Custom consulting
Some problems do not fit a package. This is where that work goes, and it still starts the same way everything else does.
Start with an auditWhat this actually covers
Most of my work is a process audit followed by a build. That covers the majority of what founder-led businesses need, and it is priced and scoped before anything starts.
Then there is the other kind. A 14-person insurance brokerage that already documented its renewals process two years ago and cannot get anyone to follow the doc. A design studio moving off one project tool onto another where the real problem is that intake was never defined, so both tools hold the same mess in different shapes. A founder who has quietly become the only person who knows how quoting works, and has 3 months before a key hire starts.
Work like that gets scoped from what I find, not from a page like this one.
Who I work with
Founder-led service businesses. Usually 5 to 20 people, somewhere between $1M and $5M in revenue, with no dedicated operations lead. Revenue is fine. The founder is the constraint.
That last part matters more than the revenue number. If every real decision still routes through one person, adding tools or headcount tends to move the bottleneck rather than remove it. That is the pattern I know best and the one I am most useful on.
How it starts
With an audit. Always.
I do not quote custom work off a discovery call, because a discovery call tells me what a founder believes is broken, and that is rarely the whole picture. The audit extracts how the work actually moves today: what comes in, what gets decided, what gets handed off, and where it stalls. Scope comes out of that, in writing, with a fixed price before anything gets built.
If the audit shows the problem fits one of the standard engagements, I will say so and you get the cheaper path.
What I turn down
Worth knowing before you book a call.
- Open-ended monthly retainers. Engagements are fixed scope with a defined end.
- Staff augmentation. I am one person and I am not a substitute for a hire you need to make.
- Training a model on your data. There is almost always a cheaper answer, and it usually starts with fixing the process feeding it.
- Anything where the answer is already decided and the work is to justify it.
Saying that up front saves us both a call.
Why there are no client names here
Client work runs under NDA. That covers the process maps, the systems, and usually the fact of the engagement itself, so you will not find logos or named case studies on this site. Operations work touches how a business actually makes money and who it depends on. Founders are right to want that kept quiet, and I would rather have their trust than a testimonial slider.
What I can point you at is the thinking. The method comes from years of audits and operational work, most recently at Spyglass Ops. The writing is public and there is a lot of it.
If this sounds like your situation
Book 30 minutes. I will tell you whether an audit is worth your money before you spend any of it.
Book a call