Michael Ashley

Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach

Active Creator • 1-week run

I’ve spent the better part of 25 years trying to understand two things: which problems are worth solving, and what is the simplest way to solve them. That pursuit has led me to start companies, build products, teach entrepreneurship, coach hundreds of founders, and participate in four startup exits—one as a founder and three as an advisor. Along the way, I noticed a pattern. Founders are usually very good at solving problems. The trouble is that we’re often solving the wrong ones. What looks like a sales problem might really be positioning. A marketing problem might begin with not understanding the customer. An execution problem might simply be too many priorities competing for attention. I came to think of this as finding the problem under the problem. When you find it, complicated decisions get simpler, teams align, and a surprising amount of work disappears. Today I coach founders and startup teams around the world to do exactly that. Sometimes it’s a team scaling a company worth billions. Sometimes it’s one person turning what they know into a consulting business. The scale changes, but the work is remarkably similar. Find the problem worth solving. Find the simplest way through it. Then get on with the work that matters.