Hale & CoConsultantExample, not a real client
Hale & Co
I work with owner-managed businesses between $5M and $50M in revenue, usually at the point where the thing that got them here has quietly stopped working. Engagements are fixed scope, fixed fee, and finish.
How I work
Every engagement begins with the same two-hour session, and I will say so if the answer is that you do not need me.
A short, unsentimental read of where the money is actually made and lost, delivered as a document you can act on without me.
Taking one broken process — pricing, planning, reporting — apart and putting it back together with the people who run it every day.
Two days a month for owners who want a second opinion before the decision, not a post-mortem after it.
Case studies
Names withheld at the clients' request. Numbers are as reported by their own finance teams twelve months on.
Quotes were taking eleven days and coming out inconsistent enough that two customers found out they were paying different rates for the same order.
Six weeks: rebuilt the cost model from the ground up, sat with the four people who actually produce quotes, and wrote the rules down in language the sales team could use.
Quote turnaround down to two days. Gross margin up 4.1 points within a quarter.
Headcount had doubled in two years while profit stayed flat. Nobody could say which service lines were carrying the others.
Eight weeks of unit-economics work per service line, then a hard conversation about the two that were structurally unprofitable.
Two lines closed, one repriced. Operating profit back to 18% inside three quarters.
Every branch reported numbers a different way, so head office was managing on instinct and monthly guesswork.
Built one weekly reporting pack, agreed the definitions with all twelve managers first, then trained them on it in a single afternoon.
One page, every Monday, used in every branch. Stock write-offs down 31% in a year.
About
Nineteen years in operations, eleven of them running them rather than advising on them — two manufacturing sites and a distribution business that went from 40 to 300 people while I was responsible for it.
I work alone. That means I turn down work when the calendar is full, and it means the person in the first meeting is the person doing the work in week seven.
No charge, no proposal deck afterwards. If there is a piece of work worth doing, you will get a one-page scope and a fixed fee within three days.
Request a sessionmarion@haleandco.example
+1 (555) 062-7719
Hale & Co
24 Whitcomb Street
Portland, ME 04101
