Your business runs at the speed of
whatever is blocking it.
Somewhere in your operation the work stops moving. Orders sit. Cash sits.
Every decision queues behind you. We find that one place using your own
numbers, clear it, and build the tools that keep it clear. AI is how we do
that in weeks instead of quarters — it isn't what we're selling.
in executive time spent rebuilding the same weekly reports by hand — found in a single diagnostic.
High-volume franchise operator · four systems, none of them talking
$50K a year
in uncaptured margin the business was already producing and not collecting — about 6% of revenue, with no new customers and no new capacity.
Producer-retailer · found in one profitability review
~90% below quote
Work a development agency scoped at 655–920 hours, delivered in 60–94 — now carrying $80M in purchase orders.
Industrial construction, $60B+ energy campus · delivered in one to three weeks
Client names withheld by agreement. Engagement documentation available under NDA.
Who we work with
Operators between $1M and $100M, where the owner is still the bottleneck
and nobody in the building owns the data.
We're not a one-industry shop, and we won't pretend to be. What our
clients share isn't a sector — it's a shape. Physical work moving on a
schedule. An owner or operator who carries the P&L personally.
Numbers living in systems that were never built to talk to each other.
Nobody on this list is a SaaS startup, and nobody is a Fortune 100 with
an internal data team. Those firms have other options. These ones
mostly have spreadsheets.
A cross-section of the work
Multiple high-volume franchise operators
Plastics recycling brokerage
Multi-truck hauling company
UK baler manufacturer
International machinery group
Industrial construction, $60B+ energy campus
Specialty food manufacturer
Producer-retailer with a wholesale line
Personal-injury law practice
The way in
Every engagement starts with Discovery.
We won't quote work we haven't scoped, and you shouldn't buy a fix for a
constraint nobody has found yet. Discovery is two to three weeks inside
your operation — your data, your systems, your people — and it ends in a
written verdict rather than a proposal deck.
01
We listen
What you are trying to fix, what "better" would actually look like, and where the operation hurts — before anyone mentions a tool.
02
We read your data
What your systems hold, what they refuse to share, and whether any of it can support integrated reporting or AI today.
03
We assess your team
Where your people are strong, where they are stuck, and whether training has to come before any build will stick.
Discovery
from$5,000
Fixed fee · Fixed scope · Two to three weeks
Operations running more systems, more sites, or more entities scope
higher — and we tell you that number before you commit, not after.
Everything past Discovery is priced from what Discovery finds, because
until then we would be guessing and so would you.
A written verdict on where throughput is actually constrained — and why it is that and not the thing you assumed
What the constraint is costing you, in dollars, with arithmetic you can follow
An integration map: what connects today, what does not, and which parts of the operation nothing is measuring at all
Team AI skills evaluation across the people who would use what we build
A sequenced roadmap — what to fix first, and explicitly what not to touch yet
A costed proposal for the next phase, only if Discovery says one is warranted
After Discovery
Three ways in. Most operators end up using two of them.
We find where a business is choking and put a number on it. Then you
decide who clears it — us, or your own people with our methods in their
hands. That choice gets made from what Discovery found, not from a
package you picked before anyone looked.
We build it.
The fastest route. We connect the systems, build the tools, and stay on to run and improve them. You are reading your own numbers inside a quarter.
We teach your team.
Slower to value, cheaper over time, and you own it at the end. We hand over the methods and the tooling, then stay close enough that the habit survives the first busy week.
We hold the seat.
For operators who need the function and not the hire. Whichever branch you took, this is what staying looks like — senior operational leadership on a monthly cadence, from the two people who built the systems in the first place.
Build the part that has to work now. Learn the part you should own
forever. We will tell you which is which, and sometimes the answer is
that you do not need us for either.
What we actually walk into
Your systems are a museum. That is normal, and it is fine.
Most operating businesses we walk into are running an accounting package from a decade ago, a CRM somebody bought in 2019, a project system that came with a hire, three or four spreadsheets doing load-bearing work, and at least one process that involves printing something out and typing it back in somewhere else.
None of that happened because anyone made a bad decision. Each piece was bought at a different time, by a different person, to solve a real problem in front of them. It is what growth looks like from the inside.
The trouble is that none of it talks. So the numbers that would tell you where your money is actually going live in five places, and the only way to see them together is for somebody to spend Monday morning assembling them by hand. By the time the picture exists, it is already old.
We do not come in and tell you to replace it. Ripping out working software is expensive, slow, and it costs you every bit of institutional knowledge baked into the way your people already work. We would rather leave your systems where they are and build the connections between them.
That includes the spreadsheets. Especially the spreadsheets. The workbook nobody wants to touch usually has ten years of hard-won business rules living inside it that were never written down anywhere else. We read those rules out, write them down properly, and put them somewhere they can survive the person who built them.
And if you are mid-migration, that is not a reason to wait. Half the businesses we work with are changing something when we arrive. A new ERP going live in the fall, a point-of-sale switch the franchisor is forcing, an accounting move that has been on the list for two years.
We build against a stable structure with adapters behind it. When the new system arrives, we point a second adapter at it and run both in parallel until you are comfortable with the new one. Then the old one retires and what you rely on carries straight on. Your migration does not become our excuse, and it does not become your delay.
After Discovery
What gets built, once we know what to build.
None of these are entry doors. They are what Discovery may recommend —
and only when the data, the systems, and the team can carry them.
The path is the same. What sits inside it is not.
Data integration comes first, almost without exception. Not because it
is exciting, but because nothing above it works until the systems can
talk. Then dashboards and KPIs, which is usually the first time a
business writes its own rules down in a form anyone else can read. Only
then does the consulting get useful, because now we are both looking at
the same numbers instead of arguing about whose gut is right.
That last part gets more specific to your business the further in we go.
The first module looks broadly similar across a franchise operator and a
machinery manufacturer. The last one does not look like anybody else's.
The sequence does not change. The names always do. By the time you see
your roadmap it is written in your language, about your operation, and
the only thing borrowed from anyone else is the order we do it in.
Instrumentation — making the missing number exist
The constraint usually sits in the part of the operation nobody measures, because no system was ever pointed at it. We put sensors and capture software where the work actually happens, so the number you need starts existing instead of being estimated.
GPS and geofencing on vehicles and equipment
A scan at each material handoff, working offline
Vision models reading the paperwork still filled in by hand
Feeds pulled off machines that already publish data
Integrated reporting & dashboards
The live view of margin, throughput, capacity, and cash you assumed you already had. Built once the underlying data can actually support it.
Custom apps & automations
Web and mobile tools designed for how your operation genuinely runs — offline-first field apps, reconciliation workflows, inventory, scheduling. Plus the workflow automations underneath them: the email that goes out when a KPI crosses a line, and the business rules that fire without anyone remembering to check.
AI upskilling
Hands-on training on the systems your people actually touch, with follow-up so the habit survives the first busy week.
Online presence rebuild
Website, local search, and reviews working as one system — for the operations where the constraint turns out to be demand, not capacity.
The conversation nobody else is having
When renting the models stops making sense.
Most companies are fine paying per token. Some are not, and the crossover arrives faster than people expect once a tool gets real adoption across a workforce. We have watched clients go from a few hundred dollars a month to a number that makes the CFO ask questions, without anyone deciding to spend more.
There is a point where owning the hardware and running open models beats renting the API, and there is a point well before that where it is a distraction. We will tell you which side of it you are on, with the arithmetic attached. Usually the answer is a split: your own model handling the routine internal volume, commercial models where the quality genuinely matters.
We run this analysis for our own business first. You are getting a recommendation we have already had to live with.
The ongoing mode
A Chief AI Officer, without the hire.
Whether we built it or your team did, the constraint moves and somebody
has to keep watching. A full-time Chief AI Officer runs past $500,000
all-in once you count salary, equity, and the better part of a year
spent looking for one. Almost no operator between $1M and $100M needs
that person five days a week. What they need is the function — someone
senior who owns the data, decides what gets built, and is accountable
for whether throughput actually moved.
Fractional AI Officer
15–40 hrs / month · Advisory, Operating, or Embedded
Senior operational leadership through an AI lens, delivered by the two
people who built your systems in the first place. Not a strategy deck
handed to a vendor — the same hands stay on the work.
Quarterly re-diagnostic, because the constraint always moves
Custom AI tools and dashboards built as the work requires them
Hiring oversight for data, ops, and technical roles
Async access to both partners between sessions
Scoped from what Discovery finds. We don't quote a retainer to a
business we haven't looked inside.
More embedded than a consultant
We are in your numbers every month, not presenting a deck and leaving you to implement it.
More strategic than a trainer
We decide what gets built and what does not, then build it. Training is a consequence, not the product.
Far less risk than a hire
Quarterly terms after the first cycle. No equity, no severance, no nine-month search for a unicorn.
Throughput Cycle
The lighter ongoing option, for operators who want the discipline
without the retainer. A quarterly re-diagnostic and a monthly cadence
call — because once you clear the first constraint, the bottleneck
moves somewhere else. It always does. Finding out where is the work.
Quarterly mini-diagnostic
Monthly operating cadence call
Async access between sessions
Honest fit
Who this is for
The market is flooded with firms selling AI readiness frameworks to
people who cannot get a straight answer about last month's margin. We do
the opposite: we look at your actual numbers and tell you where the work
is actually blocked. That suits some operators and irritates others.
Better to sort it out now.
You're a fit if
You own the P&L, and the number at the bottom of it is personally yours
You are working too many hours, and most decisions still route through you
You have sat through AI pitches selling governance frameworks, certifications, and maturity models — and noticed none of them ever asked to see your numbers
You want an operator's judgment, not another vendor's roadmap
You would rather be told "don't build that yet" than be sold something
You're probably not if
You need a full-time executive on the leadership team, in the building, five days a week
You already know what you want built and just need hands to build it
You want the recommendation before anyone has looked at the data
Who you're working with
Two operators, not an agency.
Forty years between us of running the jobs we now help people fix. Operations, sales, marketing, leadership, finance, logistics, and the data underneath all of it. Not studied. Run, with the P&L attached.
Experience is the hardest thing left to buy. Most of what gets sold as AI consulting comes from people whose entire operating history is the deck they are showing you. When we walk into a plant or a yard or a back office, we are not learning the business for the first time. We have been the person on the other side of the desk, and usually with the same problem.
There is no bench, no account manager, and nobody junior learning on your engagement. The two people who diagnose your operation are the two who build what comes next.
Elliott English
Co-Founder · Operations & Build
Elliott spent twenty years running operations inside organizations far larger than the ones he serves now — the Pentagon, Morgan Stanley, healthcare, pharma, and a telehealth division he built from nothing. Derivatives metrics and fraud operations at one end, a Pentagon desk in Qatar at the other.
The thread through all of it was the same: find where a complex organization is genuinely broken and fix the system rather than the symptom. He does that work at owner-operator scale now for one reason — the blockages are visible, the fixes pay back inside a quarter, and the person who can approve the change is in the room. He has run the reports you are running by hand, at a scale where doing it by hand was not an option.
Mac Steele
Co-Founder · Business Development
Mac has spent his career carrying proven technology into industries that had never used it — proxy tabulation for institutional investors, RFID inventory control, and fifteen years moving established manufacturing technology from brick into metals, mining, and steel.
The job never changed: find a company's real problem, match it to technology that actually solves it, and stay long enough to help them pull the value out. Twenty years of it as an owner and an operator, carrying the losses himself when he got it wrong. He finds the businesses with the right problems. Elliott builds the fix.
What we bring beyond the build
We have sat on the other side of the table.
Mac has served on boards for most of his career, including as chairman of an international manufacturer with operations on four continents, alongside director seats across manufacturing and construction materials. Most of our clients are family-owned or owner-operated, and that is not a coincidence.
The hardest problems in a family business are usually not operational. They are about who decides, what the next generation is owed, what gets said at the table and what gets said in the parking lot afterward. A recommendation that ignores all of that is a recommendation that does not get implemented.
We know what a board needs to see before it will approve something. We know why a good idea sits for two years. And we know how to write a proposal that survives a room full of directors who have never met us, because that is the room we have spent our careers in — Mac on the board, Elliott in front of it.
You can talk to us about the business and about the family, and
neither conversation will surprise us.
Across borders
Mac spent twenty years running commercial operations across the US, Europe, Australia and South America, pulling subsidiaries onto one framework so a business that size could see itself as one company. Saudi Arabia, Australia, Germany, Latin America. Fluent German, working Spanish, and a fairly clear-eyed view of what actually goes wrong when a company crosses an ocean.
If you are a European manufacturer looking at North America, or a North American company trying to build a position in Europe, the operational problems are the ones we already work on. Systems that were never designed to consolidate. Pricing that drifts between regions because nobody can compare it directly. A subsidiary that reports on a different calendar in a different currency and takes six weeks to become a number anyone trusts. Local teams solving the same problem three different ways because nobody has ever seen all three.
We have been the parent company trying to get one honest picture, and
we have been the subsidiary being asked for it. Both jobs are harder
than they look from the other side.
Get in touch
Start with Discovery.
Two to three weeks, a fixed fee from $5,000, and a written answer about
where your operation is actually blocked. If we are not the right people
for it, we will usually know someone who is — and we will say so on the
first call rather than the fourth.
