first 90 days dropped from 23% to 6%. Their HR manager went from 15 hours a week of firefighting to 5 hours a week on proactive strategy. They hired 12 people in the next quarter without a single compliance issue.
"I was ready to hire a full-time HR director at $120k when someone told me about Coherence. Six months later, our HR function is in better shape than it was with a dedicated hire — and I didn't have to manage them."
They'd tripled revenue in 18 months but had no idea where the money was going. Their founder was doing finance on a spreadsheet that hadn't been reconciled in three months. Investors were asking for metrics they couldn't produce. The books were a mess and he was embarrassed to show them to anyone.
We assigned a fractional CFO who started by cleaning up three months of backlogged reconciliations, then built the financial model from the ground up. We mapped their revenue, identified their real gross margins, and built a board-ready dashboard they could update in 20 minutes each week. P&L, cash flow, runway — all investor-ready.
They closed their Series A at a $12M valuation. The due diligence process took two weeks — faster than most founders expect — because the financials were clean and organized. His anxiety about the numbers became his biggest asset in the room.
"I was afraid an investor would ask me a financial question and I'd have to say I didn't know. After Coherence set up our dashboard, I walked into board meetings confident instead of dreading them."
Every engagement starts with a conversation. Tell us where you're stuck and we'll tell you straight whether we can help — and what it would look like if we did.