March 17, 2026

Always Be Supportive - Alexis Sikorsky - Special Advisor to Founders #308

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Us People Podcast

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Alexis on ADHD, Leadership vs Management, and Advising Founders to Grow and Exit

Season seven of the Us People Podcast features host Savia Rocks interviewing Alexis, a special advisor who helps founders grow and sell companies. Alexis shares being raised in Geneva with undiagnosed ADHD, starting a first business at 15, studying communication and film in Paris, working on movies, and moving to Africa before building and later selling a software company in 2019, then retiring for three years.

He explains he is a leader rather than a manager, and says his advisory work began after seeing entrepreneurs repeat his costly lesson / mistakes, which he estimates cost him five years and $50 million; he wrote a book to share methodology for growth and exit and built a fractional team of experienced leaders. Key themes include action-based relationships and reputation over networking, founder-stage focus on client satisfaction, the need for process after ~$10M revenue, risk and failing fast, hiring people smarter than you, kindness, being yourself, and finding Alexis via LinkedIn.

00:00 Meet Savia Rocks

00:22 Legacy and Trauma

01:10 Season Seven Intro

02:08 Alexis Background

04:52 Identity in the Mirror

07:29 Why Become an Advisor

12:08 Relationships and Reputation

15:16 Leadership and Culture

17:42 Business Stages Explained

21:36 Risk Versus Clients

23:08 Fail Fast Mindset

25:25 Hire Smarter People

27:45 Advice And Identity

30:06 Defining Success Goals

32:22 Helping As Success

34:26 Never Fully At Peace

36:44 Kindness And Truth

38:57 Find Alexis Online

41:22 Closing And Outro

Linkedin: uk.linkedin.com/in/alexis-sikorsky-consulting

Thank you so much Alexis for showing us that life is not giving up but about giving in to to the service of what we love - Savia Rocks

Giving in allows you to be free with your heart and honest with you emotions of who and what you love - Savia Rocks

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About Alexis Sikorsky

#1 International Bestselling Author and Special Advisor to Founders of £5M–£20M Businesses, Founder Bottleneck and Private Equity Exit Strategist

$100M+ Private equity exit500+ Employees scaled at New Access#1 International bestselling author£5M–£20M Founder businesses advised by revenue

Alexis Sikorsky is a #1 international bestselling author and Special Advisor to founders of privately held £5M–£20M businesses. Through Knightscale Partners, he helps founder-led companies break through the Five Million Plateau, remove founder dependency, build the senior operating layer they are missing, and prepare for scale, recapitalisation or private equity exit.

He moved into this work after founding, scaling and selling New Access, a Switzerland-based private banking software company, through a staged nine-figure private equity exit. That experience showed him the gap between generic online advice and what actually happens in boardrooms when founders are preparing for liquidity, negotiating with investors, or realising the business cannot keep scaling while every major decision still runs through them.

Today, Alexis works with founders at the point where the habits that built the company start to limit the company. A founder can be the biggest asset in the early years, but around the £5M–£20M stage, they can become the bottleneck if the business still relies on their memory, energy, relationships and constant intervention. At Knightscale Partners, Alexis works alongside co-founder Topher Morrison and a roster of experienced senior operators to give founder-led businesses access to the C-suite thinking they need before they are ready to hire a full-time executive team.