Management consulting for owner-led companies, $5M to $75M

Build a company that runs without you in every meeting.

We help owners of manufacturers, distributors and multi-location service businesses put in the numbers, the weekly rhythm and the leadership team that carry the load, so the business can grow past you or sell without you.

Book an intro conversation Take the 2-minute dependency check
An assembly floor with rows of workers at packing stations
Owner COO CFO VP Sales Plant Supply Finance Pricing Sales Service

Today: six functions, one bottleneck. 41 decisions a week wait on the owner.

64owner-led companies since 2011
31states, from one Pittsburgh office
4.1 ptsmedian gross margin gained in year one
71%of new clients referred by a past client

The pattern we see

Owner-led companies stall at three ceilings.

Revenue climbs, then goes flat for years. Not because the market dried up, but because the way the company is run stopped fitting its size. Here is the shape, drawn from twelve client histories.

$0$25M$50M$75M Year 04812 $8M: the owner is the system $20M: managers without a cadence $40M: a team that can't run it alone
Composite of 12 client histories, revenue in millions of dollars, linear scale.
  1. $8M

    The owner is the system

    Every price, hire and late shipment goes through one desk. Growth stops when the owner's calendar fills.

  2. $20M

    Managers without a cadence

    There are titles now, but no shared numbers and no weekly rhythm. Problems surface at month end.

  3. $40M

    A team that can't run it alone

    The business is worth a lot, but a buyer sees the owner holding the key accounts and the know-how.

What we work on

Six pieces of the same job.

Most engagements start with cadence and margin, because that is where the owner's time and the cash go. The rest follows once the numbers are honest.

Cadence

Operating cadence and KPIs

A one-page scorecard, a weekly meeting that ends on time, and owners for every number.

How it runs Margin

Margin and pricing

Job and customer profitability you can trust, then prices that match what work really costs.

How it runs Team

Leadership team building

The right seats, the right people in them, and clear decision rights between them.

How it runs Succession

Succession and exit readiness

A company a buyer, a child or a manager can take over, with the value to show for it.

How it runs Scale

Scaling past the founder

New sites, new lines and new regions that work the first time because the playbook exists.

How it runs Cash

Cash and working capital

Receivables, inventory and payables run on purpose, so growth stops eating the cash it needs.

How it runs
Two managers talking on a distribution floor beside a conveyor line

“For eleven years I was the scorecard. Now there's a real one, and Tuesday's meeting runs without me in the room.”

Owner and president, precision machining companyWestern Pennsylvania, 140 employees, client since 2022

The operating rhythm we install

Four meetings. One page of numbers.

Every client ends up with some version of the same cadence. It is boring on purpose: the same questions, at the same time, against the same scorecard.

Each site, each shift

Yesterday's misses, today's constraints, who needs help. Standing up, at the board, done in fifteen minutes.

The leadership team

Twelve numbers, each with an owner and a target. Anything red gets a name and a date, not a discussion.

Leadership plus finance

Margin by customer, product line and job. This is where pricing changes get decided, with the data on the table.

Leadership, offsite

Three to five priorities for the next ninety days, each owned by one person. Everything else waits.

Weekly scorecard, week 37

Sample from a $28M distributor
MeasureWhoTargetActual13-wk avg
Orders shipped on timeCOO96%97.2%95.8%
Gross margin, bookedCFO31.0%31.6%30.4%
Quotes out, valueVP Sales$1.20M$0.94M$1.11M
Quote win rateVP Sales34%36%33%
Days sales outstandingCFO423944
Inventory turnsCOO6.55.86.1
Open positionsCOO≤324
7 of 12 measures shown, 2 off targetChaired by the COO

Results, before and after

What changes, measured.

Three recent engagements. Each bar sits on the same scale as its pair, so the change reads at a glance. Full stories on the results page.

Industrial valve manufacturer

Ohio, $34M revenue, second-generation owner

Before
23.5%
After 14 mo
29.0%
Gross margin
010%20%30%40%
+5.5margin points

Commercial HVAC service, 9 branches

Mid-Atlantic, $52M revenue, founder-owned

Before
41 / week
After 11 mo
6 / week
Owner decisions
01020304050
−85%decisions on the owner

Food-service distributor

Western PA, $19M revenue, sold in 2025

First bid
4.5× EBITDA
Final sale
5.8× EBITDA
Sale multiple
0×2×4×6×8×10×
+1.3×on the same buyer pool

Read the full engagement stories

The dependency check

How much of the company still runs through you?

Six statements we ask every owner on the first call. Answer honestly; nothing is sent anywhere.

Talk through your score with us

Prices on any quote over $25,000 need my approval.

I know our gross margin by customer without asking anyone.

Our three biggest accounts would call me first if something went wrong.

The leadership team meets weekly against a written scorecard.

I have not taken two weeks off without checking in since we passed $5M.

Someone other than me could run the company for 90 days.

0/6

Answer the six to see where you stand.Each answer that points to you adds one to the score.

Mostly off your desk.The structure is there. The work is usually margin and the next layer of leaders.

The $20M ceiling.Managers are in place but still route the hard calls to you. Cadence fixes most of it.

You are the system.Very common, and very fixable. This is where the Assay phase starts.

Field notes

Written for owners, not consultants.

Short pieces from the work. No frameworks for their own sake, just what we keep seeing on shop floors and in leadership meetings.

Cadence · 6 min read

The Tuesday meeting that replaced 30 hallway conversations

Most owners we meet already have a monthly report. It arrives on the 18th, it is thirty pages long, and by the time anyone reads it the month it describes is over. Nobody decides anything from it.

A weekly scorecard is the opposite: twelve numbers, one page, each with a name next to it. The meeting that goes with it has one rule. If a number is red, the owner of that number says what they will do and by when. Nobody debates it in the room.

Why it replaces the hallway

When there is no regular place to raise a problem, people raise it with whoever is nearest, which is usually the owner. Give the problem a slot on Tuesday at 8 and most of those conversations wait for the slot, where the right person hears them.

What it takes

Four to six weeks of discipline. The first meetings run long and the numbers are wrong. By week six the meeting runs in under an hour, and someone other than the owner is chairing it.

Margin · 8 min read

Your best customer might be your least profitable one

In almost every margin review we run, the largest account sits near the bottom of the profitability list. It has the most custom work, the most expedites and the most free engineering hours, and its price was set years ago by the owner on a handshake.

That is not a reason to fire it. It is a reason to know the number. Once job costing captures the hours the work really took, including the rework and the after-hours calls, the conversation about price gets much easier.

Where to start

Pick the top twenty customers. Pull twelve months of jobs. Add labor at actual hours, freight at actual cost and a fair share of engineering time. Rank them. The list will surprise you, and it will tell you where your next three price changes should go.

Exit readiness · 7 min read

What a buyer reads in the first ten minutes of diligence

Buyers of owner-led companies look first for one thing: what happens to this business when the seller leaves. Everything else is detail.

Three things they check

Who holds the top ten customer relationships. Whether the financials close in ten days with no adjustments. Whether there is a leadership team with a track record of running the place, written down in a scorecard history.

Each of those can be fixed, but not in the six months before a sale. The owners who get the best multiples start two to three years out, and spend most of that time making themselves less necessary.

Cash · 5 min read

Record sales, and still short on cash every month

A growing company can be profitable on paper and still lean on the credit line every month. The profit is real. It is just tied up somewhere the owner is not looking.

Three places it usually sits

Invoices that go out a week after the job ships. Customers who pay in 60 days on 30-day terms because nobody calls. Inventory bought for the forecast instead of the orders, sitting on the shelf for a quarter.

None of these needs a new system. It needs a number on the weekly scorecard, days sales outstanding and inventory turns, with a name next to each. Most clients free up a few weeks of cash inside the first two quarters, and the credit line goes back to being for emergencies.

Start with a 45‑minute conversation.

Tell us where the company is and where you want it to be. We'll tell you plainly whether we can help, what it would take and what it would cost. No deck, no pitch.

Book an intro conversation (412) 958-2063
Ellen Brandvold and Tomas Pikul started Foundry in 2011 after years as a COO and a CFO themselves. One of them is on most first calls.