Jacob Burke. An operator, not a coach.
Working Properly is an operations consultancy for founder-led agencies and online businesses, led by Jacob Burke in Atlanta. Jacob has spent about twenty years inside operations, most of it fixing how work gets done at those businesses, and sixteen years being brought in by investors as operating partner or fractional COO.
What I do, in one paragraph
I fix the operations behind the sale. Not the marketing, not the sales process: the part after the customer says yes, where work gets handed off, delivered, checked and billed. When that part runs to a clear standard, the business can grow faster and the founder can step back, and the same fix does both. When it does not, growth caps out and everything routes back to the founder.
Where that comes from
I started in healthcare and enterprise software: hospital system implementations contracted through Deloitte, software delivery at Wells Fargo and NCR, an enterprise rollout at The Home Depot. That work taught me how processes behave when hundreds of people depend on them, and how training is the difference between a system that exists and one that is used.
For the last 16 years, investors have brought me in as operating partner or fractional COO after they buy a business, or while they decide whether to. The brief is always the same: fix how the work gets done so margins improve and the playbooks hold when new people sit in the seats. Along the way I ran operations inside founder-led agencies and online businesses, including the years Blue Stout grew about twelve times and Five Hour Flip went from about $1.5M to $8M before its sale. Many people contributed to those results; my part was the operating side.
I am trained in project management (PMP), Scrum and Six Sigma methods, and in healthcare systems implementation (Epic, Allscripts, McKesson). None of that matters to a client unless it shows up as work that runs without them, so that is what I measure.
How I work
- I’ve sat in the operating seat. The fixes I bring have been tested where I was the one accountable for them.
- I’ll tell you plainly what I see, including when the real problem isn’t operations, or when the right move is to wait.
- I only take work I can improve. If I’m not the right fit, I’ll say so on the first call and point you somewhere useful.
- Written scope and price before any commitment. Prepared, agreed, started and paid are different states, and I keep them separate.
Where I use AI
Where a step repeats and the inputs are approved, AI takes the grunt work out of it: drafting, tagging, summarising. A named person reviews anything that reaches a customer. I will not tell you to run your business through a chatbot, and I will tell you when a tool is costing you more than it saves.
Working Properly
Working Properly is my practice. You work with me directly. It is the operations consulting practice of J BURKE BUSINESS LLC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and working remotely with founders across the United States. Where I have worked, labelled by relationship →
If sales doubled next month, or you took a week off, what would break first?
That is the first question on every call. Bring your answer, or let’s find it together.
Written scope and price before any commitment.