What I do
Four ways in.
Every one of them ends.
Fixed scope, fixed fee, and a number agreed before anything is signed. I install the measurement and the process, get your team to the number, and hand it back. No open-ended retainers, no hourly clock, and no report that sits in a drawer.
Before any of these
The diagnostic.
Operational diagnostic
A written read on where the money is actually leaking and what it would take to stop it — cycle time by site, WIP position, parts gross, sublet spend, A/R aging, and the reporting your board should be getting and isn't.
It runs on your numbers and one working session with the people who own them.
You get
- A ranked list of where the money is, with the arithmetic shown
- The one number I would chase first, and why
- Whether I'm the right person to install the fix, or who is
If there isn't a number worth chasing, I'll say so, and you'll have spent two weeks rather than a year.
The four engagements
Pick the one that's costing you most.
Acquisition integration & WIP conversion
You closed. Now there is a book of half-torn cars, unordered parts, a cycle time climbing week over week, and a DRP watching all of it. The work in process is where every acquisition bleeds, and it is the part most integration plans leave to the local manager.
I built and rebuilt this conversion process across thirty-two sites inside a PE-backed platform, and I can run it for you or train your team to run it without me.
In scope
- WIP audit, triage and a dated conversion plan
- The conversion process itself, documented and installed
- SOP library and onboarding for the site
- Integration team stand-up, or training for the one you have
- A first-90-days operating cadence with the metrics that prove it stuck
Cycle-time recovery
Thirty days to twenty at a dealership collision center, inside three months. A shop that turns a car in twenty days makes money on the same work that a shop turning it in thirty loses money on — and the second shop genuinely does not believe that until you prove it to them.
In scope
- Production flow, dispatch and bay utilization
- Supplement capture that doesn't depend on one good estimator
- Parts discipline — ordering, returns, and the gross nobody is watching
- The weekly operating rhythm that holds the number after I leave
Finance function reset
For the gap between controllers, or between CFOs, or the quarter after an acquisition when nobody can tell you what the book actually is. I have covered the CFO chair twice and sat through three CEO transitions; I know what the reporting has to look like when the board asks on a Tuesday.
In scope
- A/P rebuilt — I took a platform from 90+ days back under 30, and built the team to hold it
- A/R recognized, collected and aged down; write-offs identified rather than carried
- Financial reporting speed and accuracy, and operational KPIs generated on a schedule
- System truth — CDK, QuickBooks or NetSuite, and the interface between estimating and accounting
Financial modeling & scenario planning
Before you add a bay, buy a store, insource a service or sign a lease, you should know what the numbers do in the base case, the bad case and the one that actually happens. I build these myself — editable drivers, live formulas, no black boxes — and I have taken one through a Quality of Earnings as the seller, which is the fastest way to learn what a buyer will pick apart.
In scope
- Capacity and throughput model tied to real production data
- P&L with labor burden, sublet and parts gross modeled as visible line items
- Scenario and sensitivity analysis, including the cash trough
- Insourcing business case with equipment, staffing and payback
- A model your team owns and can change without calling me
How the fee works
Why there's a range, and not a price.
Every number above is a range, because the same engagement on a single store and on a twelve-store group are not the same job. I would rather tell you what moves the number than quote a figure that turns out to be wrong by the second week.
The fee is fixed once we have scoped it. If I have underestimated the work, that is mine to carry — the fee does not move. If you need it compressed into half the calendar time, that is a different engagement and I will quote it as one.
I don't sell hours. A hundred hours a month at what this work is worth is a number nobody in this industry signs, and it puts us on opposite sides of how long the job takes. Fixed fee, agreed scope, defined end.
Fit
Who this is built for
- Platforms that have bought something in the past six months, or are in the process of buying
- Dealership-owned collision centers of any size — the dealer principal is protecting a brand and a customer, and will pay for that
- Dealer groups with a collision or reconditioning operation
- Family businesses considering a sale, before you hire a banker
- A single site with a number big enough to justify the fee
What I don't do
- Run the shop day to day. I'll help you hire that person, not be them
- Open-ended retainers with no number attached
- Deliver a report instead of an installed process
Not sure which one you need?
That's what the diagnostic is for. Two weeks, a number, and a straight answer about whether it's worth chasing.