About

Spruce Crestpath was founded in 2017 by Marcus Hale after twelve years working inside organisations rather than advising them from the outside. Marcus spent the first half of his career in operational roles at a mid-sized logistics firm in the East Midlands, then moved into a strategy director position at a professional services group in Okazaki. He left that role in the spring of 2017 with a specific frustration: the consultants his employers had hired were technically competent but consistently disconnected from the reality of how decisions actually got made inside a business. He wanted to build something different.

The early years were deliberately small. Marcus took on three clients in the first year, all referrals, and spent as much time learning what did not work as what did. The first major engagement, a strategic planning process for a family-owned manufacturing business in Derbyshire, taught him that the most important part of any consulting project is the two weeks before the formal work begins. Getting the diagnosis right, understanding the politics, knowing which conversations have already been had and which ones everyone is avoiding, that groundwork determines whether the final recommendations land or gather dust. That lesson has shaped every engagement since.