The Two-Day Teardown

The premise

Revenue doesn't get stuck for mysterious reasons. A business is a machine. Every event causes other events, and somewhere in that chain a part isn't doing what everyone assumes it's doing. The people inside can't find it. Not because they're not smart — because they're inside it. Same as you. The world works a certain way, and it has laws. When a number won't move, something specific is holding it. My job is finding the something.

What I actually do

Two days under the hood. I start with you (you've got to be in it), then your key people, one at a time, the same questions asked different ways until the picture fills in. It's detective work, and the method isn't a secret: I make an assumption and try to disprove it. The number's flat because of X. Fine. Why did X happen? And why did that happen? I keep digging and digging and digging until the answer stops moving.

It usually ends somewhere that looks completely normal. A decision nobody made. A thing nobody owns. That's why nobody found it.

What you get

A short memo, within the week. The true picture, the one to three moves that matter, in order, and a name next to every move. If a name doesn't exist yet because no one on your bench can run that move, the memo says so, and I'll point you to hands I trust. Not a 40-slide deck. If it isn't actionable, it's worthless.

Days 30, 60, 90

Here's what kills these plans, and it isn't the plan. Either nobody owns a move, or everyone nods in the room and by week three the machine has quietly gone back to the old way. People go back to the old way when nobody's coming to look.

So I come back. Three checkpoints, part of the fee. I hold what got done up against the spec and tell you straight: on track, drifting, or stalled on a decision upstream. What you do about it is your chair, not mine. Your team does the work. I make sure it was the work.

Who it's for

You're somewhere between $10M and $30M. You just took money, or you're about to spend big on a build, or the number's been flat long enough that the explanations stopped making sense. Maybe it shows up as the leadership meeting that's quietly become a tribunal: sales says the leads are bad, marketing says sales can't close, and you can't tell who's right. That's the part that actually wears on you. Not the number — the not knowing who to believe.

Quiet by design

A handful of the right people, a handful of real conversations. Not a company-wide audit that stops everyone for a week. Most of your team never feels it. And bringing in cold eyes early is the confident call, not the risky one.

The shape of the money

Flat fee, up front. Two days, three check-ins, day ninety ends it. It can't become a six-month retainer because the meter doesn't exist. Want my eyes on the machine past ninety days? That's a separate, small monthly thing. I only take a handful of these a quarter.

The deal

If by the end of the two days I haven't shown you something that's costing you more than this costs, something you didn't already know, you don't pay. I only want the money if I earned it. Worst case, you walk out understanding your own machine better than you did, and you owe me nothing.

Why I don't run the build

I learned this at Dow Chemical. I built them a tool and handed it over so they could change it themselves, and it became a corporate standard because I wasn't standing next to it. The fix that needs me in the room forever isn't a fix. Your people run it. I make sure they can. That's the job. Full stop.