Hi, I’m Dawn.

I help business leaders see the whole decision before their business has to carry it.

I’m an author, business operator, strategist, and the creator of Strategic Intelligence for Main Street™—a decision discipline built for founders, operators, and leaders making consequential choices with limited time, incomplete information, and real resources at risk.

My work helps leaders identify the real decision, understand what it will require, bring the right people into the conversation, and make choices that can hold after the meeting ends.

[Explore Before You Decide]
[Read My Current Work]

This Work Did Not Begin as a Business Framework

It began in environments where decisions had to survive contact with reality.

Before Strategic Intelligence for Main Street™, I worked in military capability planning and enterprise intelligence—helping organizations identify gaps, evaluate requirements, understand dependencies, and determine whether proposed solutions could actually support the mission.

In 2015, I translated that discipline for public-safety leaders through the Standard Acquisition Approach for Public Safety. The work helped agencies look beyond the immediate purchase and consider operational readiness, lifecycle cost, stakeholder alignment, capacity, and what a decision would require over time.

The industries changed.

The central question did not:

What must be understood before people, money, capacity, and responsibility are committed?

From complex systems to Main Street- Then I Put My Own Money on the Line

Business ownership changed the stakes.

As co-founder and CEO of Convoy Road Coffee Roasters, I have made decisions about equipment, hiring, inventory, pricing, wholesale growth, production capacity, partnerships, facilities, and market expansion with my own resources at risk.

Some decisions worked exactly as planned.

Others required adaptation, restraint, or a complete change in direction.

That experience reinforced something I had already seen across military, enterprise, public-sector, and consulting environments:

The visible decision is rarely the whole decision.

A business does not only carry the answer. It carries the cash requirements, timing, people consequences, operational dependencies, customer expectations, and risk that come with it.

Strategic Intelligence for Main Street™ grew from that intersection: disciplined decision thinking tested inside real businesses.

I Am Not an Observer of Business

I have started businesses, closed businesses, rebuilt after disruption, advised founders under pressure, worked inside complex organizations, analyzed financial and operational risk, and made decisions where there was no perfect answer.

That means I do not approach business decisions as isolated spreadsheet exercises.

I look at:

what the numbers are actually saying
what the business can realistically support
what assumptions are driving the choice
who has information the leader may be missing
what must happen after the decision is made
and whether the organization can continue carrying the choice when conditions change

My role is not to take the wheel from the leader.

It is to help reveal what cannot be seen clearly from the driver’s seat alone.

coffee in the grocery store

The Work Continues Across Books, Research, and the Field

Before You Decide

Before You Decide: The Field Manual for Durable Decisions Under Pressure introduces the decision discipline at the center of this work.

It helps leaders identify the real decision, determine when it must be made, understand who belongs in the conversation, and evaluate what the business will have to carry after the choice.

[Explore the Book]

Research

The Strategic Intelligence for Main Street white paper documents the gap between enterprise decision support and the tools traditionally given to small businesses, supported by field assessments and cross-industry case studies.

[Read the Research]

Current Writing

On Get In, We’re Doing Business, I write about consequential decisions, leadership, business operations, risk, capacity, partnerships, financial reality, and the judgment required to build something that lasts.

[Read on Substack]

Earlier Work

I am also the author of The Profit Accelerator for Small Business and the former publisher of At The Ready Magazine, where I translated military, public-safety, acquisition, and operational thinking for broader audiences.

[At The Ready Magazine Archives]

[The Profit Accelerator for Small Business (January 2021)]

Why I Keep Doing This Work

I believe Main Street businesses deserve better decision tools.

They face the same complexity, volatility, market pressure, and operational consequences as much larger organizations—but often with fewer resources, thinner margins, and far more personal exposure.

They do not need more noise.

They need clearer questions, stronger context, and a disciplined way to decide what happens next.

That is the work.

Explore Before You Decide

Bring Dawn Into The Room