David Nanfra is a leading coach to founders, CEOs and their leadership teams, trusted by highly successful growth-stage, listed and private businesses through their highest-stakes moments: scaling, succession, founder transition and the shift from founder-led to team-led.
The leaders I coach are already successful, running businesses long past the early chaos. They’re commercially sharp and humanly intelligent, ambitious about what they’re building and deeply invested in the people building it with them, and they’ve reached the point where the business has outgrown the operating model that built it.
That’s when the strengths that got them here start carrying a load they were never designed for, decisions slow, delegation reverses under pressure and the founder finds themselves back in the detail. They’re more powerful than they think and more creative than they know, and my role is to sharpen how they think, decide and lead at that level, so their leadership becomes the business’s greatest source of leverage.
Finance, including VP at Merrill Lynch Europe, taught me commercial rigour, building and owning businesses taught me what leadership feels like from the inside, and coaching taught me that beneath almost every business challenge sits a leadership challenge. More than 25 years across those worlds, including more than a decade and 5,000 coaching hours alongside founders and CEOs, have given me the privilege of working through some of the most important moments in the life of a business: commercially, strategically and personally.
If you’re leading a highly successful growth-stage business through an inflection point, let’s talk.
A Coaching Relationship Unlike Any Other
This is a long-term thinking partnership unlike any coaching relationship you’ve had before, and it goes further than most leaders expect coaching can go.
I sit alongside the leaders I coach through their greatest wins and their hardest moments, and they bring me the conversations they can’t have anywhere else: commercial decisions, leadership dilemmas, co-founder tension, team dynamics, family pressures, health and identity. Leadership happens inside the rest of life, so the work covers all of it. I’m the independent voice that has earned the right to hear what’s really going on, and to hold it carefully.
That’s what this work is and why it lasts, and if that’s the partnership you’re looking for, you’ve found it
The Three Pillars
Every business problem eventually becomes a leadership problem. The three areas below are where I partner with leaders to navigate growth, complexity and change.
1. Leaders in Scaling Businesses
Growth changes the job of the Leader before most leaders realise it has changed. When the business needs a different version of the leader than it did two years ago. When success has created decisions they can’t make alone.
One-to-one coaching for founders, CEOs, and senior leaders navigating the move from operator to leader of leaders. Expect challenge, expect care, expect someone in your corner who will tell you the truth, back you fully, and hold you accountable to the leader you say you want to become. This is a leadership retainer, built for continuity, judgement, and respectful challenge over time.
2. High-Value Impact Teams
Leadership teams usually engage me when the business has outgrown the way the team works together.
Senior leadership teams shift from high-performing to high-value impact when they stop measuring themselves only by output and start operating with shared purpose, behavioural alignment, and bi-directional accountability. Teams that experience this start to understand how leveraging the collective strengths and talents of leadership can create powerful alignment and drive future growth, unlike they’ve achieved before.
3. Co-Founder alignment
The most consequential relationship in any growth-stage business is the one between its co-founders. When it is in alignment, the business moves with extraordinary speed and conviction, when it drifts, every part of the business feels it. Co-founder dynamics are unlike any other working relationship, they carry equity, history, identity, and the original belief that built the business. Done well, this is the most leveraged work a founder team can undertake.
How I coach
Energy sits at the centre of how I coach; Physical, emotional, cognitive, relational. It is how leaders show up, how decisions get made, how cultures get shaped. Wellbeing is part of it, not separate from it, because there is one, integrated life, not two, and the way you lead is shaped by the way you live.
The hardest leadership challenges rarely arrive looking like leadership challenges. A strategy issue is often an identity issue. A team issue is often a trust issue. Every business problem contains a leadership problem. My role is to help leaders see what is really happening, navigate complexity with greater clarity, and make better decisions about what comes next.
I bring a rare combination to this work, with commercial sharpness and human depth at the same time. The leaders I coach are running real businesses with real numbers, real pressure, and real consequences, and they want a coach who understands all of that without losing the human in the process.
Who I am
The way I coach today has been shaped by over 25 years across corporate strategy, business ownership and coaching.
Together they’ve taught me that while every business is unique, the leadership challenges beneath them are often the same. They’ve also taught me that leadership isn’t improved by having all the answers, it’s improved by seeing the situation more clearly.
The work is shaped by what I value. Freedom and autonomy, expressed in adventure travel and a long-held pull toward places off the beaten track. Energy as the foundation of everything. Connection, deeply held, with my wife Nicole, our three kids, my closest friends, and the leaders I coach. Growth, which I treat as a lifelong commitment, and the imagination to keep challenging how things are done.
The same mindset has shaped my life outside coaching. Over the years I’ve completed 30 marathons and climbed four of the Seven Summits, not because I collect achievements, but because I’m drawn to environments that demand resilience, perspective and continual growth. Those experiences continue to shape how I think about leadership, resilience and human potential.
I spend my time outside coaching with my family, in the mountains, on the trail, or back in the running community I have been part of for over 20 years. I am dedicated and focused to my work and art, and I see life and work as an integration, not something that needs to be balanced. I read, listen, and learn constantly, because coaching at this level is a craft, not a profession, and the leaders I work with deserve someone who treats it that way. The values I bring to the work are the values I try to live by.
The Ripple
The Ripple explores the leadership questions, decisions and tensions I encounter most often working alongside founders, CEOs and senior leadership teams.
Everything I write is grounded in real coaching conversations. The ideas aren’t built on theory alone. They’re shaped by years spent helping leaders navigate some of the most important moments in the life of a business.
It’s designed to provoke insight, spark alignment, and sharpen execution. The future of leadership in the AI age will amplify the positive ripple of impact and reach, so let’s make it an empowering voice. Also born from the belief that presence, depth, and relational intelligence are the next frontiers of leadership.
No fluff. Real edge.
My Clients:
What Clients Say
One of these rare individuals
Dave is one of these rare individuals who can cut through the bullshit and get straight to the nub of the issue. His strengths-based approach has helped me navigate some challenging moments and successfully reach my goals. The proof is in the pudding. I still use Dave for personal coaching, he runs his high-performing team programme for our senior management team at Pemba, and we use him to coach the leadership teams of a number of our partner companies. For those who watch the TV show Billions, Dave has become our Wendy at Pemba.
– Tom Matthews,
Managing Director, Pemba Capital
Pivotal force in elevating our culture and performance
Dave’s coaching has been a pivotal force in elevating our culture and performance at Sheet Society since 2021. As I stepped into the sole CEO role in 2024, Dave became an invaluable partner, guiding me through a fast-paced, evolving landscape with unwavering dedication and insight. His authenticity, adaptability, and deep commitment to our success make him a trusted advisor and thought partner. For any founder, CEO or senior leader ready to level up their leadership capability, I highly recommend Dave.
– Andy Worley,
CEO, Sheet Society
A dedicated coach and trusted advisor
Dave has been working with members of Adore Beauty’s executive team since June 2018, including through the private equity investment process and our IPO. He has coached us during the biggest period of change and growth in our company history. I consider Dave a coach and trusted advisor who has supported me and my co-founder in making some critical decisions. He is great at bringing out your authentic and purposeful best, he cares both professionally and personally about your success, fulfilment and wellbeing.
– Kate Morris,
Founder and Former CEO, Adore Beauty
Partner through 5x growth and a successful IPO
Prior to working with Dave my experience of coaching had been mediocre. Dave changed that. Strong trust and value exchange fuelled challenging conversations and direct questions. These in turn enabled lasting change, development and definition in my approach to my role, career and values. Our work together took place in the context of 5x business growth, multiple investment rounds and a successful IPO. The personal growth required to match that pace wouldn’t have been possible without those sessions.
– Dan Ferguson,
CMO, Adore Beauty
Close collaboration, strong listening and attention to detail
Dave provided a year-long high-performing teams programme for my leadership team at Peloton. Through close collaboration, strong listening and attention to detail, he crafted a deep understanding of the challenges my leadership team was facing, the individual goals and styles, and translated that into a customised and actionable programme. The programme enabled my team to meaningfully improve trust, communication and collaboration, and as a result see tangible business impacts. Dave’s high-performing framework is one I still use today across my teams.
– Amanda Gilmore,
ex Country Manager, Peloton Australia
He is enrolled in our collective success
Dave has a unique ability to understand both the needs of our people and our business and to adapt his coaching and programs accordingly with a very personalized and targeted approach. He is enrolled in our collective success and he uses his extensive experience and coaching skills to enable that. Dave provides dedication, care and integrity. I cannot recommend Dave more highly should you be fortunate enough to engage his services.
– Mark Lewis,
Director at Hacer Group
Takes on your company’s goals as his own
David has been coaching our international management team and has provided skill-building workshops for our broader team as well. We have seen immediate benefits in our focus, strategy and execution as a result of David’s coaching. He takes on your company’s goals as his own and is very good at focusing the individual on the most important management issue at hand, building a plan in response to that need. I highly recommend David for any high performing team.
– Gillian Pearl,
CEO at Pearl Consulting
An unparalleled coach, mentor and advisor
David’s approach is absolutely unique; combining his life experience, business skills and passion for mindfulness to operate at the cutting edge of contemporary coaching. What impresses me the most about David is his ability to ask insightful questions, listen intently, and diagnose the situation with a unique and tailored plan for me. David is adaptable, genuine, dedicated and motivated to help others – traits that make him an unparalleled coach, mentor and advisor.
– Andrew Aoukar,
Director, Customer Strategy at PwC
Start a Conversation
Tell me where you are, what’s changing, what feels harder than it used to, and what you’d like your leadership and your business to look like 12 months from now. If we are a fit, we will find a way to work together. If we are not, I will tell you.
I coach to create real impact, and I only take on the work I believe will deliver it.
