Hi, I’m Colleen. For twenty years, I built growth for other people's companies. B2B technology brands inside $300 million businesses, SaaS startups finding their first real traction, legacy enterprises trying to move again. Big budgets and scrappy no-budgets. I was good at it, and I loved it. In 2020 I helped found CIOs Against Cancer, a nonprofit that has since raised more than $3 million for cancer research.

Then in 2021, I walked away from the C-suite.

The COVID years had made me stop and look at the whole picture: my life, my family, the kind of work I actually wanted to do, and the purpose I wanted to serve. So I did what experts do. I went out on my own, built a consulting practice as a fractional CMO, advisor, and growth coach, and got good at that too. Successful, even.

And then I hit the same wall my clients kept hitting. The practice I'd built to give me freedom had built itself around me, like a golden cage. It only grew when I worked more. Every new client cost me more hours, not fewer. I was more successful than I'd ever been, and I had less of my life.

That's when I understood it wasn't a discipline problem. It was a design problem. I didn't need to work harder or hire faster. I needed to redesign the business around what I uniquely knew, instead of around my hours, so it could grow without me holding up every piece.

So I did. I designed for optimal instead of maximum, and built the systems that kept the business running when I stepped away. That work became a method, and the method became the Grow on Purpose® System, the strategic program I now run for consultants, coaches, and experts whose business only grows when they work more. The founding cohort starts January 2027.

Every week I also write Grow North Thursday, a letter for people thinking seriously about how to grow on purpose, earn well, and live like they mean it. Specific and real, no bullshit, always free.

When I'm not advising or writing, you'll find me adventuring with my husband Ed and our two sons, EJ and Dash, working our way through the national parks by homebuilt airplane and motorhome. We share the journey on our aviation vlog, GoodPlaneLiving, which has crossed a million views on YouTube. And through Saunable, the mobile woodfire sauna company Ed and I built, featured by the Associated Press, we help people fold real rest into their lives.

I believe profit is fuel.

When the people who carry real expertise are supported and protected, their work ripples outward, from the businesses they run into the communities they live in. That's the growth I care about.