Operators who build · Niagara, Ontario · working nationally
Software that ships before your business changes shape.
An 18-month build lands on a company that no longer exists. That was never a technology failure; it was a timeline failure. We compress the timeline, so what ships is built against what is true now.
The last business we ran
$0 → $30M
Grown from zero on Shopify, and sold. We're not consultants who read about growth — we operated it.
The diagnosis
Every business is somewhere on this map, overspending on something.
Pick the one that sounds like your week. Each shows what it costs and what the next twelve months can look like instead.
Six places businesses get stuck
pick yours
01Everything runs through you
Where you are
Quotes go out when you write them. Jobs run when you confirm them. Invoices leave when you remember. This business has systems — most of them are you. And every hour spent working in the machine is an hour nobody spends working on it.
What it's costing you
$78,000/yr
10 hrs/wk × $150/hr × 52 weeks. Redo it with your numbers.
Count last week’s hours spent quoting, scheduling, invoicing and chasing — priced at what your selling and hiring time is worth, not what an admin costs. Ten hours a week at $150 is $78,000 a year, and ten is polite. A payroll line that never appears on payroll.
Twelve months from now
The business runs for a day without you and nothing breaks. That is the twelve-month test, and most of it is automation, not software.
Build now
- The three or four automations that take you out of quoting, scheduling and invoicing. Live in weeks, not quarters.
- Some of it is throwaway by design. That is fine; it buys back the hours that fund everything else.
Foundations only
- The full operating system. Get the record-keeping primitives right: customers, jobs, money in, money out.
- Leave the screens for when you know what you need. Every shipped screen is maintained forever.
02It runs on spreadsheets
Where you are
There is a workbook only one person really understands, and they take holidays. Customers live in one tool, orders in another, and when two systems disagree, someone re-keys until they match. You have priced off-the-shelf CRMs twice and bounced, because your business does not fit their shape.
What it's costing you
$13,000/yr
2 hrs/day of re-keying × $25/hr × 260 working days.
Every record typed twice is paid for twice — two hours a day at $25 is $13,000 a year moving data you already own. The bigger cost has no line item: decisions made on stale numbers.
Twelve months from now
One record of the truth, and everything else reads from it.
Build now
- The data model, complete: customers, orders, money in, money out, wired into the tools you already use.
- The two or three ugliest re-keying loops, automated first. They pay for the rest.
Foundations only
- The screens: dashboards, permissions, the accounting interface.
- A schema change costs nearly nothing. A shipped screen is maintained forever. Build the record, not the furniture.
03A Shopify store at its ceiling
Where you are
The store works, which is exactly why nobody wants to touch it. The theme has been patched by three freelancers, the apps do not talk to each other, and at least one is quietly slowing the storefront down. Behind the checkout, fulfilment and support run on copy-and-paste.
What it's costing you
$[TK]
[TK — confirm theme-build and monthly app figures before publishing]
We sat on the buying side of this: a big-agency theme build billed at [TK — confirm] and a private app budget of [TK — confirm] a month. The invoices were half the cost; the waiting was the rest — every week a change sits in a queue, the store sells at its old conversion rate.
Twelve months from now
The store becomes something you change on a Tuesday, not a system you petition.
Build now
- The theme and private-app work that unblocks whatever is costing revenue this quarter.
- The ops behind the store: fulfilment, inventory sync, support triage, automated.
Foundations only
- Whatever the replatform pitch says you need. We grew a store from $0 to $30M on Shopify. You are not outgrowing Shopify; you are outgrowing how yours was built.
04An ERP project, live or looming
Where you are
You have been told the answer is an ERP, or you are already a year into one. The weekly status call has more people on it than progress, the spec was written by people who do not do the work, and go-live has moved twice.
What it's costing you
11 people × 2 years
The anatomy of a blown implementation. We were three of those people.
Eleven people from two companies on a weekly call for two years: two project managers, three full-time staff on scoping, QA and UAT, six directors billing time whether or not the project moves. The software was never the expensive part. The coordination was.
Twelve months from now
Live on something the team actually uses, module by module, with the spec written inside the operation instead of about it.
Build now
- The one or two modules bleeding the most, plus the data migration path and the integration seams.
- A spec built by working inside your systems, not from discovery calls about them.
Foundations only
- Every module the vendor demo showed that nobody asked for.
- Honestly: we compress coordination overhead, not change management or training. Those still take the time they take.
05The books don’t match the bank
Where you are
QuickBooks says one number, the bank says another, and the spreadsheet that reconciles them lives with your bookkeeper. You find out what a month looked like three weeks after it ended — precisely when you can no longer do anything about it.
What it's costing you
160 hrs/yr
200 invoices/mo, hand-entered at 4 minutes each.
Hand-entering 200 invoices a month at four minutes each is 160 hours a year re-typing what your other systems already recorded. The larger bill lands at year-end, when your accountant charges clean-up rates to reconstruct it.
Twelve months from now
The books close days after month-end, and you trust the number enough to act on it.
Build now
- The books set up properly, once. Then sync from the systems where transactions are born, so nothing is typed twice.
- The month-end checklist automated down to exceptions.
Foundations only
- Job costing and forecasting. Cheap to add on a trustworthy ledger, worthless on a shaky one.
06A small team, choosing systems
Where you are
There are three, four, five of you, and this quarter’s tool decisions will quietly become permanent. You are about to pick a CRM — or pay someone to build one — sized for the company you are instead of the one you are becoming. And nobody technical is in the room.
What it's costing you
2 builds + 1 migration
What the wrong foundation actually costs.
A system you outgrow is not replaced; it is migrated — every record re-mapped, every habit retrained, mid-growth, when you can least afford the distraction. The wrong foundation is paid for twice, and the move between the two is the expensive part.
Twelve months from now
Headcount or revenue doubles, and nothing has to be replaced to survive it.
Build now
- The automations that keep founders out of admin from day one.
- A book-of-record data model with room in it: customers, work, money, from the start.
Foundations only
- Nearly everything else. Data model complete, features minimal. It is cheaper to leave room than to move house.
The next step
A free day inside your systems. Not a sales call.
Pick a row above, or don't; we'll find it. We spend one day inside your business and hand back real optimisations, delivered, along with the diagnosis. Most firms spend that money on salespeople. We spend it on the work.
The offer
Two speeds. One direction.
01
Live in weeks
Get out of the machine
Quoting, scheduling and invoicing off your desk in weeks. Some of it is scaffolding we'll replace later — we'll tell you which parts.
02
12–24 months
A system with room in it
Built for where you'll be, not where you are: the records complete from day one, screens added when the business proves it needs them. Nothing to outgrow.
How we build
Data model complete, features minimal.
Schema room is nearly free on day one and brutal to retrofit later, while every shipped screen is maintained forever. So we build the record of your business first — customers, work, money in, money out — and add screens only when you need them. The day you need the accounting interface, it's an addition, not a rebuild.
Where budgets actually go
The software was never the expensive part.
An ERP implementation that should cost far less routinely balloons, because eleven people from two companies sit on a weekly call for two years:
- 2Project managers, one per company, reconciling two versions of the plan.
- 3Full-time staff on scoping, QA and UAT. We were these three.
- 6Directors and executives billing time whether or not the project moves.
- 104Weekly status calls over two years, each one starting with a recap.
That is coordination overhead, and it is what we compress: fewer people, a shorter loop, a spec written inside your operation. What we don't compress — change management, training, the data work only your team can do. Anyone who says otherwise is selling.
The full anatomy, the research, and a calculator to price your own →
Proof
What we have actually run
$0 → $30M
Grown and sold
The Shopify business we grew from a standing start and sold. Not advised on. Ran.
Every day
We live with our builds
LawnJunkie, the Niagara landscaping company one of us co-owns, runs daily on an operating system we built: estimating, crews, job costing, routing.
Buying side
We know what it feels like
A large ERP implementation, big-agency Shopify builds, a monthly app budget. We paid those invoices before we ever sent one.
Client work
The businesses that have let us inside.
Running our own companies is the loudest proof we have. It isn't the only kind.
A coffee company
Toronto
Shopify work for a brand shipping real product out of the city — the kind of store where operations, not marketing, set the ceiling.
Manufacturing
Hamilton
Inside the shop, where job records, quoting and scheduling actually live — the work a video call cannot scope.
Landscaping and trades
Niagara
Seasonal businesses run from trucks: quoting, scheduling and billing that has to survive a rainy Tuesday in June.
Accounting firms
Niagara
Firms tired of year-end archaeology. We build the pipes so the data arrives clean; the judgment stays with them.
Pantree and Office Painting Solutions are client work. LawnJunkie is closest to home: one of us is a partner there.
A name or a logo appears here one way only: the client put it in writing. The rest stays anonymous, often under NDA — you'd want the same.
The next step
The first day is free, and it isn't a call.
Scoping calls produce bad specs — the vendor doesn't know your business yet. One day inside your systems teaches more than six discovery calls, so that's what we do first.
1
Point us at the mess
A short note about where it hurts. We pick the day together and sort out access — that’s the whole ask.
2
We spend a day inside
One day working in your actual systems, not asking about them from across a boardroom table.
3
You keep the work
Real optimisations delivered, plus the diagnosis in writing. A proposal only if you want the rest built.
"You'll get the three of us — the people who ran the last one — not a delivery team you've never met."