Rocket Restoration · $4.2M shop · Pacific Northwest
Recent shop · Owner-as-bottleneck → AR 71d → 44d in two quarters
You built a shop. Now it can’t run without you, and that’s exactly why no one will buy it. We pull you out of production without dropping margin, and rebuild the books a buyer will pay for.
- 52%
- recon margin (R360 cohort)
- $214K
- AR recovered in a quarter (one shop)
- 200
- projects trained on
- 90 days
- full quarter engagement
The bottleneck
What was actually leaking
You’re still six of nine seats on the org chart
Approving every estimate, riding every Cat 3 job, calling every adjuster on supplements. The shop only works because you’re holding it together, and the day you stop, revenue stops with you.
Margin is leaking and you can’t point to where
AR over 60 days. Supplements you never wrote. Techs over-scoping mit because no one defined an authority threshold. You feel the bleed every Friday but the books can’t tell you which job did it.
The mastermind didn’t move the numbers
You sat through the calls. You bought the binders. The Slack channel got noisy and your AR aging report didn’t change. Coaching without an install is just expensive validation.
Nobody is buying a job you’re personally running
Buyers don’t pay multiples for you. They pay for a system. If the operation can’t survive a 30-day owner sabbatical, the multiple gets cut in half, or there’s no offer at all.
Find · what we diagnosed
- Owner approves every scope over $2,500
- AR aging out past 60 days, no clear owner
- Supplement hit rate sub-50%, can’t tell you exactly
- P&L is monthly, lagged, and not per-job
- Lead tech is capable but has no written authority
- Growth has been flat for 12+ months
Fit · what we installed
- Operating Diagnostic, 90 days of files, the shop, the team, the books
- Ranked playbook with dollar amounts behind every fix
- AI agents shipped on your existing stack inside one week
- Weekly working sessions with an owner-founder for the quarter
- Quarterly re-scope on real numbers, not feel
Owner was approving every estimate, riding every Cat 3 job, and personally calling every adjuster on supplements. Classic owner-as-bottleneck, revenue plateaued for 14 months and AR was sitting at 71 days. We spent the first two weeks just shadowing: ride-alongs, FNOL intake, scope walkthroughs, supplement queue. Found the lead tech was capable of running mit independently but had never been given a written authority threshold. Wrote a one-page scope-approval matrix (under $7,500 tech-approves, $7,500–$25,000 PM-approves, over goes to owner). Rebuilt the supplement workflow so docs hit the desk adjuster within 48 hours of discovery. Six months later: owner stopped riding routine water losses, AR dropped to 44 days, recon margin moved from 38% to 49%.
The results
Before → after, and what holds it
Consulting found the leak and made the call. Automation keeps it from sliding back without the owner in the loop.
Owner approves every scope over $2,500
Authority matrix written; PMs approve up to $25K
Consulting moved itAR aging out past 60 days, no clear owner
AR sub-45 days with a named owner and weekly cadence
Automation holds itSupplement hit rate sub-50%, can’t tell you exactly
Supplement workflow: docs to desk in <48 hours
Automation holds itP&L is monthly, lagged, and not per-job
Per-job margin live in QuickBooks-tied dashboard
Automation holds itLead tech is capable but has no written authority
Lead tech runs routine mit end-to-end without owner
Consulting moved itGrowth has been flat for 12+ months
Books defensible enough to hand a buyer’s diligence team
Consulting moved itCohort numbers are averages across shops we’ve worked with. Single-shop numbers are one engagement and labeled that way in the stats above. Anonymized at the operator’s request — the numbers are not.
“Jake didn’t sell me a course. He sat in my truck for a week, watched how I was running the shop, and told me which three things were eating my margin. I’d already paid two consultants before him who never set foot on a job site.”
Want this run on your numbers?
The work starts with a 30-minute Operating Diagnostic. We tell you where your shop leaks before anyone signs.