Operations Consulting
Your business is not short on effort. It is short on system.
Most service businesses that stall around $1M are not badly run. They are run entirely on the owner's judgement, which works beautifully right up until it becomes the ceiling. My job is to move what is in your head into something the business can run without you.
What does an operations consultant actually do?
Finds the constraint that is limiting the business and removes it. That means mapping how work really flows — not how the org chart says it does — then finding where it stalls, gets redone, or waits on one person. Those specific handoffs get rebuilt with clearer ownership, better systems, and reporting you can trust without double-checking it.
The constraint is usually not where owners expect. It is rarely the thing that feels busiest.
How I work
Diagnose
Map how work moves today and find the real constraint. Two weeks, and it usually contradicts the assumption you came in with.
Design
Build the system that removes it — process, tooling, ownership, and the reporting that tells you it is still working.
Deploy
Put it into the business and train the people who have to live in it. This is where most engagements quietly fail, so it gets the most attention.
Discipline
Documentation and cadence so it survives contact with a busy quarter. If it only works while I am watching, it does not work.
Why me specifically
I spent 12 years at Google running operations, programs, and product launches — the environment where "we will just handle it manually" stops being an option very early. Then I spent the last several years applying that to businesses of five to twenty-five people, where the constraint is real and the budget for solving it is not enterprise-sized.
That combination is the useful part. Plenty of consultants can tell you the process is broken. Fewer can design the system, build the software, and train the team on it — and that is usually what the job actually requires.
20+ systems built · 100% Job Success Score and Top Rated on Upwork · 12 years at Google
Common questions
What does an operations consultant do? ▾
An operations consultant finds the constraint that is limiting the business and removes it. In practice that means mapping how work actually flows, identifying where it stalls or gets redone, and rebuilding those specific handoffs — usually with better systems, clearer ownership, and reporting the owner can trust without checking.
How much does an operations consultant cost? ▾
For a small service business, far less than the full-time hire it substitutes for, because the work is part-time and scoped to a specific bottleneck. I work on monthly retainers and on two-week sprints. The sprint exists so you can see the quality of the work before committing to anything longer.
What size business does this make sense for? ▾
Typically $500K in revenue and up, with five to twenty-five people. Below that the owner can usually still hold the whole operation in their head. Above it, the informal systems that got you here start producing errors faster than you can catch them.
What happens in the first two weeks? ▾
I map how work actually moves through your business — not how the org chart says it does. That surfaces the real constraint, which is frequently not the one you expected. Then we fix one or two high-leverage things and you get a roadmap for the next 60 to 90 days.
Do you just advise, or do you build? ▾
Both, and the building is the part that matters. Advice that stops at a recommendation puts the hardest work back on the person who was already too busy to do it. I build the systems, train the team, and stay long enough to see whether they hold.
Start with a conversation, not a contract
A free Systems Audit call. Thirty minutes, and you leave with a read on where your actual constraint is whether or not we work together. If what you need is closer to an ongoing operations partner or specifically automating repetitive work, those are the same conversation.
Book a free Systems Audit call