We understand small businesses, because we've run them.
Cobalt is new. It is not, however, anybody's first business.
My name is Leon Smith. I have spent about twenty-five years running small companies. A career in recruitment first, then a construction company, then haulage. I have built some and I have lost some, and I have started again more than once.
What I know about missing enquiries, I know because I missed them. Not occasionally. Regularly, for years, while believing I was on top of it.
Everything on this site comes out of that rather than out of a course. There is no team of consultants behind me and I am not going to pretend there is. It is me, and it is software I have built and tested on my own businesses before I would put it near yours.
Why automation, and why now. Because the tools finally got good enough that one person can build the sort of system that used to need a department, and because every small firm I have ever run or worked with had the same three holes in it. The enquiry nobody answered. The quote nobody wrote. The money nobody chased.
None of that is a technology problem. It is a Tuesday problem. You were busy.
Where the twenty-five years went
- RecruitmentA career of it. Learned what happens to a business that lives or dies on returning a phone call.
- ConstructionQuotes, variations, materials, margin. And the ones that never got sent.
- HaulageJobs booked and forgotten, paperwork on a van dashboard, invoices raised weeks late.
- CobaltBuilt to close the three holes that were in every one of them.
Built from problems I hit over and over in my own businesses, and tested on our own systems before it goes near yours. The receptionist you can ring on this site is the same one you would get.
If you want to know whether I understand this.
Three that I lost. Not to a competitor, and not on price.
The dashboard
There was a period where the dashboard of my van had a pile of receipts and job sheets on it worth somewhere around eight thousand euros of finished work, waiting to be invoiced. I still cannot tell you the exact number, and that is the part that should worry you.
The pickup
I agreed to a pharmaceutical collection, then got pulled onto a forty-eight hour emergency and forgot it completely. They rang. They messaged. I never heard from them again, and I don't blame them.
The terrace
Two thousand euros of tiling. The quote sat in my head for three weeks and the customer chased me for it twice. Both times I told him I was waiting on the tile price. I wasn't. I just hadn't written it.
Nobody outpriced me on any of those. I lost them to disorganisation, which is how most money goes missing in a small firm, and it is the only kind of loss you can fix with a system.
Most firms don't need more leads.
They need to stop losing the ones they have already got.
More leads at the top.
Growth is exciting and it photographs well. It is also expensive, slow to prove, and it pours more into a bucket that is already leaking. If enquiries are falling through today, doubling the enquiries doubles what falls through with them.
Fixing the leak first.
Cheaper, faster, and you can actually prove it happened, because the enquiry either got answered or it did not. Then, if you still want more leads, at least they land somewhere that holds them.
The scarce thing isn't hours. It's attention. The problem isn't that you haven't got time. It's that the business is running in your head all day, on a Saturday, and on holiday.
That is what we are actually selling. Hours saved is a side effect.
Cobalt hasn't got any clients yet.
So the parts of a website that normally do the convincing are missing from this one, on purpose.
What you won't find here
- Testimonials
- Client logos
- Case studies
- Percentages and "results" figures
Because we have not earned any of them yet, and inventing them would be the exact opposite of the point.
What there is instead
- A receptionist you can ring right now and test
- A check that gives you a figure out of your own numbers
- A study we are running on ourselves, in the open
- Prices on the website, in public
When there is something real to show you, it goes up. Not before.
Stop carrying your business around in your head.
Fifteen minutes, free, and you watch the thing running rather than hear about it. If it looks useful you can go further, and if it doesn't you have lost a quarter of an hour.
Or take the two-minute check first. If you would rather go through your own numbers properly, the longer forty-five minute audit is free as well. Or ring 07401 200177 and speak to the receptionist yourself.