About Zento
The two people who have already built what you are building.
Zento is Lyn and Mike. Between them they have built, scaled and sold businesses of their own across six continents over more than sixty years, and have worked with 87 owner-led businesses. They have been the owner the business could not run without. They rebuilt from there, and now they help other owners do the same.
What's actually limiting your growth?We are two owner-operators who have worked inside businesses from global enterprise to owner-led firms, across every sector.
87 owner-led businesses · 60+ years of combined owner-operator experience · built, scaled and sold across six continents
Businesses do not change until owners do.
Zento did not start as a theory. Lyn and Mike are owner-operators who have led and advised businesses at close range for years, and the same thing surfaced every time. What owners really want is not a lighter week. It is the next level: to grow the business into everything it is capable of, and to be free to build it, sell it or step back on their own terms. We help established business owners transform themselves, their business and their team, so the business performs, scales and holds its value without depending on the person at the top.
Lyn. Strategy, structure and direction.
Lyn finds the pattern under the symptoms and the highest-leverage move before most people have named the problem. She has built seven businesses of her own, and done what most advisors never have: started them, taken others over, turned struggling ones around, and sold them, across industries from oil and gas to dental. She has operated at the top of global enterprise too, leading teams across continents and negotiating deals worth up to a billion dollars. She has lived in five countries and worked in many more, so she reads different business cultures from the inside.
Lyn has also been the bottleneck owner, carrying too much and working the longest hours in the building, until the business grew bigger than the way she was running it and she hit a wall. She rebuilt from there. It is why she tells owners plainly that getting results and building trust are not the same thing, and that the bill for confusing them comes due eventually.
Mike. People, behaviour and accountability.
Mike is the owner-operator, mentor and challenger who names the thing an owner is avoiding, then holds the standard until it holds itself. Across more than thirty-five years he has worked in mining, fitness, banking, marketing, oil and gas, technology and education. He owned and sold businesses of his own, and learned commercial discipline the hard way: he loved the people and neglected the numbers.
Over the years he has built his approach to leadership on structured development, performance management, and the belief that organisations should develop people, not simply employ them. He believes leadership is behaviour, not title, that accountability is one of the greatest expressions of care, and that extraordinary businesses are built by extraordinary people held to clear standards.
One sees what the business could become.
One builds the leaders who get it there.
The dynamic between them is the work. Lyn expands the horizon and asks the bigger questions. Mike strengthens the foundation and asks the deeper ones. They work a problem from both sides, strategy and execution, in front of you, until the answer holds up to both. Not one perspective handed down, and not a faceless firm. Two owner-operators in the room, refined over decades of leadership, business ownership and lived experience. They are partners in business and in life, and they train and run together, holding the same standard out of the office as in it.
Lyn sees the pattern. Mike sees the behaviour.
Together they solve the problem almost nobody realises they're solving.
Trusted by the people who have led and worked alongside them.
"Lyn is intelligent, has an intense focus on delivering results, and is a fabulous networker."
Timothy English,
Lyn's manager at Shell
"Lyn is a highly motivated director with exceptional business set up and development skills in addition to her great managerial capabilities ... I have worked more than seven years with Lyn with great joy and success. I recommend her as a perfect business partner and trustful companion."
Dick Schapp,
ORBITAL Technologies BV
"Mike's ideas were inventive and easy to adopt and resulted in a substantial increase in our repeat client base. We found his service of great benefit and still use his ideas today. I would highly recommend his services."
Martin Johnston,
Director, VE Graphics
We hold ourselves to the standard we ask of you.
We'll never teach something we haven't lived. We'll tell you the truth, including the part you don't want, and we'll do it because we're on your side rather than to prove a point. We'll raise the standard rather than lower it to make anyone comfortable. And we measure our success by how capable you become without us.
The Untapped Value Scorecard
What's actually limiting your growth?
The Untapped Value Scorecard shows you, in a few minutes, what your business is capable of and the one thing most in the way. For most owners, it isn't the thing they'd have named.
Find your real constraintThe Independent Owner
Notes for business owners who refuse to settle for the level they've already reached. The thinking behind the work, in your inbox.
Or send us a message and tell us where you want to take the business.
