Platform One
Your business can run without you.
Right now it can't, and you already know that. You have a good company that still needs you every single day. What you don't know is which one thing is holding it there. More often than anyone admits, the one thing is you. We find it, fix it with you, then prove it moved.
Find your one thing Not ready? Score your business first · free, 10 minutes ›What we do
Find it. Fix it.
Follow through.
One thing is holding the rest in place. We find which one, fix it with you, then measure again and show you it moved.
- 9,000+founders scored
with us - 4our own companies
built and exited - $1B+capital raised,
structured, advised
The constraint moves as you grow.
Most owners are still solving the last stage's problem. Find your revenue band and read across.
Tap your revenue band
These are the odds, not your answer. Your business is capped by one of these, and the band tells you which is most likely. It does not tell you which is yours. That is what the audit is for.
We don't just work on the business.
We work on you.
Because the person is the business. A company grows to the size of the one running it, and not an inch further.
Every audit you have ever bought looked at the company and left you out of it.
That is the one place the answer usually is.
The part I got wrong first, in every company I built. Not the plan. Me.
Nick Ayala
If you have ever said "I'll hand it off when I find someone who can do it right," this is about you.
So we measure you the same way we measure everything else.
You rate yourself. Your team rates you, separately, on the same things. How much lands on your desk. What the room does when you walk in. How you take bad news. Whether you are the ceiling.
Then the part only you answer. The last week you took off with no phone. What you are afraid happens if you let go. Who you talk to when it is bad.
The gap between your number and theirs is the finding. It is the most useful thing you will get from us, and nobody else measures it.
The instrument that finds it is called Baseline.
It's called Baseline.
A full audit of your whole company.
The deepest look at your business you have ever had.
Three sectors over 0.6. All three resolve to the same desk.
We measure where your company actually is before anyone changes anything.
Everyone answers separately. No names on the answers. What comes back is the distance between what you believe and what your people know.
That distance is the constraint, and it is costing you money today.
Not the version that protects them. No name ever goes on an answer, you sign that before we send a single link, and we will not break it if you ask later. That is the only reason what comes back is real instead of diplomatic.
Most owners are working the loudest problem, not the one capping them. You answer first and alone, your team answers separately, and the gap between those two accounts tells you which is which. One thing to fix, and the evidence for why it is that one.
Every score opens onto the answers underneath it. Challenge any figure in the room and we open what produced it on the spot. Nothing you have to take on faith, and nothing you cannot defend to your own leadership team.
See what a real finding looks like ›
Read the Platform One Index: what actually caps owner-led companies ›
Am I the bottleneck in my own business? ›
Why won't my team tell me what's actually wrong? ›
Is it a people problem or a process problem? ›
How do I get out of the day-to-day? ›
My revenue is flat and I don't know why ›
Best business consulting firms for owner-led companies ›
Three steps, every time.
Find it. Fix it. Follow through.
Most firms do the first one and call it a job. Almost nobody can do the third at all. Step one takes as long as your company is complicated, and we will tell you that number before we start.
We audit the business, then sit down with you
You answer first and alone, including about yourself. Then your partners, then your team, with nobody seeing anyone else's answers.
Plenty of owners stop here, take the finding and fix it themselves. That is a fine place to stop.
We come in and run the fix with you
A small senior team works your business alongside your people until the constraint is gone.
Not advice. Nobody hands you a plan and leaves.
We measure again and show you it moved
Almost nobody else can do this, for a boring reason: they never measured you before they started. We did, in step one.
The number either moved or it did not.
What it covers
Three steps outside.
Six sectors inside. One is you.
A racing lap is timed in sectors, because that is the only way to see which part cost you the race. We score a business the same way. Most owners are sound in five and losing in one, and almost nobody is losing where they expect. The one they least expect has their own name on it.
- S0The founderHow much runs through you, how the room reads you, and whether you are the ceiling. Scored by you and by your team, separately.
- S1FinanceWhere the money actually goes, and what it costs to find out late.
- S2MarketingWhether new business arrives predictably or by luck, and whether the agencies and lead-gen firms you pay for are actually producing.
- S3PeopleWho the work really depends on, and what stops without them.
- S4OperationsHow the work moves, against how it is supposed to.
- S5PerformanceWhether any of it is measurably better than last quarter.
Somebody who has built and sold companies, not just advised them.
structured, advised
and exited
more than once
On the record
With Kevin O’Leary, Robert Herjavec and Daymond John.
Founded, scaled and exited companies across finance, real estate, technology and education. Roll-ups, re-caps, and a few deals walked away from that looked good on paper and would have killed me.
Sat across from family offices, funds and institutional investors in the US and the Middle East. Raised, structured or advised on over a billion dollars.
The pattern that stuck was never about the money. It was watching what actually stops good companies from growing, and how rarely it is the thing the founder is focused on.
I talk about the other part every day online. The mental side. Getting better as a person before the business can. Platform One is where it gets measured.
- FounderAlign Equity Group · Lot 29 Capital · The Wealth Circle · The Come Up
- AuthorCapital Is the GameA number one Amazon new release
- BoardChairman's Society · Make-A-Wish Southern Florida
- LicensedSeries 65 and 63Relevant to the regulated work, and not the reason anyone hires us.
The method existed
before the product.
The pattern in both books is the one the audit measures. It came out of the companies we built and sold, and the hundreds we have scored since. The audit is what happens when you stop writing the pattern down and start measuring it.
Start here
You already suspect
what it is. Find out for certain.
Send one paragraph on what you think is holding the business up. You get a reply from Nick with a straight answer on whether the audit would settle it, what it would cost for a company your size, and what we would expect to find. If an audit is the wrong instrument, we say so.
We take a handful of engagements at a time, because step three puts our own people inside your business. Every enquiry is read by Nick. See a worked example
Not ready to talk? Take the P1 Index. Twenty questions, your constraint named, free.