Business Operations & Growth Lead

Business Operations & Growth Lead
Technology | Marketing | Delivery | Operations — Independent Contractor
Long-term independent contractor engagement | Remote | Philippines-based
Contract fee: approximately US$1,000–$1,600/month depending on experience, capability and demonstrated fit with the role.
Works directly with the Founder
The role
I am looking for an unusually capable small-business operator who can become my operational counterpart.
This is not a Virtual Assistant role and it is not an employment position.
The successful person will provide services as an independent contractor based in the Philippines. This is intended to be an ongoing contractor relationship. There is no planned conversion of the role to employment. Increased responsibility or progression toward General Manager-level responsibilities would remain on an independent-contractor basis, subject to applicable law.
I am strong at strategy, identifying opportunities, conceptualising solutions, solving difficult problems and starting new initiatives. I am looking for someone whose strength is taking those ideas and priorities and making them happen.
You will progressively take substantial operational responsibility across a small Australian business with several activities, including:

• an AI and automation services business delivering client projects;
• an established online education academy;
• marketing and business-development activity;
• two junior AI/software developers;
• a marketing team member;
• new business initiatives and experiments.

This is a small-business environment, not a narrow corporate operations role.
On one day you might be reviewing a software automation project with developers. On another, you may be examining whether a marketing activity is producing results, improving a process in the online education business, coordinating a client deliverable, or taking a new idea from the founder and turning it into a practical execution plan.
The common thread is simple:
You make sure important things actually happen.
What you will take responsibility for
Operations and execution

• Turn business priorities into clear plans, owners, deadlines and measurable outcomes.
• Maintain visibility over important activity across the businesses.
• Follow up and ensure agreed commitments are completed.
• Identify bottlenecks and resolve them before they become serious problems.
• Build simple systems and processes where they are genuinely useful.
• Determine what needs attention now, what can wait and what should probably stop.
• Progressively remove day-to-day operational coordination from the founder.

Project and technical delivery
You do not need to be a software developer, but you must be technically literate.
You will:

• coordinate AI, automation and software projects;
• manage priorities and workflow across developers;
• understand technical explanations sufficiently to challenge them;
• ask intelligent questions about APIs, integrations, automation, AI tools, testing, security, reliability and implementation;
• track scope, risks, deadlines and client dependencies;
• ensure work is properly tested and finished before delivery;
• translate between business requirements and technical work.

If a developer says something cannot be done, I do not expect you to write the code yourself.
I do expect you to be capable of asking:
Why? What are the alternatives? What is the evidence? What does this mean commercially?
Marketing and growth
You do not need to be a specialist marketer, but you need strong marketing and commercial literacy.
You will:

• manage and prioritise marketing activity;
• work with an existing marketing contractor;
• understand SEO, content, LinkedIn, lead generation, funnels and basic conversion metrics;
• distinguish commercially useful marketing from activity that merely looks busy;
• establish objectives and measures for marketing work;
• run small commercial experiments and evaluate the results;
• question activities consuming time without producing meaningful value.

Online education business
You will progressively take operational responsibility for an established online education academy, including:

• coordinating marketing and content activity;
• overseeing routine business processes;
• tracking products, customers and priorities;
• identifying opportunities to improve systems and efficiency;
• ensuring agreed initiatives actually move forward.

Contractors and resources
You will initially coordinate a small remote team consisting of two junior AI/software developers and one marketing contractor.
You will:

• establish priorities;
• monitor workload and capacity;
• hold people accountable for agreed outputs;
• identify performance issues;
• resolve coordination problems;
• improve how the team works together;
• assist with finding and assessing additional contractors where required.

What I am looking for
Your strongest capability should be operations and execution.
Around that core, you need enough breadth to operate intelligently across technology, marketing and a small commercial business.
The ideal candidate is likely to have several years of experience in one or more of:

• operations management in a small or growing business;
• technical project or implementation management;
• running operations inside a software, AI, automation or digital agency;
• Chief of Staff or founder-side work involving substantial operational responsibility;
• managing multidisciplinary remote teams.

You should be:

• highly organised without being bureaucratic;
• comfortable with ambiguity;
• commercially minded;
• technically curious and capable;
• familiar with modern AI tools;
• comfortable managing developers;
• sufficiently marketing-literate to manage marketing activity intelligently;
• numerically competent;
• very strong at prioritisation and follow-through;
• confident communicating in English;
• willing to challenge the founder when you believe something is wrong.

The person who will succeed here
You enjoy finishing things.
When somebody describes an objective, your instinct is to work out:

• What exactly needs to happen?
• Who owns it?
• What is the sequence?
• What could prevent it?
• When will it be finished?
• How will we know whether it worked?

You do not expect someone to continuously tell you what to do.
You are comfortable saying:
We can do that, but it means delaying this other priority.
You bring problems together with recommended solutions rather than simply escalating them.
You can take something ambiguous, investigate it, impose enough structure on it and move it forward.
You are comfortable being the person who turns someone else's strategic ideas into operating reality.
This engagement will probably NOT suit you if

• You prefer receiving a list of tasks and completing them.
• Your main experience is as an Executive Assistant or general VA without substantial management responsibility.
• You dislike questioning a founder or senior person.
• You need detailed SOPs before starting unfamiliar work.
• You are uncomfortable dealing with software developers or technical subjects.
• You believe marketing success is measured mainly by how much content gets produced.
• You are excellent at planning but weak at following through.
• You want a narrowly defined corporate role.
• You are specifically looking for an employee position with employee benefits.

Contractor arrangement
This role is offered on an independent-contractor basis only.
The contractor will operate as an independent service provider and will enter into a written contractor agreement.
The engagement is intended to be substantial and long-term, but it is not employment.
The contractor will:

• provide services remotely from the Philippines;
• provide their own normal computer, internet connection and working environment;
• be responsible for their own taxation, insurance and other obligations applicable to an independent contractor in their jurisdiction;
• invoice for their services under the agreed contractor arrangement;
• have reasonable flexibility over how work is organised while meeting agreed business outcomes, deadlines and communication requirements;
• have regular working-time overlap with Melbourne, Australia, for meetings and coordination;
• remain free to undertake other work where this does not create a conflict of interest or interfere with agreed responsibilities.

There is no intended pathway from contractor to employee. If the scope of responsibility grows substantially, the commercial contractor arrangement may be reviewed accordingly.
Opportunity
Although this is a contractor engagement rather than employment, I am looking for someone interested in becoming a long-term and increasingly important part of the business.
For the right person, the scope could develop from Business Operations & Growth Lead toward General Manager-level responsibility.
That progression would reflect demonstrated capability and increasing responsibility while remaining an independent-contractor engagement.
The long-term objective is for the founder to concentrate primarily on strategy, major client problems, new opportunities and business development while you take responsibility for turning those priorities into operating reality.
Commercial arrangement

• Independent contractor.
• Philippines-based and working remotely.
• Long-term engagement intended.
• Significant overlap with Melbourne business hours required for collaboration.
• Some flexibility in how working time is organised.
• Contract fee approximately US$1,500–$2,500 per month, depending on experience and demonstrated capability.
• Contractor invoices for services under the agreed contract.

How to apply
Please do not send a generic cover letter.
Instead, answer all of the following questions. Keep your response concise.
1. Small-business operations experience
Tell me about the smallest business or organisation where you have personally had substantial operational responsibility.
What did the business do, how