I find the constraint that’s costing you the most, then we fix that first. One operator, working directly with you. No juniors, no binders, no theater.
They have a clarity problem. Too many priorities, fuzzy ownership, numbers nobody trusts. I’ve seen it from the inside, and it’s fixable. Usually within 90 days.
If that sounds like your business, fill out the intake below. I read every word myself.
Services
Here’s what I actually do.
Every engagement starts the same way: I look at how your business really runs, find what’s constraining it, and tell you straight. Start with the diagnostic, or pick the piece you need.
Operating Diagnostic
I trace how your core idea travels through leadership, workflow, numbers, and commercial performance — and find where it degrades in transit. You get clear priorities, and nothing else.
Constraint Mapping
Symptoms lie. I separate what’s actually broken from what’s just noisy, so you stop fixing the wrong things.
Priority Sequencing
A long list of problems becomes three moves in the right order. First things first, on purpose.
90-Day Execution Plans
Who does what, by when, measured how. Your team can run it Monday morning.
Leadership & Accountability
Who owns what, who decides, and what happens when they don’t. Ambiguity is where execution goes to die.
Margin & Efficiency Review
I find where money leaks at every handoff, and I put a number on it. Wherever the idea degrades between people, the margin follows.
The frame
Every business centers on a vision. That vision drives the core idea, and every unit in the business works together to deliver that idea to the people it serves.
Every business runs into inefficiencies, breakdowns, and choke points. Every one of them is communication-based.
I find those breaks and fix them — so your units, your systems, and your people work in concert with one another, around the core idea, toward the vision.
You carry an idea in your head, and you want it to land in someone else’s head exactly as you hold it. To get it there, you have spoken word, written word, imagery, facial expressions, mannerisms — every channel a human has.
Every single time, the delivery falls short of perfect. Fallible sender, fallible receiver — that is the human condition. So the work is to keep sharpening the channels: clearer speech, stronger writing, sharper imagery, more deliberate presence, bringing each delivery closer to intact.
A business is that same human, expanded into component parts. Marketing, sales, pricing, product, operations, finance — every unit exists for one purpose: carrying the core idea of the business to its intended audience.
Which means every breakdown inside a company is a breakdown in communication. Between the business and its audience. Between the people inside it. Between people and the systems they use. Between the systems themselves. Between one unit and another. Trace any problem far enough back — accounting, pricing, marketing, sales, all of it — and you arrive at the same place: somewhere along the way, the idea stopped arriving intact.
That is what I do. I am a communication specialist — an expert in diplomacy and mediation. I walk your business end to end, find every place the idea degrades in transit, and repair the channels until it lands.
Everyone sells answers. I fix the delivery.
About me
I’ve sat in your chair.
My name is Shaun Cohen. As a highly synthetic, strategic thinker, I’ve spent 30 years inside operating businesses: building them, fixing them, and coming through the kind of darkness and fire most advisors have only read about.
I’ve built a $250M company from zero. I’ve been brought down by the regulatory system and even been in prison from it. I’ve climbed higher than most, and sunk lower than most.
It’s this raw experience coupled with the mad scientist visionary artistry that allows me to see that which you will never see. When a business landscape unfurls before me, a whole universe of inefficiency displays itself in my vision — the idea breaking down in transit between units, between people, between the business and its market. And without pause, the correct painting begins to manifest itself in my mind. I see what others overlook. I will look at the various business units and the picture of growth and scale begins to emerge for each of those units. This is the magic, this is the vision. The path becomes clear.
I keep this firm to one person on purpose. When you hire Min Habor, you get me: in the room, in the numbers, in the hard conversations. No juniors, no handoffs, no account managers.
“Min Habor” means from the pit. A reminder that purpose and forward movement can emerge from hard circumstances.
From the story of Joseph, brought out of the pit. Clear-eyed about difficulty, focused on what comes next.
Insights
Thinking, in writing.
I write about what I see inside businesses — the constraint, the choke point, the next move. New pieces every two weeks.
Oct 5, 2026·3 min read·The Frame
From Darkness to Clarity
What the pit teaches: face the pain point first, because clarity lives on the other side of what you avoid.
Oct 5, 2026·3 min read
From Darkness to Clarity
What the pit teaches: face the pain point first, because clarity lives on the other side of what you avoid.
Oct 5, 2026·4 min read
Most Advisors Hand You a Report
Reports don’t change businesses. Sitting in the owner’s seat until the picture is clear does.
Oct 5, 2026·4 min read
The Real Reason Your Business Stopped Growing
The constraint lives somewhere you stopped looking. Four honest questions that find it.
Coming soon·90-Day Execution
90 Days to a Business That Moves as One
How a 90-day execution plan turns one clear priority sequence into weekly ownership, a measurable rhythm, and momentum you see in your numbers.
Four steps. Every one ends with a decision in hand.
01
Confidential Consultation
We talk about where you’re stuck. I’ll tell you straight whether a diagnostic makes sense, including when it doesn’t.
02
Tailored Diagnostic
I interview your people, read your numbers, and trace your workflows until we share one picture of what’s actually happening.
03
Execution Plan
Your priorities in order, with owners and dates. A plan your team can run Monday morning without me in the room.
04
Ongoing Advisory
I stay close while the plan runs. Honest scorecards and course corrections when reality disagrees with the plan.
Working with me
What I refuse to do.
You hire judgment, delivered straight. I sit in the owner’s seat, face the pain points head-on, and stay in the work until the picture is clear.
I will rip open the chest of your company and stand above the observation table as the lead surgeon of a hospital. I am the doctor — and every engagement is built around your business alone.
I work only with companies that open their darkest regions to me. Everything on the table: the true architecture, the true landscape, and the true puppeteer.
Field notes
Every unit delivers the idea.
A merchant-services startup, Naples FL
They had built genuinely unique technology — but the marketplace was missing it. I restructured their go-to-market strategy, their pricing, and the manner in which they tell their story: through their entire online presence, and in conversation.
A consulting firm, UK
I helped build the entire business from zero: the go-to-market strategy, the pricing, the USP and the communication of that USP in every format, the operational systems — all of it.
Contact
Tell me where you’re stuck.
Now: booking diagnostics for October 2026 — I take on three at a time.
Your first call is free. Consulting packages begin at $5,000 — a fixed fee for a fixed outcome. No hourly billing.
Five minutes of honest answers. It tells us both whether a diagnostic is worth your time, and it gives our first conversation a head start.
What happens next
I reply to every intake the same day — except on weekends and holidays. The first conversation is an interrogation: I can only help once I know the truth. We start on Zoom; I come on-site if necessary.
Your revenue flatlined six months ago. You work longer hours than ever. Your team runs harder than ever. The number sits exactly where it was.
So you did what every owner does. You blamed marketing. You blamed sales. You blamed the market, the competition, the economy. You spent real money fixing the thing you blamed. The number sits exactly where it was.
Thirty years inside operating businesses taught me this: the constraint lives somewhere you stopped looking.
I built a $250M company from zero, and I’ve come through darkness and fire most advisors have only read about. I’ve achieved what most have not and sunk lower than most have. I have run the diagnostic on businesses in every condition, and the pattern repeats every time. The owner points at the symptom while the real problem sits two rooms over, quietly choking everything.
Why do smart owners misdiagnose so consistently? Because the symptom shouts and the constraint whispers. Marketing is visible — campaigns, clicks, leads. You can point at it in a meeting. Cash conversion is invisible. It lives in payment terms, in the gap between invoice and deposit, in the quiet math few owners ever run. Owners fix what they can see. The real problem keeps working in the dark.
There is another reason, and it takes more courage to say out loud. Admitting the constraint sits with you — in how you spend your week, in the decisions only you make — demands more than blaming the market does. Blame is comfortable. Clarity asks something of you. That is why most owners need an outside operator in the room: someone outside the comfortable story, whose only job is the true one.
Let me ask you four questions. Answer them honestly. The truth is the entire point. Where does your cash actually go? A customer says yes. How many days pass before that yes becomes money in your account? For most owners, the honest answer is a shock. You fund your customers’ patience with your own cash. Every new sale drains the tank a little further, so growth itself becomes the strain.
What breaks if you leave for two weeks? If the answer is everything, you own a job with overhead rather than a business. The bottleneck wears your face. Every decision routes through you. Every fire needs your hands. A company shaped like that grows exactly as far as your waking hours stretch.
What does it truly cost you to deliver? I mean the full, loaded, honest number. The rework. The discounts you grant to close. The customers who cost more to serve than they pay. Almost every owner I meet sells at least one thing below cost and calls it revenue.
Where does your week actually go? Track it for five days. Owners tell me their time goes to strategy and growth. The calendar tells another story: inbox, fires, meetings about meetings. Your scarcest resource — your own attention — flows to whatever shouts loudest.
One of those four answers tightened your stomach. That one is your constraint. Something deeper than marketing, sitting underneath sales, structural and quiet.
This is the work I do. My Operating Diagnostic finds the constraint. Constraint Mapping shows you exactly how it chokes everything downstream. Then we sequence the fix — first things first, in an order that holds — inside a 90-day execution plan you can actually run.
I sit in the owner’s seat with you until the picture is clear. Judgment, delivered straight, with everything on the table.
So here is my question back to you: how much more are you willing to spend before you look at the real problem?
Your first call is free. Consulting packages begin at $5,000 — a fixed fee for a fixed outcome. No hourly billing. On that call, we find your constraint together. If it sits somewhere else entirely, you will know within twenty minutes, and the call stays free.
From darkness to clarity. That is the work.
You have a drawer full of them. Maybe a shelf. Bound reports, slide decks, roadmaps — five figures each, transformation promised on every cover. You read the executive summary. Your team skimmed the rest. The shelf grew. The business stayed the same.
Then the advisor left, and you were alone with the implementation — which was the hard part all along.
Most advisors hand you a report. I sit in the owner’s seat with you until the picture is clear.
Here is what that means in practice.
It starts with an interrogation. That is my word for our first conversation, because the truth is the only material I can work with. I ask the questions your team avoids and your last advisor overlooked. Where the cash goes. What breaks when you leave. What delivery truly costs. Where your week goes. Owners sometimes squirm. The squirm is where the value lives.
Then I stay. I work inside your business, alongside you, through the diagnosis and the fix. My six services — Operating Diagnostic, Constraint Mapping, Priority Sequencing, 90-Day Execution Plans, Leadership & Accountability, Margin & Efficiency Review — form one continuous engagement, a single arc from diagnosis through execution. We find what holds you back, map how it chokes the business, sequence the fix, and run it in ninety days, with accountability built in.
Here is what those ninety days feel like from your side of the table. Week one, the interrogation — uncomfortable, clarifying. Weeks two through four, the diagnostic — I map the constraint and show you, in plain numbers, how it chokes revenue, margin, and your own time. Then we sequence: first things first, in an order that holds under pressure. You execute with me beside you — the binder stays on the shelf where it belongs. By day ninety, the business runs on structure instead of your stamina.
Everything stays on the table. Your numbers, your people, the regions of the business you would rather keep dark — those regions hold the answers more often than the polished parts do. I only work with owners willing to open all of it. Where that willingness is absent, I pass, plainly and early. Fit matters more than fees.
And I give you judgment, delivered straight. I tell you what I see, in plain language, facing the pain points head-on until the picture clears. Some owners flinch at the directness. The ones who stay describe the same relief: finally, someone said the true thing out loud. They stop buying comfort and start buying clarity.
One pattern I keep seeing: owners who have survived their own fire recognize the directness immediately. They have lived with polite advisors and expensive shelves. They know the difference between being comforted and being helped.
Why do I work this way? Because I have sat in your seat. I built a $250M company from zero. I’ve achieved what most have not and sunk lower than most have. That combination is why I can see what others miss. A consultant who has only ever advised has read about the fire. I came through it.
So let me ask you the question that matters: when did you last pay for advice you actually used?
If the answer embarrasses you, we should talk.
Your first call is free. Consulting packages begin at $5,000 — a fixed fee for a fixed outcome. No hourly billing. Bring the drawer full of reports if you like. We will find what they missed — then we will fix it, together, in ninety days.
My name is Shaun Cohen. I built a $250M company from zero. I have been through darkness and fire most advisors have only read about. I named my firm Min Habor Consulting — from the Hebrew “min ha-bor,” meaning “from the pit” — because the pit is where I learned to see.
This is a story about what falling teaches.
When you build something from zero, you learn every inch of it. You know where the cash hides, where the waste lives, which people carry the weight and which ones only appear to. Builders develop x-ray vision out of necessity. When the payroll comes from your own pocket, illusion dies fast.
And when everything comes apart — when the fire takes what you built — you learn the other half. You learn what structure actually holds under pressure and what was decoration. You learn the difference between a business and a story about a business. Few people receive that education. It costs everything, and it teaches everything.
People sometimes ask whether I would trade that education for an easier road. The question misses the point. The road made the operator. Skip the pit and you get another advisor with a framework and a fee schedule. Walk through it and you get someone who sees — someone who can stand inside your business, feel where the structure strains, and name it.
From darkness to clarity. That is more than a tagline on my website. It is the shape of my life, and it became the shape of my work.
Here is what the pit taught me, beyond anything a classroom or a consulting firm offers: Face the pain point first. In the pit, denial is fatal. You look directly at the worst number, the hardest truth, the thing you least want to see — because looking away leaves everything unchanged. I bring that discipline to every engagement. We open the darkest regions of your business first — before anything else. Clarity lives on the other side of the thing you avoid.
Structure is everything. A business is an extension of the human beings inside it. Marketing, sales, pricing, product, service, finance — every unit either carries the idea forward or drags it backward. When I diagnose a company, I read all of it, the way a mechanic listens to an engine. The constraint is always structural.
This is why my first conversation with an owner is an interrogation. I need the truth — all of it — because partial truth produces partial diagnosis, and partial diagnosis wastes your money.
Judgment beats methodology. Frameworks have their place. But at the critical moment, what you need is someone who has seen this exact shape of trouble before and can tell you, straight, what to do. That judgment comes only from lived experience — from building, from breaking, from rebuilding.
I tell prospective clients this plainly: I work only with owners willing to put everything on the table. The engagement is built around the business alone. Where the fit is absent, I say so early. That directness is the product as much as the diagnostic.
“Most advisors hand you a report. I sit in the owner’s seat with you until the picture is clear,” I say that because I have sat in your seat — in the boom and in the fire. I know what it costs to look away, and I know what clarity is worth.
If your business feels stuck, and you suspect the real problem sits somewhere you stopped looking, let’s find it together.
Your first call is free. Consulting packages begin at $5,000 — a fixed fee for a fixed outcome. No hourly billing.
