Your P&L tells you what happened.
It doesn't tell you what to do next.
You know which month was bad. Knowing why is a different piece of work and it is the one that rarely gets done. We take the business apart in numbers, find where the value actually sits, and hand you a ranked list of what to do about it, with each item sized.
The crew fixes the car.
The race engineer decides the race.
Our recovery work is the crew. It finds money already leaking out of contracts and spend, it is paid from what it recovers, and it is very good at what it does. If that is the job you actually need, start with our cost recovery work instead.
This is the other job. Not hundredths of a second found everywhere, but the call that decides the outcome. Whether that branch is fixable or should close. Whether the money tied up in equipment is earning its keep. Whether the thing everyone believes about the business is actually true.
From the cockpit, everything feels tuned. The telemetry tells the truth.
You can see the number.
You cannot see the cause.
Most owner-led businesses run on a monthly P&L that arrives as one page. It tells you the total. It does not tell you why one branch earns half what another does on the same work, whether growth is quietly consuming your cash, or what the business earns on every dollar tied up inside it.
So the honest answer to "why was June bad" is usually a theory. Then a decision gets made on the theory and nobody finds out whether it was right.
Averages hide it
A company-level number is the average of things that are not alike. Until it is cut by branch, crew, product or customer, it is not yet evidence of anything.
The balance sheet is silent
A business can look thin on margin and earn well above what its money costs, or look healthy and be quietly going backwards. Neither shows on the income statement.
It is nobody's job by default
Your accountant tells you what happened and keeps you out of trouble. That is a different job with a different liability and it is usually not the one they were engaged for. Some accounting firms do offer this work. Ask yours, and if they will do it properly you do not need us.
A written report and it is yours
whether or not you buy anything else.
Not a slide deck. A document you can hand to your accountant, built so that every number in it traces back to something you can find in your own system.
Where the money comes from and goes
The business decomposed into the numbers you can actually influence, reconciled to your own accounts. If it does not tie out, we say so rather than presenting it.
Why your best unit is better
Compared against itself rather than an industry average, because you can dismiss a statistic and you cannot dismiss your own branch. And we separate what is repeatable from what is not.
What your capital actually earns
What the business returns on the money tied up in it, against what that money costs you. Your P&L cannot produce it on its own. It needs the balance sheet as well, and your actual borrowing rates, which is why we ask for those.
A ranked list, each item sized
With the arithmetic shown, so you can check it. Recurring gains and one-off cash releases reported separately, because they are different kinds of number and adding them together flatters everybody.
Four rules this work runs on.
- Every figure ties back to your own records.
- Every headline number is worked out twice, by different methods, and reconciled.
- Where we recommend a provider from our specialist network, that provider pays us, and we say so on the page the recommendation sits on rather than in the small print.
- The assumption we are least confident in is named in the report rather than left for you to find.
Two to three weeks from the day
we have your data.
Thirty minutes, nine questions
You talk, we listen. No advice, no price, and nothing for you to prepare. At the end we tell you honestly whether there is something here.
Same day, either way
About half the time this should end here and we will say so rather than sell you something. That is the process working.
Within two working days, and no price yet
One page saying what we think is going on and whether it is worth a second conversation. If we think you do not need us, the page says that instead and nothing follows it.
Scoping, with everyone who decides in the room
Six questions about how the business really works, then a short list of exports we need. Nothing you have to build for us.
Two working days after that, with the number
Scope, what you get, what it does not include, when it starts, and what it costs. We price it once we have seen how the business actually works, not before.
The work
We take it apart, size everything worth doing, and check the numbers twice. If something in your data will not support the analysis, you hear it that week, not at the end.
Two hours and the report is yours
We open with your own words from the first call and answer them. Bad news comes in the middle of the meeting, not at the end.
Fixed, quoted before any work,
and never a percentage of anything.
The fee scales with the size of the business because what we can find scales with it. Every point of margin on a four million dollar company is forty thousand dollars. On twenty million, every point is two hundred thousand.
after the BaselineSupport
6 mo minimumAll three
together
Between $5M and $15M the fee slides with your revenue, so there is no jump at a band edge. Enter yours to see it.
A guide, not a final quote. Your exact fee is confirmed in writing in your proposal, after we have seen how your business actually works. If it is unusually simple for its size, it may come in lower.
The last column is the three added together with six months of support, which is roughly eight months if they run back to back. Most businesses do not buy all three, and nobody is asked to decide on the second one until the first is finished.
The written report described above. Where the money comes from and goes, why your best unit outperforms the rest, what your capital earns against what it costs, and a ranked list with each item sized.
It is presented in person, not emailed. It is built to stand on its own, and plenty of businesses stop here.
Three to six initiatives and no more, each with a named owner inside your business who has agreed out loud that they can do it, a number to hit and a date to hit it by. Everything that did not make the cut is listed with the reason it was cut.
The price above is for that work alone. It does not repeat the Baseline, because by then the Baseline exists, so nothing is being charged for twice. We do not build a plan without one: a plan laid over a business nobody has examined turns into more of whatever you are already doing.
If you take the Baseline now and come back for the Plan later, the price above holds for ninety days after your readout. After that we requote, because the figures a plan would be built on have aged.
The rhythm afterwards. A standing review, the tracker kept current, variance explained, and someone whose job is asking whether the thing that was agreed actually happened.
Six months is the commitment and it is not refundable part-way, so it is $15,000 to $30,000 depending on your revenue. After that it renews month to month and either of us can end it on thirty days written notice.
Whether you need it at all, and for how long, is not something we decide until you have seen the plan it attaches to.
Half on signature, half on delivery. Take 5 percent off the whole fee if you would rather pay it in full up front. If your business is unusually simple for its size, one location and one line of work, say so and we will price it at the band below.
Before an investor reads it,
we read it the way they will.
The Raise Readiness Review is a separate service for founders about to raise. You send us your deck, your model and your financials. We check them against each other and against the outside sources you cite, then tell you what an investor is going to find and where they will push.
It stands on its own. You do not need the Baseline to buy it and it commits you to nothing after it. No deck yet? We'll create a deck for you on our template, using your own words and numbers.
Priced on how much there is to review, not on how much you are raising, from $1,500 for a deck alone. A fixed fee, agreed before we start. Never a percentage of the raise and never a success fee. We do not rewrite your materials and we do not value your company.
Ask about a reviewWhat this is not.
- Not an audit and not assurance work of any kind.
- Not a valuation. We do not opine on what your business is worth.
- Not tax advice and not legal advice.
- Not implementation. We analyze, build and coach. You decide, own and sustain.
- Not a cost-cutting exercise. Cost is the smallest of the four things that move what a business is worth and the only one you cannot do twice.
And one more, which matters more than the others. We are a small, veteran-owned firm. If you want a big name on the door and a team of twenty, we are not that. We will, however, be honest with you about the work and you will not get shuffled between advisors.
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