Advisory Services
Embedded Operations
Find the real constraint and rebuild the systems around it.
Ninety-day embedded engagements for businesses with strong revenue and weak architecture.
Selective availability · By application only
What Advisory Looks Like
The companies Graham works with are not struggling to sell. They are struggling to operate at the scale they have already reached. Post-acquisition integration that stalled. A close cycle that takes three weeks. Five systems doing the job of two. Graham embeds alongside the CFO or COO and spends ninety days fixing what is structurally broken.
This is not consulting. There is no slide deck at the end. Graham operates inside the business, restructures what needs restructuring, and leaves it cleaner than he found it.
Typical Engagement
Weeks 1–2
Diagnostic
Two weeks embedded. Graham maps the reporting structure, systems architecture, and close cycle. The goal is to separate the symptoms from the root cause.
90 Days
Corrective Phase
Ninety days alongside leadership. Rebuild fractured reporting, consolidate overlapping systems, and fix financial visibility. The work product is a running business, not a deliverable.
Monthly
Ongoing Cadence
A lighter monthly rhythm to stabilize the gains, monitor the constraint, and hand the business back clean.
What Graham Fixes
Who This Is For
Good fit
- PE-backed platform companies working through post-close integration
- Founder-led businesses scaling past $10M with systems that haven't kept up
- Companies in a recap, acquisition, or leadership transition
- Operators who suspect the problem is structure, not effort
Not a fit
- Pre-revenue or early-stage startups still finding product-market fit
- Companies looking for a slide deck or strategy document
- Businesses looking for ongoing part-time finance leadership rather than a focused structural engagement
Representative Outcomes
Where this work comes from
PE-Backed MEP Rollup: 40+ Acquisitions, One Structural Problem
A private equity-backed platform acquired more than forty mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors across multiple states. Each acquisition brought its own chart of accounts, payroll vendor, estimating tool, and reporting cadence. The holding company had revenue north of $500M but could not produce a consolidated financial picture in under six weeks. Leadership turnover was high. Integration was stalled.
The structural constraint was not complexity. It was that every integration decision was being made subsidiary by subsidiary, with no shared operating framework to sequence them against. The result was forty versions of "good enough" and no institutional standard for what a fully integrated portfolio company should look like.
Embedded inside the platform for more than a year, Graham built the target-state operating model across accounting, software, and reporting. Defined which systems consolidated first based on financial risk, not convenience. Rebuilt the month-end close process from a six-week cycle to ten business days. Designed the KPI layer that gave the PE sponsor visibility into portfolio performance without requiring subsidiary-level calls. Each new acquisition now runs through the same structural integration framework.
The advisory model offered through this practice is built on this kind of work. The difference is scope and duration: a focused 90-day engagement rather than a multiyear embed.
Other engagement results
Engagement Tiers
By application · Selective availability
Advisory Engagement
Full embedded engagement: two-week diagnostic, ninety-day corrective phase, optional monthly cadence. Priced as a senior operator taking functional ownership. A small number per year.
Free · Fifteen minutes
For Businesses
Structural Audit
An operator’s audit of the business across six dimensions: personnel, accounting and finance, software stack, AI readiness, sales and marketing, operations. Weighted scoring, industry benchmarks, risk-ranked output.
Questions
What does an engagement cost?
Advisory engagements are priced by scope, not by hour. Each one is structured around the diagnostic phase, the 90-day corrective phase, and the ongoing monthly cadence. Pricing sits in the range you would expect for a senior embedded operator taking functional ownership of a business for three months, and it is set after the diagnostic, not before. Companies that are not ready for that level of commitment should start with the Structural Audit.
How long does an engagement actually last?
Two weeks of diagnostic, followed by ninety days of corrective work embedded inside the business, followed by a lighter monthly cadence to stabilize the changes. Some engagements extend past month three if the structural work uncovered is larger than the initial scope. The monthly cadence is optional and ends when the business no longer needs it.
What kinds of companies is this actually for?
Companies past the revenue problem and into the operations problem. Post-close platform builds, businesses that outgrew their original systems, leadership transitions where the back office did not keep up. Revenue is established. The internal structure is not.
How is this different from management consulting?
Consulting delivers a recommendation. Graham delivers a restructured business. He embeds alongside the CFO or COO and does the work himself: rebuild reporting, consolidate systems, fix the close. When he leaves, the business is running differently, not reading about how it could.
How is this different from the Structural Audit?
The Structural Audit is a free self-service diagnostic. You answer fifty questions across six dimensions and receive an instant structural score, per-dimension risks, and ranked recommendations. An advisory engagement is the opposite end of the spectrum: Graham comes inside the business and executes the work. Most companies who later engage start with the Audit.
Does Graham replace your team, or work with them?
Graham works alongside them. The goal is to rebuild the structure and hand it back to the team that will operate it long after the engagement ends. When team-level issues surface (the wrong seat, a missing function, a handoff that is structurally broken), those become part of the diagnostic output for leadership to act on. Graham does not make hire/fire decisions.