For founders of proven organizations
That’s my work. I help people who’ve proven something in one place turn it into an organization that doesn’t run through them.
Three seats.Buyer. Operator. Investor-facing leader.
12 years.Building Westrock Coffee’s commercial organization.
One first-year turnaround.A proven product with an organization that needed rebuilding.
Is this you?
If more than one is true, you probably don’t have a strategy problem. You have an organization that has outgrown the way it is being run.
Selected results
The names stay private. The work and the outcomes do not need embellishment.
Food & beverage
OutcomeThe commercial leader was hired. The hire stuck.
Mission organization
OutcomeThey knew where not to go—and where they could be genuinely different.
The work
No two engagements are identical, but the movement is consistent. The scope, the stage, and the finish line are made clear at the beginning.
Conversations with you, your team, and as many customers as will take the call. The same handful of questions, asked enough times for the pattern to become visible.
QuestionWhat can’t happen when you’re not in the room?
Not a deck. A short account of who owns what, where work piles up, which seats fit, and what will break first if the organization doubles.
OutputA written organizational map people can recognize and use.
Roles written down and agreed to. A customer owner other than the founder. A meeting and decision rhythm that runs without one person chairing it. The hires and moves that follow.
PrincipleYour team does the work. I stay close enough to be useful without becoming the new bottleneck.
We agree what must be true for the engagement to be finished. When it is true, I go. Any continued work is a new decision with a new scope.
Finish lineAn organization that can carry the work without transferring the dependence to me.
Who I work with
A strong fit
Not the work
If the thing has not worked yet, I am the wrong person. I do not arrive with a team of associates, take a permanent job inside your company, or hand over a document and call the problem solved.
How I work
Every Red Wagon Group engagement has capped hours, a fixed term, something written at the end, and a date when it stops. Renewal is a decision made on purpose.
I travel four to eight nights a month and prefer to cluster visits rather than negotiate each trip as it comes.
The right structure is discussed plainly before the work begins.
What I’ll need from you
Access to your team without you in the room, a few customers, and permission to say the uncomfortable version out loud.
About
Elizabeth McLaughlin Founder, Red Wagon Group
I’ve sat across the table from the buyer, run the organization that had to deliver what we promised, and stood in front of investors explaining the number out loud.
Most advisers have done one of those. Having done all three is why I can usually see where an organization is actually stuck—and which people problem is wearing a process costume.
Why Red Wagon
The name comes from my childhood, pulling a red wagon around to collect cans and build something from what was already there. That is still roughly the job: find what matters in what you have built, then give it the structure to go farther than you could carry it yourself.
Gather what matters. Move it forward.
Carry what counts. Build what lasts.
Red Wagon Group · Start here
Half an hour, no materials, and one question: what can’t happen when you’re not in the room?
If the answer comes back short and specific, we’ll both know quickly whether there is work here. If there is not, I’ll say so—and I will usually know somebody who is a better fit.
