Fractional CCO  ·  Executive Coach  ·  South Africa

Commercial leadership for founder-led businesses. And the coaching to lead it.

Fractional CCO and executive coach for founder-led businesses in South Africa and beyond. I work at the level of systems and people simultaneously — so the commercial engine gets built and the leadership grows to run it.

— and the people leading them.
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How I can help

Capabilities.

01

Commercial Strategy

Clarifying positioning, pricing and market focus so growth becomes intentional rather than accidental.

02

Partnerships & Expansion

Identifying strategic partnerships and routes to market, both locally and internationally.

03

Revenue Development

Building practical sales pipelines and commercial structure so revenue growth is the result of conscious effort.

04

Founder Advisory

A senior commercial sounding board for founders navigating growth, pivot or the transition from founder-led sales to a structured commercial team.

About Robin Hook

Built by someone who has actually run businesses.

Robin brings over 20 years of commercial and operational leadership across technology and creative industries — spanning roles including Business Partner, COO, commercial lead, and business owner. He has founded, built, scaled, and restructured multiple companies, giving him first-hand experience of the realities behind growth, cash flow, and long-term sustainability.

His earlier career across advertising, digital marketing, transformation, and production gives him a broad, practical view of how commercial decisions play out across different business models.

He has also designed and run structured mentorship and coaching programmes across large multi-company environments — matching candidates with senior leaders and managing the ongoing relationships at scale. That work sits at the core of how he approaches executive coaching today.

This experience now informs his work as a Fractional CCO and executive coach — helping companies translate strong technical capability into clear market positioning, partnerships, and sustainable revenue, while supporting the leaders responsible for delivering it.

Increasingly, this work happens at the intersection of commercial leadership and personal development — coaching the people who make the decisions, not just the decisions themselves.

20+ years commercial & operational leadership Founder coaching Designed & ran mentorship programmes at scale

Robin evolved our relationship from a standard service agreement into a high-level strategic collaboration by consistently looking beyond the task at hand. He values the future of a partnership far more than short-term gains — proving himself to be a partner of immense integrity and vision.

FT
Farhan Tariq
Program & Product Leader — Ex Epic Games
LinkedIn recommendation
Good fit

Where I typically work best.

Founder-led companies scaling beyond early traction

Bringing structure, focus and commercial discipline to turn momentum into predictable growth.

Strong products with limited commercial structure

Translating great products into clear positioning, pricing and repeatable revenue models.

Companies entering new markets or building partnerships

Identifying the right opportunities and building partnerships that actually convert into growth.

Businesses preparing for commercial expansion

Strengthening the commercial story and traction to unlock funding and scale with confidence.

Founders who've become the bottleneck in their own business

Knowing the next phase of growth depends on you changing, not just the business changing. This is where the coaching work earns its keep.

How we work

Three ways in. Designed to stack.

Start where you need to. Most clients begin with one and deepen into another — fractional leadership becomes a coaching relationship, or coaching opens the door to operational work.

01
Leadership Coaching

Structured 1:1 coaching for a founder or senior leader. Standalone — no operational work attached.

Fortnightly 90-min sessions 3–12 month engagement Async support between
Flagship
02
Fractional + Coaching

Embedded commercial or operational leadership plus structured 1:1 coaching for the founder and 1–2 senior leaders. The business changes and the leadership grows together.

Most clients say the coaching is where the real shift happens.

4–8 days/month fractional Fortnightly coaching, 2–3 people 6–12 month minimum
03
Change & Culture Sprint

Fixed-term engagement for a business in transition: diagnostic, change programme, and coaching to sustain it. Time-boxed, outcome-defined.

12–16 weeks Fixed fee Clear endpoint + handover
Methodology

Every engagement runs through four phases.

The same arc whether the work is operational, coaching, or both. Diagnose what's actually happening. Align on what matters. Build the systems and the leaders. Sustain the change once the hard part is done.

01
Diagnose

Commercial, operational and people health. Stakeholder conversations, data review, a written read-out that names what's actually going on.

02
Align

Strategy, structure, culture. Agreed priorities, an operating rhythm, and the one or two decisions that unlock everything else.

03
Build

Systems, capability, leadership. Where the operational work and the coaching work happen in parallel.

04
Sustain

The coaching-only phase. Stepping out of the operator seat, staying on as a thinking partner as the leaders hold the change themselves.

It is Robin's ability to listen, observe and weigh up the options before moving ahead that has saved us both time and money. He understands the delicate balance between the need for greater efficiencies and the impact that change has on the team — managing to increase profitability whilst following good change management practices.

MP
Mike Perk
Building High Performing Teams — Author & Technology Entrepreneur
LinkedIn recommendation
Get in touch

Let's have a conversation.

No pitch, no pressure. Every engagement begins with a free 60-minute conversation — a proper read on what's going on and whether we're the right fit to work together.

info@blackpoly.co.za
+27 71 222 3835