About
An operator, not an advisor.
JW Consulting was founded to give £1m to £20m product businesses access to senior operational leadership without the cost, or the risk, of a full-time hire. The promise is simple: rooted advice, real growth.
James Wakely
I spent nine years as Operations Director of a £20m SME, leading a 75-person team across operations, supply chain, commercial, finance and systems. That period gave me a full view of how product-led businesses actually scale, and where the structural weaknesses appear when they don't.
From there I moved into a Chief Operating Officer role in the automotive aftermarket sector. I led the expansion into new product categories aimed at modern vehicle markets (fridges, cool boxes, solar solutions, consumer electronics, accessories) and grew the business from £8.9m to approximately £15m before transitioning into the Managing Director role.
I now work as a Fractional COO with founder-led SMEs in product, ecommerce, marketplaces and distribution. The work is hands-on. I have run sourcing trips, negotiated 3PL contracts, designed replenishment models for catalogues over 15,000 SKUs, written commercial reporting systems, and sat in leadership meetings owning the operational P&L. The advice on this site is operational because the experience behind it is operational.
Underneath the operator instinct sits a finance foundation. I started my career in finance and am AAT-qualified, which still shapes how I evaluate every business: the underlying economics first, the story second. Revenue without margin is not growth, and you cannot scale what you cannot measure.
Career snapshot
- 9 yrs as Operations Director, £20m SME, 75-person team
- COO automotive aftermarket: led £8.9m → £15m growth
- Transitioned to Managing Director role
- 15,000+ SKUs operational exposure
- Markets: UK, EU, US, Australia
- China-based manufacturing and sourcing
- Designed systems supporting £20m to £30m scale
- Finance foundation: AAT-qualified
The operating philosophy
The line that captures it
We ask the questions you didn't know needed asking.
Most founders know their business intuitively. What they don't have is someone sitting alongside them who has seen the same pattern in other product businesses and knows where the next bottleneck will appear.
The three lenses
Every engagement starts by evaluating the business across three dimensions, the lens I have used inside every SME I have worked in.
- Products, the range, the unit economics, where margin is genuinely made and where it is being given away
- Routes to market, channels, marketplaces, geographies, and how they interact (or compete) with each other
- People, leadership structure, accountability lines, capability gaps below the founder
The core principles
Four operating principles run through every engagement. They are deliberately uncomplicated.
- Revenue does not equal profit. Top-line growth without margin clarity is a slower-motion problem, not a solved one.
- Margin must be understood before scaling. Pour fuel on an unprofitable channel and you build a faster machine for losing money.
- Operations must be structured before growth. Marketing-led growth on a broken operation amplifies the problem.
- Decisions must be data-led. A business cannot be improved until its problems are clearly identified. Reporting comes first.
How an engagement runs
A typical engagement runs 6 to 18 months and ends when permanent operational capacity is in place, hired, promoted or trained. We design ourselves out. That is the test of whether the work was real.
Brand promise
Rooted advice. Real growth.
Three brand pillars sit behind that promise.
01
Growth
Every engagement is measured by the progress it creates, visible, lasting and sustainable. Not vanity revenue. Real, profitable growth.
02
Integrity
Deep, grounded counsel. We give the honest answer, not the easy one. If the model is not right for your business, we will say so on the discovery call.
03
Stewardship
We balance ambition with responsibility, to the people in the business, to the operational reality, and to the long term. Sustainable growth is the only growth worth pursuing.
Want to know if this is the right fit?
Book a 30-minute call. I'll be honest about whether the Fractional COO model is right for your business and your stage.